INTRODUCTION

Under pressure from legislators, the 13-campus University of Wisconsin System recently surveyed students on their views about free speech and their experiences relating to speech on their campus and in their classrooms. More than 10,000 students responded, enough to provide some sort of picture of the state of the classrooms on the campus. The results specifically concerning student experiences in the classroom are consistent with a much smaller but national survey conducted by intelligent.com. That survey targeted students who self-identify as moderate, conservative, or liberal, and found that 52% of respondents “say they ‘always’ or ‘often’ refrain from expressing views on political and social issues in classrooms out of concern for potential consequences,” with conservatives only very slightly more likely than moderates and liberals to testify to self-censorship. Conservatives and moderates are more likely than liberals to fear losing the respect of their professors or a cost to their grade, but, for all three groups, concern that their peers would lose respect for them was either the top, or joint top, reason given for keeping quiet.1

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