Americans’ views on free speech are constantly changing. One of those moments was during protests at U.S. universities against the war between Israel and Hamas. As scholars who study free speech and public opinion, we wanted to find out what happened and why.
The Supreme Court itself declared as recently as 1989 that the “fundamental principle” of the First Amendment is that “the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds that idea offensive or disagreeable.” For years, conservative politicians and commentators have warned that college campuses did not adequately protect free speech. Yet when demonstrations broke out, those same people complained that the protests were filled with anti-Semitic hate speech. Leading conservatives declared that the demonstrations must be banned and ended, with violence if necessary. Liberals made a similar about-face. Many of them have supported greater regulation of hate speech against minority groups. Yet during the campus protests, liberals warned that the crackdown by college administrators, state officials and police violated the protesters’ free speech rights. As researchers with the Unity and American Democracy project and Vanderbilt University’s The Future of Free Speech project, we tried to figure out where Americans stand. We were inspired by a November 1939 poll in which 3,500 Americans answered questions about free speech. In June 2024, we asked 1,000 Americans the same questions.When an abstract concept gets more concreteWe found that the vast majority of Americans – then and now – believe democracy requires free speech. That’s abstract.But when the questions get more concrete, their support dwindles.Only about half of respondents in both the 1939 and 2024 polls agreed that anyone in America should be able to speak on any topic at any time. The rest thought some speech – or certain topics or speakers – should be banned.This pattern isn’t unique to Americans. A 2021 poll of 33 countries by The Future of Free Speech, a nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt, also found high support for free speech in general in all countries, but lower support overall for specific speech that offends minority groups or religious beliefs.We looked more closely at the polls in March and June 2024 and asked which topics or speakers should be banned. We thought that the public’s appetite for free speech might have waned amid the campus unrest. We found the opposite.When asked whether seven people with very different views should be allowed to speak, the share of people who answered “yes” increased between March and June. Some of the differences were within the polls’ margin of error, but it’s still notable that they all moved in the same direction.While these polls show a slightly increased desire for free speech, they still fit the general contradiction: Large majorities of Americans passionately defend free speech as a cornerstone of democracy. But fewer of them support free speech when it comes to specific controversial speakers or issues.The First Amendment is not an à la carte menuOur polls found that the public has a nuanced view of free speech. For example, in our June 2024 poll, we added a few additional categories of potential speakers to the list we asked about in March. More respondents were comfortable with a pro-Palestinian speaker than with a Hamas leader, and with a scientist who believes IQ varies by race than with an outright white supremacist.This pattern suggests that the public distinguishes between extreme and more moderate positions and is less tolerant of the rights of those with more extreme views.This shift runs counter to the purpose of the First Amendment, which is to protect unpopular speech. The amendment was explicitly not designed to apply only to certain speakers or viewpoints.Ours is not the only survey to show that many people do not fully understand the logic and principles of free speech. In 2020, a Knight Foundation poll found that members of both political parties reject speech that goes against their values or beliefs. Later polls, including those from other organizations, found more accurate results: Democrats were more likely to support censoring racist hate speech or vaccine misinformation. And Republicans opposed drag shows and kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. A February 2022 national poll commissioned by The New York Times and Siena College found that 30% of Americans agreed that “sometimes we need to shut down speech that is undemocratic, bigoted or simply untrue.” A Return to Basics With the 2024 election looming and Americans becoming increasingly polarized, some people may want only those who agree with them to be allowed to speak. But a true commitment to basic principles of free speech requires people to create space for the expression of controversial and even offensive views. History shows that censoring hateful ideas is often a cure worse than the disease itself: It deepens social divides. James Madison, one of the primary authors of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment to the Constitution, wrote in 1800, “A certain amount of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of all things… it is better to leave some of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth than to prune them and so impair the vitality of those which bear the proper fruit.” As the Founding Fathers knew, respect for diverse viewpoints and the ability to voice those views – good, bad or harmful – in public are essential to a healthy democracy. John G. Geer, senior adviser to the chancellor, director of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy and co-director of Vanderbilt Poll, Vanderbilt University and Jacob Mchangama, research professor of political science and executive director of The Future of Free Speech, Vanderbilt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
FOX28 Spokane©
