More than half of U.S. universities encourage students to snitch anonymously on others for “bias” or “protected identity harm.”
According to a study done by free speech watchdog Speech First, 56% of institutions of higher education have avenues for “enforcing ideological uniformity,” a 230% increase at private schools and a 175% increase at public schools from 2017.
TIKTOK LEGISLATION PUSH MEETS BACKLASH OVER FREE SPEECH
“Colleges and universities routinely threaten their students’ free speech rights,” Speech First Executive Director Cherise Trump said in an opening letter attached to the study. “Those who fight back are met with open hostility from campus administrators, professors, and peers.”
The threat to free speech comes from schools adopting bias reporting systems that “actively chill speech through fear and intimidation.”
At many of these schools, if a student speaks in opposition to certain political beliefs on, for example, gender identity or racial consciousness or does not use “preferred pronouns,” they may be reported to the administration for “bias.”
“After receiving a complaint about an alleged ‘bias incident,’ the BRS reviews the incident report and will either conduct an ‘educational intervention’ with the accused student or forward the complaint to another university department for further review,” the report states.
The anonymous nature of the reporting system also denies the accused student core tenets of due process, such as the right to face the accuser, critics say.
Federal appeals courts for the 5th and 6th circuits have ruled against the bias reporting systems at the University of Michigan and the University of Texas. In 2020, the 5th Circuit said the systems “represent the clenched fist in the velvet glove of student speech regulation.” Similarly, in 2019, the 6th Circuit stated they “act by way of implicit threat of punishment and intimidation to quell speech.”
Speech First found that of the 824 public and private institutions evaluated, 456 have bias reporting systems. Of those, 249 are public, and 207 are private.
The report noted that “53% of the most egregious forms of BRSs were housed in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices.”
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In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Stanford University professor Ivan Marinovic and University of California, Santa Cruz, professor John Ellis warned of the growing power of DEI offices and their controls over speech.
“The same group that polices language, forces ideological training down the throats of faculty and students, and mandates loyalty oaths from faculty candidates will be in charge of administering the system of informers,” they wrote. “Woke ideologues will obstruct the work of those who still believe that the mission of a university is to foster the free exchange of ideas.”
