The skeptics were wrong, Part 1

Campus free speech was in trouble in 2018, and the data shows it has gotten much worse

Last week, we shared the alarming data coming out of FIRE’s new Campus Deplatforming Database to show just how bad the effects of violent protests and heckler’s vetoes on campus free speech really are. This week, we’ll address the skepticism about the “campus free speech crisis” dating back to 2018.

Six years ago, in a three-part series for Heterodox Academy, Sean and Jonathan Haidt proposed that a “new dynamic” was emerging on American college campuses and that current college students were more hostile toward freedom of speech than their older counterparts. Sean and Haidt proposed that this “new dynamic” represented a set of “politically correct” viewpoints that made it harder for students and faculty who dissented from these viewpoints to express themselves.

The “new dynamic” hypothesis was based on an analysis of FIRE’s Campus Disinvitation Database (now the Campus Deplatforming Database) as well as data from five different surveys. The data demonstrated that in 2016 and 2017, student participation in disinvitation attempts and substantial event disruptions was at record levels and was increasingly targeting conservative expression. It also showed that college students thought their campuses were stifling the expression of controversial ideas (which on many campuses, were likely to be conservative, or, at least, deemed to be conservative, what Greg calls “fasco-casting”).

At the time, Sean and Haidt’s “new dynamic” hypothesis was met with skepticism. Jeffery Sachs declared, “There is no campus free speech crisis, the kids are alright, those that say otherwise have lost all perspective, and the real crisis may be elsewhere, ” and, “The ‘campus free speech crisis’ is a myth and here are the facts.” Rich Smith let everyone know, “There’s No Free Speech Crisis on Campus, So Please Shut Up About It.” And Matt Yglesias claimed in Vox, “​​Everything we think about the political correctness debate is wrong.” 

This was, of course, maddening to Greg, who had been watching free speech on campus deteriorate since 2001. He had published countless examples everywhere from the Huffington Post (where he was a columnist for 10 years) to The New York Times to Reason Magazine, and in his 2012 book, “Unlearning Liberty.” He had also published, along with Haidt, the original “Coddling of the American Mind” (a title he hated, by the way) article in The Atlantic in summer 2015, and the full book later that year.

By 2018 you would’ve already seen hundreds of instances of increased campus illiberalism. For example, in 2015 Erika Christakis was forced out of teaching at Yale while her husband Nicholas was surrounded by angry students — with one calling him “disgusting” — all over an email from Erika saying students should be able to decide for themselves which Halloween costumes they wore.

In 2017, pandemonium overtook Evergreen State College after biology professor Bret Weinstein argued that a plan to have all white students and professors leave campus for a “Day of Absence” to highlight the lack of racial diversity was itself racist.

That same year, violence broke out at Middlebury College over the attendance of political scientist Charles Murray and at Claremont McKenna College in protest of conservative political commentator Heather MacDonald. Most spectacularly — and shamefully, given the college’s history as the home of the Free Speech Movement — violent protests ravaged UC Berkeley at a scale not seen since the 1970s in response to a scheduled-then-aborted speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopolous.

Again, those are just a few examples of the hundreds on offer,but, of course, the data on the situation wasn’t totally clear yet in 2018. It never can be so soon after a new phenomenon begins. (In both “The Canceling of the American Mind” and “Coddling,” Greg, Haidt, and Rikki Schlott argue that real shift on campus truly only got under way in 2014).

In their analysis for Heterodox Academy, Sean and Haidt say as much — acknowledging that the jury was still out on this “new dynamic” hypothesis because data was still only beginning to emerge.

Six years later, however, the verdict is in: The skeptics were wrong.

We have receipts: Deplatforming attempts on college campuses

The crux of the “new dynamic” hypothesis is this: Do we have data supporting the claim that a significant portion of college students have become more hostile toward free speech than previous generations?

According to FIRE’s new Campus Deplatforming Database (last updated Feb. 29, 2024), the answer is yes.

From 1998 through 2013, students and student groups were involved in 171 deplatforming attempts — an average of 11 per year. Deplatforming attempts involving students and/or student groups (henceforth students) during this time period peaked at 22 in 2009, in contrast just one deplatforming attempt involving students occurring in 1998 and one occurring in 1999. Seventy of these deplatforming attempts involving students succeeded at disinviting speakers like Ward Churchill and Norman Finkelstein or in removing pro-Palestinian artwork from display — a success rate of 36%, roughly three-and-half per year.

Since 2014, however, students have been involved in 485 deplatforming attempts — an average of 48-and-a-half per year. Of these 485 deplatforming attempts involving students, 215 have succeeded. That’s a success rate of 44%, or roughly 21-and-a-half per year — an average that is six times higher than the average of three-and-a-half per year from 1998 to 2013.

