The Plight of the College Conservative: The need for greater speech protections for the collegiate political minority

By: Jonathan Godoy (Free Speech) -  Back in November 2013, the Students for Life chapter at the University of Chicago, a student-led organization that works to advance the pro-life causes and engage students on discussions surrounding the topic, found itself a victim of alleged acts of political intolerance.

The club, in an effort to expand its on-campus presence and highlight the perspectives of those in the pro-life movement, had placed various posters around campus bearing statistics on public views on abortion. However, many of the posters had erroneously cited that a majority of women personally disapproved of abortion.

As members began the task of collecting the posters, they found that many of them had been vandalized and torn down. No culprits were caught and it remains unclear if this was a targeted attack or a series of unrelated episodes.

Yet, the matter was met with little outrage from the student community. Barring a small article featured in the Chicago Maroon and the occasional post and commentary on social media by students, few seemed truly perturbed by the incident.

This occurrence serves as a prime example of the student-led political intolerance and bigotry sometimes inflicted on conservatives across college campuses.

It is no secret that the university, and many of the premier collegiate institutions in the nation, holds a fairly large liberal majority, arguably both institutionally and in the student body. At the University of Chicago, for instance, many of the polls conducted of the incoming classes showed that conservatives only represented 7-10 percent of the student body, while those self-identified as liberals or openly socialist were triple or quadruple their size.

Whether by way of the collective actions and rhetoric of the political majority on campus or the implicit pressures that holding such a minority position induces, conservatives have often felt marginalized and isolated on these campuses. Those bearing traditionally socially conservative views, such as pro-lifers, have arguably felt even more pressure and bias, as this generation’s political swing turns heavily liberal on these matters.

Whatever the fundamental problem may be, the fact remains that incidents like this one, while not systemic, are a persistent and disconcerting phenomena. Academic institutions have prided themselves on being beacons for open civil discourse and rigorous, substantive debate, and such an approach should apply equally to those of a conservative persuasion as it does to those on the left.

While such a stance is officially an administrative one, the desires for tolerance and respectful discourse should be held and upheld with vigor and vitality by the student body as a whole. As such, incidents of political bias against conservatives should be met with severe and righteous indignation from all in the campus community.

Promoting a community of open discourse necessarily means that protests and demonstrations are legitimate and a protected right. However, students, especially those in the majority, should be particularly sensitive to the fact that such a position does not justify political oppression or acts that openly advocate one perspective at the expense of silencing another.

Acts of political intolerance, which seek to create a hostile environment for those in the minority, do not represent proper decorum or a form of speech protected by the university.

Unfortunately, this is not the only recent example of student-led bias against causes perceived as conservative. In October, then New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was slated to give a speech to a crowd of Brown University students on policing policies.

Many students protested the commissioner’s visit, objecting to the city’s so-called “stop and frisk” policy and alleged surveillance of Muslim-Americans. While campus protests are far from rare, participants took this demonstration to a new level.

As Commissioner Kelly began to speak, many of the protesters, who were sitting in the audience, began to heckle him and rudely interrupt his speech, many shouting him down as a racist. University officials, failing to quell the protesters and maintain order, were forced to cancel the event and Commissioner Kelly was escorted out of the room as the demonstrators claimed victory.

One student protester would later note, perhaps not fully self-aware of her statement’s irony, that the protest’s success was “a powerful demonstration of free speech.”

Again, this incident presents another example in which students, blinded by the apparent superiority of their positions and their disdain for all views contrary, took proactive measures to ensure that other’s voices were quelled and silenced. While these two examples should not be used to characterize these schools’ respective student bodies as intolerant and bigoted, they do nonetheless highlight a major issue college conservatives face today: the presence of small, but vocal and targeted, attacks by those of contrarian views.

The goal of any university should be to foster and maintain a healthy and open environment that welcomes students of all perspectives to engage in lively debate, promote their views and actively organize for any cause. That responsibility, while held by the school’s administration, is ultimately contingent upon compliance by the student body.

If some members of the student body actively seek to malign the views and opinions of the political minority and those in the majority refuse to protect their basic rights to free speech, then the university will have failed in its endeavor to provide an environment open to civil discourse and lively discussion.  

The explicit or implicit pressures that liberal majorities have placed on conservative minorities stifle debate and drive those who would otherwise be interested in engaging in thoughtful and civil dialogue into hiding. These targeted attempts at muzzling conservative views must stop and all students should find it in their civic duty to protect their fundamental right to free speech.

This generation, whose crusades against biases based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, have been, at times, laudable and noble, should, in the name of righteousness and free speech, extend its mission to protecting the rights of the political minority and ensure that universities can ultimately realize their goal of becoming the bastions of open debate and dialogue.