Faculty Attitudes Toward Regulating Speech on College Campuses

Eric L. Dey and Sylvia Hurtado

Tables

The ideals of academic freedom and free speech are deeply embedded in American academic culture, making the thought of regulating campus speech very troubling. Equally troubling, however, is the fact that students and faculty regularly find themselves subjected to various forms of harassment due to the historical legacy of a sexist and racist society. These two forces have placed free speech issues at the center of a continuing debate over the advisability of policies aimed at reducing harassment on college campuses. Since such debates are fueled by an underlying "conflict between civil rights and civil liberties" (Grey, 1992, p. 485), we can all expect to hear--and participate in--these debates for some time to come.

In this study we examine the correlates of faculty support for different policies designed to regulate certain aspects of speech on campus. In undertaking this study, our interest is not in promoting support for any particular side of this contentious issue but rather in highlighting the underlying contradictions and complexities associated with faculty attitudes towards campus speech policies. Specifically, we seek to answer the following questions: What are the individual sources of support for such policies? What faculty characteristics--ideological and demographic--are most closely associated with support for such policies? What role does the campus climate [End Page 15] play in determining support for prohibitions of speech-based harassment or bans on speakers with extreme views?

Examining these questions is important because faculty are likely to convey their attitudes and values to students in the course of classroom interaction. In addition, faculty play a key role both in supporting academic freedom and in institutional policy-making on campuses with participatory governance structures. Understanding the institutional and individual correlates of faculty attitudes thus contributes to our understanding of why some campus communities adopt speech regulation policies while others only enjoin a discussion of the issues.

Academic Freedom and Free Speech

Academic freedom is a fundamental aspect of the modern American academic tradition. Although the basic idea of academic freedom, the right to follow an argument anywhere it leads "is a claim at least as ancient as Plato" (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976, p. 308), it is important to note that this idea has been quite malleable in practice. Academic freedom, for example, was not a consideration in colonial colleges, which were governed in all matters by religious orthodoxy (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976). In fact, the modern concept of academic freedom did not develop until the mid to late 1800s, the result of a burgeoning Germanic intellectual influence, the development of the modern American university, and a continuing pattern of external pressure to remove individual faculty "dissidents" (Metzger, 1955; Schrecker, 1986). Moreover, until the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915, faculty had neither legal recourse nor the protection of normative pressure and public sanction if institutions infringed upon their rights to free speech and inquiry (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976).

Today's faculty show general support for the idea of academic freedom, although "faculty views about academic freedom show considerable complexity" (Finkelstein, 1984, p. 76). Support for academic freedom has been shown to be strongest in relation to research and lowest in relation to classroom activities (Lewis, 1966), although institutional context influences this relationship (Clark, 1987). Support for academic freedom can vary even in the realm of research. In 1975, for example, about three quarters of faculty agreed that there should be no restrictions placed on research on the controversial topic of the inheritability of intelligence by race, while more than one half supported restrictions on weapons research (Ladd & Lipset, 1975).

Despite the pervasive ideology of academic and intellectual freedom within higher education (Clark, 1987), it is easy to find examples where campuses sought to restrict other forms of speech. During the 1920s and 1930s, for example, there were several concerted efforts to restrict campus speakers and censor student newspapers in an effort to suppress the development of [End Page 16] radical ideologies on many campuses (Lipset, 1971). More recent restrictions range from the unsettling prevalence of McCarthyism on college and university campuses in the 1950s (Schrecker, 1986) to the events that gave rise to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s (Lipset, 1971), as well as more standard restrictions on campus and classroom disruptions.

It is clear that colleges and universities routinely can and do regulate speech on campus. It can be argued that "controlling speech is, in one sense, a defining characteristic of the university" (Sunstein, 1993, p. 21), in that colleges routinely regulate classroom content and decorum, and college faculty continuously make judgments about quality which are, in part, based on subjective viewpoints. As Sunstein notes, "In many places, a student who defends fascism or communism is unlikely to receive a good grade. In many economics departments, sharp deviation from the views of Adam Smith may well be punished" (p. 21). Despite the fact that these practices can be seen as violating the principles of free speech and academic freedom, they are routinely accepted by the academic community without question.

