Revers, M orcid.org/0000-0002-6266-4967 and Traunmüller, R (2020) Is Free Speech in Danger on University Campus? Some Preliminary Evidence from a Most Likely Case Ist die Meinungsfreiheit an der Universität in Gefahr? Einige vorläufige Befunde anhand eines „Most likely case“. Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 72. pp. 471-497. ISSN 0023-2653
Abstract
While universities play a key role in questions of free speech and political viewpoint diversity, they are often associated with the opposite of a free exchange of ideas: a proliferation of restrictive campus speech codes, violent protests against controversial speakers and even the firing of inconvenient professors. For some observers these trends on university campuses are a clear indicator of the dire future for freedom of speech. Others view these incidents as scandalized singular events and regard the campus intolerance as a mere myth. We take an empirical look at some of the claims in the debate and present original survey evidence from a most likely case: the leftist social science studentship at Goethe University Frankfurt. Our results show that taking offense is a common experience and that a sizable share of students is in favor of restricting speech on campus. We also find evidence for conformity pressures on campus and that both, the desire to restrict speech and the reluctance to speak openly, differ significantly across political ideology. Left-leaning students are less likely to tolerate controversial viewpoints and right-leaning students are more likely to self-censor on politically sensitive issues such as gender, immigration or sexual and ethnic minorities. While preliminary, these findings may have implications for the social sciences and academia more broadly.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Freedom of Expression; Viewpoint Diversity; Higher Education; Political Ideology; Tolerance |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Dec 2020 10:00 |
Last Modified: | 20 Dec 2020 03:16 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11577-020-00713-z |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:168713 |
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