College Students' Mixed Feelings on Free Expression

A new Gallup survey for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation finds students supportive of free expression on campus, but with limits. By a large margin -- 78 percent to 22 percent -- more students say colleges should expose students to all types of speech and viewpoints than say colleges should prohibit biased or offensive speech in the furtherance of a positive learning environment. But in answers to other questions, students differentiate "hate speech" from other speech and many favor college policies to restrict speech that is intentionally offensive to people based on their identities. The full report on the survey is here.