In contrast, attempts to regulate various kinds of "hate speech" to reduce harassment have been controversial and been met with much resistance. Hate speech has been defined as a derogatory message--written, verbal, or symbolic--which is designed "more to humiliate or wound than it is to communicate ideas or information" (Kaplin, 1992, p. 518). Campuses have implemented a variety of policies designed to regulate hate speech and other forms of harassment (Jennings, 1993; Olivas, 1992; Paterson, 1994; Walker, 1994), although legal disputes continue over the appropriate boundaries of such policies.

Our study examines attitudes toward institutional attempts to regulate different forms of on-campus speech. We used data from a recent national survey of college teaching faculty to examine how various individual and institutional characteristics relate to faculty support of policies designed to regulate on-campus speech.

Methodology

Data Source

The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA conducted a faculty survey in 1992-93. (See survey procedures in Dey, Ramirez, Korn, & Astin, 1993). In the summer of 1992, all operating institutions of higher education in the United States (N = 2,582) were invited to participate in an omnibus survey of college teaching faculty; 344 institutions, representing all major types of higher education institutions, agreed to administer the survey and provided HERI with current faculty name and address lists. A four-page survey instrument was mailed to these faculty in the fall of 1992 with a response rate, after a reminder to nonrespondents, of 60.2%. The researchers [End Page 17] dropped 55 institutions from the national data base because of low response rates, leaving 289 institutions in the analysis pool.

The researchers further refined the sample by excluding full-time campus administrators, full-time researchers, and part-time faculty. The normative sample remaining consisted of 29,771 full-time college and university faculty members at 289 2-year colleges, 4-year colleges, and universities. The researchers employed a multistage weighting procedure to correct for biases in the representation of institutions in the data set and individual patterns of nonresponse. Taken together, these procedures have been shown to be effective at producing an analytical sample that closely approximates that which would have been obtained if all full-time teaching faculty in every institution had participated in the survey (see Astin, Korn, & Dey, 1991).

Variables

As we began our study of these data, we assessed faculty attitudes toward institutional attempts to restrict "hate speech" and more general forms of extreme speech by responses to two questions: (a) "Racist/sexist speech should be prohibited on campus," and (b) "College officials have the right to ban persons with extreme views from speaking on campus." These questions were part of 11 questions about faculty attitudes toward various social and higher education issues on a 4-point scale (4 = agree strongly, 3 = agree somewhat, 2 = disagree somewhat, and 1 = disagree strongly). These two items were the basis of an extensive analysis of individual and institutional correlates of support.

In addition to deriving measures directly from survey responses (race, gender, and political view), we developed a measure of departmental political context using commonly used procedures (Ladd & Lipset, 1975; Hamilton & Hargens, 1993). We grouped departments by the percentage of faculty who reported that they were politically liberal (or far left). Departments in which the liberal faculty made up 50% or more of the department were classified as liberal contexts, departments which were 35 to 49% liberal were classified as centrist, while conservative departments were those in which liberals counted for less than 35% of the total. ¹ [End Page 18]

We should note that these percentages were derived from faculty holding appointments in each departmental field combined across all institutions in the data set (as opposed to the percentage of liberals in specific departments in each institution). While this procedure is necessary due to the relatively small number of individuals per department per institution, it also leads to a certain amount of misclassification; there will inevitably be certain institutions with politically conservative departments in fields that nationally have a liberal tone (and vice versa).

We also used the faculty survey data to derive campus climate measures using an institutional-level factor analysis (n = 282) of faculty ratings of institutional descriptions and priorities. After trying several extraction and rotation techniques and examining the results, we selected a six-factor solution. The resulting factors represent the degree to which: (a) The faculty see themselves as being student-centered; (b) The institution emphasizes goals related to diversity; (c) The faculty view students as being of high quality; (d) Administrators have positive relations with faculty and students; (e) The institution emphasizes goals related to social change; and (f) There is an emphasis on traditional campus social activities. These climate measures are quite similar in terms of construction and interpretation to those used in other research (Astin, 1993; Dey, 1991; Hurtado, 1992).

