Free Speech: What Our Schools Aren’t Teaching The Leaders Of Tomorrow

This is the first in a series of articles from Alliance Defending Freedom on the state of free speech in America today. October 21 to 27 is National Free Speech Week.

* * *

All over America, schools are back in session – and lessons are being learned. Some of those lessons are worthwhile, practical, and inspiring. But on far too many campuses, the lessons are doing serious damage not only to our sons and daughters and grandchildren, but to the nation they will one day lead.

Sadly, the most basic lesson a lot of students are learning from their teachers and administrators is: “Be a free-thinker—as long as you agree with us.” Conform your ideas. Shame people who think differently. Don’t engage in words, conversations, speeches, or debates that raise questions or address ideas that may challenge the current culture or established biases of this political season.

When pro-Palestine protests on college campuses reached a fever pitch earlier this year, Jewish students at colleges like Columbia University were told to leave campus for their own safety. At UCLA, Jewish students voiced their concerns but said they were “denied” and “not getting acknowledged.” UCLA masked its refusal to enforce rules against disruptive students behind a statement saying the protests were largely peaceful.

The refusal to maintain a peaceful, respectful atmosphere on campus hit close to home for me two years ago. I serve as senior counsel and director of the Center for Academic Freedom at Alliance Defending Freedom, and in 2022, ADF General Counsel and CEO Kristen Waggoner was invited to share a presentation with a progressive, atheist advocate on the importance of free speech for all at Yale Law School.

While Kristen and Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association believed they could demonstrate two sides of the ideological aisle finding common ground, several Yale Law students disrupted the event by shouting them down, hitting the walls, and violently intimidating the speakers into shutting down the event and leaving with a police escort. Yale failed to end the protest before it got out of control, and this is unfortunately becoming common at schools all over America (Yale eventually invited the speakers back for a peaceful presentation).

Administrators at universities all over the country will tell you they’re just trying to keep things from blowing up. They don’t want students interrupting classes, or blocking hallways, or rioting on the campus lawn. For the sake of everyone’s safety and undisturbed learning, they say, they must clamp down on any ideas that might stir the student pot.

But these same universities already have plenty of regulations in place to deal with violent or obnoxious students. The problem is that administrators are afraid to enforce them. What if the faculty members don’t like it? What if the board of trustees pushes back? What if we look bad on the evening news?

So, they silence any voices that diverge from the campus mainstream. They banish those with the “wrong” point of view. They promote their schools as bastions of tolerance and inclusion – but everyone knows these educators aren’t teaching tolerance to anyone.

The lessons their actions are passing along are that might makes right, that the loud and out-of-control are permitted to drown out the responsible and respectful. That our culture has no place for debate – or even conversation – even on important issues. That standing up for your principles in the face of opposition is a good way to get sent to campus Siberia.

People complain a lot these days about the quality of leaders they see in our public life. We wonder why we can’t produce great men and women like the ones who led us so thoughtfully and courageously in the past.

Is it really so hard to understand? Thinking comes when ideas are challenged and debated; courage comes from seeing courage modeled in the lives and conduct of others. Those aren’t lessons we’re teaching our children today. Those are not the examples we’re setting for our young people.

That’s why protecting free speech is so vital to our future as a nation. There can be no inclusion without a willingness to listen, to hear what others have to say. Without a genuine respect for other people, even if we see the world differently.

Whoever our leaders are in the years ahead, they’ll be serving a country deeply divided in its politics, its morals, its social and cultural attitudes. Uniting us will take unusual courage, self-control, and the ability to bring many different minds and hearts together.

Those are qualities worth passing along – if our schools and universities are willing to teach them.

The clock is ticking. And class is in session.

* * *

Tyson Langhofer is Senior Counsel and Director of the Center for Academic Freedom with Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).

October 21 to 27 is National Free Speech Week.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.