A record 87 student-involved deplatforming attempts occurred in 2023, and 2024 is already on track to beat it — with 18 already recorded as of Feb. 29.

Given that most colleges and universities operated almost entirely remotely due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that 2020 had the fewest number of deplatforming attempts since 2013. What might surprise you is that the total amount, 20, is only two fewer than those that occurred in 2009 — the peak year for deplatforming attempts involving students from 1998-2013. Despite the lack of in-person events during the pandemic, college students still found a way to at least match the previous period’s worst numbers.

Over the past decade, the average number of deplatforming attempts involving students per year has quadrupled. This includes the 2020 New York University disinvitation of Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on memory and skeptic of recovered memories who testified for the defense in Harvey Weinstein’s trial, and the 2023 Whitworth University disinvitation of Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese dissident who grew up during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. It also includes the cancellation of multiple screenings of the film “Israelism” last fall at Hunter College and the University of Pennsylvania and the removal of two pieces of artwork from an art exhibit by an Iranian-American artist at Macalester College because the work caused “harm” to the Muslim community on campus.

Perhaps more concerning is that students trying to stop an in-progress event — which we also code as deplatforming attempts — have also increased over the past decade.

Only 22 of the successful deplatformings from the entire period of 1998-2013 were substantial event disruptions, meaning one or more people either interrupted a speaker for a considerable amount of time or successfully shouted them down. On average, that’s roughly one-and-a-half substantial event disruptions per year. Examples include the disruption of a commencement speech by Chris Hedges at Rockford College in 2003, where students rushed the podium and unplugged Hedges’ microphone due to his opposition to the Iraq War. Hedges was escorted off the stage by security guards. Another example is a speech by Tom Tancredo at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2009 that was cut short after a protester threw a rock at the venue and broke a window. 

During this time period, the high for substantial event disruptions in a year was six, in 2006. Now contrast this record with what’s happened over the past decade, where 81 substantial event disruptions have already been recorded, including a peak of 21 last year. This is an average of roughly eight substantial event disruptions a year — five times the average from 1998-2013. 

Last year’s 21 disruptions include Tomi Lahren being escorted out of a speaking event by police at the University of New Mexico and the half-hour delay of a speaking event featuring Josh Hammer. During that event, students exposed shirts featuring photos of Palestinians killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war and began shouting Hammer down. When an administrator informed the students that their actions violated university policy, the administrator was also shouted down. The students eventually left, but continued to bang on the wall outside the room throughout the rest of the talk.

Although FIRE does not consider attempted disruptions to be successful deplatforming attempts, they do represent an effort to shut down in-progress events and reflect the general climate against free speech on campus. For those reasons, attempted disruptions are worth including in the data.

In the 15 years from 1998-2013, a total of 39 attempted disruptions occurred, peaking at six in 2006. These include a student disrupting a speech by Thomas Friedman at Brown University in 2008 by storming the stage and throwing a pie at Friedman, claiming that Friedman's views on environmentalism are a "sham” (Friedman cleaned himself off and resumed his speech). This data also includes students loudly booing then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger throughout a commencement speech at Santa Monica College in 2005 because of budget cuts his administration made to higher education in the state.

Over the past decade, 74 attempted disruptions have been recorded — almost double the 39 attempted disruptions from 1998 through 2013. These include a hostile exchange at Georgia State in 2019 between author and University of Nebraska professor Jennine Capó Crucet and a Georgia State student during the Q&A portion of Crucet’s talk on white privilege, which was followed by other students shouting, yelling, and chanting over Crucet. Later in the evening, students burned copies of Crucet's newly released book, "Make Your Home Among Strangers," about a Hispanic girl who grows up in a predominantly white environment. Some students also gathered outside Crucet’s hotel, forcing her to move to another one.

Skepticism of Sean and Haidt’s “new dynamic” hypothesis was understandable back in 2018, when the data simply wasn’t all in. But that’s no longer an excuse. Any denial of the free speech crisis on campus in 2024 is the result of either willful blindness or ignorance of the data — of which there is plenty. To their credit, Jeffrey Sachs has come around (albeit tentatively), and Matt Yglesias has made several references over the years as to how he was slow to realize the problems on campus — no doubt inspired in part by the craziness he experienced after signing the “Harper’s Letter.” 

We hope the wealth of data supporting the “new dynamic” hypothesis will continue to persuade skeptics that there is really a problem on campus worth reckoning with.

In our next installment, we’ll share data on how students have targeted conservative expression more over the past decade compared to the prior 15 years. Then, we’ll tackle the question, “Can it get worse?”

(Spoiler Alert: Yes, it can.)

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

And let’s not forget the wonderful organization that makes our work possible, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Check out this video about some of FIRE’s litigation highlights.