Methodological limitations in this study include: (a) the nature of the items used to measure faculty attitudes, (b) a cross-sectional survey design, and (c) a response rate of less than 100%. The measures of faculty attitudes we used are limited in that they are single-item representations of several broad areas. Although it would have been preferable for the purpose of this study to include a number of questions on the survey instrument designed to measure attitudes toward regulating hate speech and extreme speakers, such a focus was not practical given the constraints of a national survey design and the good will of potential respondents. The survey instrument was not specifically designed to collect attitudinal information in this area, but rather was an omnibus survey. In addition, the cross-sectional design of the survey makes it impossible to directly infer any cause and effect relationships using these data. This limitation in research design is shared by most research on college faculty, and we are thus limited to examining relationships among the variables under study. Finally, some of the findings reported are subject to some criticism on statistical grounds, given the possibility that response bias may have influenced either the nature or the responses of the returned survey sample. While the sample appears to be representative of faculty nationally and we compensated for known response biases through statistical weighting procedures, it is impossible to say with certainty what results we would have obtained had we received responses from all faculty originally queried. [End Page 19]

Analysis

The first group of analyses was conducted at the level of the individual faculty member; they examine the relationship between the characteristics of individual faculty members and their support for the two statements about regulating speech on campus. In this stage of the analysis, we refrain from showing the results of significance tests due to our extremely large sample sizes (n 29,800). Using traditional methods and assumptions for calculating statistical significance and applying them to these data, differences of even a few tenths of 1% would be statistically significant. Since any difference large enough to be interesting is going to be statistically significant, we will be conservative in our discussion and focus on only the largest and most interesting differences.

The second group of analyses was conducted at the institutional level using aggregated data for 282 institutions. (Since we were concerned that institutional-level means computed with small samples would be unstable, we excluded seven small colleges with fewer than 20 faculty respondents each at this stage.) Our interest here is in determining the extent to which the composition of the faculty and the institution's campus climate are related to attitudes toward the regulation of speech. This question is important since the institutional-level analysis shows us how these factors are related to overall levels of faculty support, a crucial determinant in the political process associated with any attempt to successfully implement or oppose policy in these areas.

Results

Individual-Level Analyses

Table 1 shows that faculty attitudes toward the two statements considered in this study are very different. Almost one third of the faculty "strongly agree" that racist/sexist speech should be prohibited on campus, with more [End Page 20] than one half (54%) reporting some level of support for such policies. In contrast, faculty are much less likely to agree with the other statement; only about 1 out of 15 "strongly agrees" that campus officials should have the right to ban extreme speakers (versus 1 out of 3 for hate speech regulation). In fact, 3 out of 4 faculty (73%) disagree that campus administrators should have the prerogative to ban extreme speakers. Although both items relate to regulating campus speech, there are clear differences in faculty attitudes toward them.

By collapsing each of the original 4-point scales into a simple measure of agreement-disagreement and cross-tabulating the resulting scales, we can examine the degree to which faculty are consistent in their views. As shown in Table 2, 38% of the faculty oppose both speech policies. In fact, faculty are twice as likely to be consistent in their opposition to any form of speech restrictions as they are to be consistent in their support for such policy-based limitations on campus speech (38 versus 19%).

The second largest percentage of faculty shown in Table 2 are those who support prohibitions on racist/sexist speech but who do not support the right of campus administrators to ban extreme speakers (35%). This figure is roughly equal to the number of faculty who are consistent in their opposition to campus speech policies, indicating that there is a substantial number of faculty who may be willing to support some type of speech policy on campus depending on the issue. Faculty are least likely to be "inconsistent" in the opposite direction: Only 8% of the faculty oppose prohibitions of racist/sexist speech on campus while supporting administrators' right to ban extreme speakers.

