According to some critics of higher education, as college students around the country head back to class, they will search in vain for classroom debate where all opinions are welcome.
Conservative watchdog groups paint a dark, repressive picture. “The Evil Empire on Campus,” an online resource published by the organization Campus Reform, urges students to be on guard against socialist professors and administrators committed to “leftist indoctrination,” who “weed out applicants who appear to be conservative” and “prohibit the expression of conservative thought by students in class.”
“The Evil Empire” offers no footnotes or examples. Its allegations are laughably overblown. But reasonable people should think about the issues they raise — because they are based, however tenuously, on a grain of truth and because hysterical caricatures have power. …
Surveys suggest that at some schools, conservative students, especially, feel censored. According to a 2017 poll by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, 69 percent of students say that conservatives can “freely and openly express their views” on campus, compared with 92 percent who say that liberals have the same freedom. A growing proportion of all students believe that “the climate on their campus prevents some students from expressing their views because others might take offense,” according to the poll. CONT.
Molly Worthen (UNC), New York Times