A new survey from a well-known and respected university sheds light on the debate over whether colleges and universities are hostile environments for conservatives.
Conor Friedersdorf covered the survey at The Atlantic, which was conducted by the University of North Carolina (UNC) and asked questions of more than 1,000 undergraduates. As with all surveys, they are self-reported, so the answers must be taken with a grain of salt. Also, because it was conducted at one university system, it is not indicative of all universities and colleges across the country.
Students at UNC by and large suggested they weren’t afraid to bring up their viewpoints in the classrooms, and said professors encourage debate and hearing from both sides. Students, however, had something different to say about their peers. Friedersdorf highlighted four key takeaways from the survey:
While majorities favor more viewpoint diversity and free-speech norms, an intolerant faction of roughly a quarter of students believe it is okay to silence or suppress some widely held views that they deem wrong.
Students across political perspectives engage in classroom self-censorship.
Students harbor divisive stereotypes about classmates with different beliefs, and a substantial minority are not open to engaging socially with classmates who don’t share their views.
Disparaging comments about political conservatives are common.
Students surveyed were asked about their tolerance for viewpoints they disagree with and were then asked what actions would be appropriate to take against people holding those opposing viewpoints.
“An alarming 25.5 percent of survey respondents said it would be appropriate to ‘create an obstruction, such that a campus speaker endorsing this idea could not address an audience,’” Friedersdorf wrote. “This authoritarian view was held by about 19 percent of self-identifying liberals, 3 percent of moderates, and 3 percent of conservatives. More than 3 percent of liberals and 1 percent of conservatives thought it would be appropriate to ‘yell profanity at a student’ for endorsing the objectionable idea.”
Conservative students also said they feared expressing their views in class, with 68% saying they had censored themselves, while 49% of moderates and 24% of liberals said the same. As Friedersdorf wrote, a quarter of conservative students who responded to the survey said they were worried their peers would file a complaint against them for their viewpoints expressed in class. What’s more, Friedersdorf wrote, the survey provided more evidence that conservatives do, indeed, face a hostile environment – at least at UNC:
Among students who self-identify as liberals, some 10 percent said they hear “disrespectful, inappropriate, or offensive comments” about foreign students at least several times a semester, 14 percent said they hear disparaging comments about Muslims, 20 percent said they hear such comments about African Americans, 20 percent said they hear such comments about Christians, 21 percent said they hear such comments about LGBTQ individuals, and 57 percent said they hear such comments about conservatives. Among moderates, 68 percent said that they hear “disrespectful, inappropriate, or offensive comments” about conservatives at least several times a semester.
Further still, conservatives appear to face social isolation if their peers know which way they lean political.
“Roughly 92 percent of conservatives said they would be friends with a liberal, and just 3 percent said that they would not have a liberal friend. Among liberals, however, almost a quarter said they would not have a conservative friend. Would UNC be a better place without conservatives? About 22 percent of liberals said yes. Would it be a better place without liberals? Almost 15 percent of conservatives thought so,” Friedersdorf wrote.
The authors of the survey themselves concluded that “Self-identified conservative students do in fact face distinct challenges related to viewpoint expression at UNC.”