We also cross-tabulated a political self-identification measure with the two speech policy items. Table 3 shows that political ideology is not consistently related to faculty attitudes: A conservative political view is strongly related to support for the right to ban extreme speakers (r = .27), while there is practically no relationship between political views and support for prohibiting racist/sexist speech (r = .03). More than one half of the faculty from each of these political categories agreed that racist/sexist speech should be prohibited on campus. Self-identified liberals are the least likely to support [End Page 21] this policy but only by a small margin. In contrast, there is a wide divergence of opinion about banning extreme speakers that is related to faculty political ideology. Self-identified conservatives are nearly three times more likely than liberals to support this policy (43 versus 16%), with middle-of-the-road faculty falling in between. These results indicate that personal political views are less tied to prohibiting racist/sexist speech on campus than to support bans on extreme speakers.

Given the strong possibility that the attitudes of one's colleagues may influence one's own views, we examined how departmental political context was related to views on campus speech policies. If faculty opinions are influenced by professional peers, do faculty who diverge from departmental political norms accentuate their differences of opinion or conform to peer attitudes? Table 4 shows faculty attitudes, controlling for individual political view and the political context of the department of appointment.

Faculty whose views differ from the departmental political norm appear to conform to the predominant attitudes of their peers. For example, middle-of-the-road and liberal faculty are more likely to support prohibitions on racist/sexist speech in conservative departments. Similarly, conservative faculty are less likely to support this policy in liberal departments (44%) than in conservative departmental contexts (58%) where they would receive reinforcement for their views. At the same time, interestingly, conservative faculty appear to be most influenced by departmental context in their support for prohibiting racist/sexist speech: The largest spread of opinion across different departmental contexts is associated with the conservative faculty (14 percentage points versus 5 percentage points for both the middle-of-the-road and liberal faculty).

A similar departmental context effect emerges about whether college officials should ban extreme speakers, although the influence appears to be much weaker in comparison to results found with the racist/sexist speech [End Page 22] policy (as measured by the spread of percentages across departmental contexts within political view groupings). There is a stronger general opposition to this speech policy, yet faculty who characterize themselves as liberal and middle of the road are more likely to support this speech policy in conservative departmental contexts. Similarly, having administrators ban extreme speakers is more likely to find favor among conservatives in centrist and conservative departments (44%) than in liberal departmental contexts (39%).

If support for the prohibition of racist/sexist speech is unrelated to political view (as it is with the other speech policy), what other individual factors might be influential? Table 5 shows how faculty demographic characteristics are related to support for campus speech restrictions. Since minorities are more likely to be targets of racist speech than Whites, the pattern of support for the prohibition of racist/sexist speech is perhaps not too surprising: Faculty of color are, in general, much more likely than White faculty to support the prohibition of racist/sexist speech. Overall, the strongest support is found among Asian American, African American, and Mexican [End Page 23] American/Chicano faculty (78, 71, and 69%, respectively). These percentages compare with a figure of 53% among White faculty. Support for the administrative right to ban extreme speakers follows a much different pattern: Although African American and Asian American faculty are most likely to support this right (36 and 34%, respectively), White faculty are about average in terms of their support (26%) with Chicano and Puerto Rican faculty showing the least support (21 and 18%, respectively).

Table 5 also shows strong gender differences. Two thirds of the women faculty support the prohibition of racist/sexist speech, as compared to one half of the men. Support for the right to ban extreme speakers is less divergent, although in this case male faculty show the most support.

The bottom section of Table 5 shows attitudinal differences by gender and race/ethnicity. Less than one half of all White men support the prohibition of racist/sexist speech (47%), compared to about 4 out of 5 minority women faculty (79%). About two thirds of the minority men and White women support such prohibitions. It is interesting to note how the patterns change when faculty consider the right to ban extreme speakers: Minority faculty show the most support (34% for women and 31% for men), while White women show the least support (23%). [End Page 24]

Institutional-Level Analyses

How is institutional climate related to faculty attitudes? To answer this question, we aggregated the data to the level of the institution and then conducted two sets of analyses for each of the dependent variables (speech policy items). In each regression analysis we statistically removed the influence of institutional type, size, and selectivity on the dependent variable. In addition to these control variables, we regressed the dependent variable upon [End Page 25] three faculty composition measures: the percentages of liberal faculty, women faculty, and minority faculty. Thus, Model 1 assumes that, net of institutional characteristics, these campus-level ideological and faculty demographic characteristics alone determine the mean level of support for the speech policy at an institution.

