Stifling Campus Speech

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Stifling Campus Speech

Special Report - February 22, 2010
Nearly 60 percent of North Carolina’s colleges and universities have a speech policy, which seriously restricts students’ First Amendment rights to free speech and free expression, according to a new report. The report from the John W. Pope Civitas Institute for Higher Education and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) examined policies at 57 private and public colleges and universities in North Carolina using FIRE’s speech code rating system that looks at university policies for excessive regulation of constitutionally protected speech. Schools can earn a red, yellow, or green light rating. No school in North Carolina received a green light, which indicates that all of North Carolina’s institutions of higher education that received a rating have policies in place that “ban,” “excessively regulate,” or “clearly and substantially restrict” protected speech.

Of the 57 colleges and universities in the state, 16 received a yellow light, indicating that they have “some policies that could ban or excessively regulate protected speech.” Included among these schools are Catawba College, Duke University, Meredith College, Shaw University, NC A&T University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Chapel Hill, Pembroke, and Wilmington. More than twice that number—34—earned a red light rating, indicating “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech” by “unambiguously [infringing] on what is or should be protected expression.” These “red light” schools include Western Carolina University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Charlotte, the North Carolina School of the Arts, North Carolina Central University, East Carolina University, Appalachian State University, Wake Forest University, Queens University, Montreat College, Lenoir-Rhyne University, Elon University, Davidson University, and Cambell University. Five private schools, including Belmont Abbey College, Gardner-Webb University, and High Point University, were not rated because they “have particular missions that require restrictions on speech” and they state “clearly and consistently” that a “certain set of values above a commitment to freedom of speech” is held at those schools.

The report warns parents and students to look for words like “innuendoes,” “teasing,” “inappropriate,” and “disdain” as examples of well-intentioned rules or policies that are usually so broad that they “stifle the free exchange of ideas.”

“America’s colleges and universities are supposed to be strongholds of classically liberal ideals including the protection of individual rights and openness to debate and inquiry,” according to the report’s author, Jenna Ashley Robinson. “Universities often deny students and faculty their fundamental rights—and thus fail in their educational missions.”

She concluded, “This report illustrates the unfortunate reality that North Carolina’s institutions of higher education are, in many cases, failing to uphold their promises of free expression, assembly, and religion to students and faculty.”