“Is our children learning?” was one of former president George W. Bush’s more memorable rhetorical infelicities. For anyone reviewing the Buckley Institute’s National Undergraduate Student Survey this year, an apposite and grammatically correct follow up question could be, “What are our children learning?”
According to the survey, it’s a mixed bag. Students’ reverence for the Constitution and free speech is up, but they register poor marks for devotion to open debate and the free exchange of ideas on campus.
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In one performative declaration after another, America’s widely distrusted higher-education officials extol free expression and assure the skeptical public—especially tuition-paying parents, deep-pocketed donors, and frequently embarrassed alumni—that all is well on campus or soon will be, pending the next round of tedious self-studies.
Some of this rhetorical assurance seems to be translating into student attitudes. According to this year’s Buckley survey, students hold increasingly positive views of foundational ideas of American liberty, at least in the abstract. Some 73 percent say they believe the Constitution is a “very important document”—the largest share over the eight years the survey has asked that question and sharply increased from the 49 percent that thought so in 2022.
Even more encouragingly, 87 percent of respondents agree that the First Amendment is “an important amendment that still needs to be followed and respected in today’s society,” versus just 10 percent who write it off as “outdated.” A record high of 66 percent of students, furthermore, believe that “hate speech” is “technically protected” by the First Amendment—an improvement over the 44 percent who agreed just four years ago.
But when asked about how freedom of expression translates into their everyday collegiate experience, students revealed record-high levels of censoriousness. A 49 percent plurality this year says that it favors institutional speech codes to regulate student and faculty speech. That’s the second-highest result on record, just below the 51 percent who thought so in 2023. Four in ten respondents agreed with a relatively new question that asks whether “offensive speech” should be “criminally prosecuted”—a seven-point spike over the 33 percent who thought so last year and nine points over the inaugural 2024 figure.
A record high share, 42 percent, agree that political comments they disagree with “can be harmful to their mental health,” an opinion only 31 percent held in 2024. More than half report that they “have often felt intimidated” expressing ideas, opinions, or beliefs that differed from those of their professors (54 percent) or classmates (53 percent).
The survey registers even grimmer results on campus protest culture. Forty-six percent of respondents believe that it is at least “sometimes appropriate” to “shout down or disrupt” a campus speaker—a considerable increase over the 40 percent agreement registered in 2021. A nearly identical 45 percent believe “physical violence can be justified” against an individual “using hate speech or making racially charged comments.” That ties with the survey’s 2023 figure for an all-time high and is dramatically greater than the 30 percent who agreed back in 2017.
On campuses where liberal faculty members outnumber conservatives by overwhelming ratios, politics may play a major role. Comparative questions about ideology reveal that students prefer socialism to capitalism by a margin of 42 percent to 28 percent. A somewhat larger 47 percent plurality believes that socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union “offer a better economic model than capitalist countries like the United States,” versus 33 percent who disagree.
Exactly half of students expressed a favorable view of Palestine, compared with 27 percent who view Israel favorably, with a 38 percent to 25 percent margin saying that, of the two, Palestine would be a better ally to the United States than Israel. Twenty-two percent believe America “deserved 9/11,” with half the students giving that view expressing “strong agreement.” Half of students believe that America is “inextricably linked to white supremacy” and excludes “most minorities” from “the promise of equality.” Only 39 percent—a record low share since the question was added in 2020—believe equality is “moving forward” and being “extended to more people.”
Is there any hope? Along with the high marks for the Constitution and First Amendment, 65 percent of students say they are “proud to be an American,” while a slight plurality of 42 percent believe that our nation’s best days are ahead.
If these glimmers of hope are to grow, higher-education leaders must do more to inculcate American values in their institutions. They could start by informing their students that, if they truly believe in free speech and open debate, they cannot criminalize speech of which they disapprove, shout down or beat up those who engage in it, or subject it to restrictive codes. They could then tell them that socialism spreads misery and dysfunction, that the Soviet Union was a horrible place whose ruling ideology caused at least 100 million deaths, that Cuba is an impoverished hellhole, and that Palestine is, in Gaza, an Islamist dictatorship run by a murderous terrorist organization.
It will take courage to speak these truths, but with only 38 percent of the public, according to Gallup, expressing strong confidence in higher education, the alternative is a continued decline into irrelevance.