In Model 2, we added institutional climate measures to the prediction equation used in Model 1. These climate measures represent the degree to which: (a) The faculty are seen as student-centered; (b) The institution emphasizes goals related to diversity; (c) The faculty view students as being of high quality; (d) Administrators have positive relations with faculty and students; (e) The institution emphasizes goals related to social change; and (f) There is an emphasis on traditional campus social activities. The results of these four regressions, which explain between 35 and 70% of the variance in the dependent variables, are presented in Table 6.

The Model 1 regressions show that the percentage of liberal faculty on a campus has a strong negative relationship with support for both types of campus speech restrictions (ß = -.45 for racist/sexist speech, ß = -.81 for the right to ban extreme speakers). This finding is consistent with the individual-level, bivariate analyses which showed that conservative faculty lend greater support to the two speech policies. In terms of faculty demographics, the percentage of women faculty is positively related to the overall level of support for prohibitions on racist/sexist speech (ß = .23) while the percentage of faculty of color was significantly related to support for both of the speech policies (ß = .16 for racist/sexist speech, ß = .14 for extreme speakers). The relationship between these demographic factors and the aggregate attitude items suggests that faculty demographic characteristics can play a key role in determining overall levels of support and, consequently, how campuses may differ in their response to such ideas.

The results of the Model 2 regression for the racist/sexist speech item indicate that two institutional climate measures are significant predictors. The degree to which faculty perceive that the students at their institution are of high quality is negatively related to support for the prohibition of racist/sexist speech (ß = -.15). It may be that faculty see "high quality" students as being better able to deal with racist/sexist speech (or believe that they will have less exposure to it) and are therefore reluctant to support the imposition of any sort of restriction. At the same time, the regression results show that faculty at institutions interested in helping students bring about social change tend to show more support (ß = .30). Faculty at such activist institutions may see their campuses as communities in which all students have equal standing and, therefore, are not exposed to overt racist and sexist messages. [End Page 26]

On the issue of administrators' right to ban extreme speakers from campus, we find that the social change emphasis of a campus is again significantly positively related to support (ß = .43). Similarly, there are higher levels of support for such a policy at institutions that are student-centered (ß = .16). There is also support for the right of administrators to ban extreme speakers at institutions where there are good faculty-administrative relationships (ß = .27). This latter finding may be related to trust: When faculty do not see administrators as antagonistic, the faculty seem willing to entrust this authority to administrators. Institutions that emphasize diversity goals have relatively low levels of support for such bans (ß = -.15) which suggests that faculty at these campuses view extreme speech as one part of the diverse views they seek to protect and foster.

Discussion

Support for regulating speech on campus is systematically related to both individual and institutional characteristics. Overall, the majority of faculty support the prohibition of hate speech on campus, while being much less likely to support the right of administrators to ban extreme speakers. Although the largest number of faculty oppose both of these speech policies (38%), there is a similarly sized group of faculty who support the idea of prohibiting sexist/racist speech while opposing the administrative prerogative to ban extreme speakers. One reason for the discrepancy in levels of support is that the benefits of eliminating hate speech are obvious for promoting civility and community, while the benefits of the right to ban extreme speakers are ambiguous; in fact, support or opposition might vary depending on the views of the hypothetical "extreme speaker." In other words, preventing the harassment of students and faculty is an concept consistent with having an open community and promoting campus citizenship, while extreme views are more likely to be seen as part of the free marketplace of ideas. Although some faculty do not support either of the attitude items examined here, differential support for these speech policies clearly indicates that faculty and institutions do not regard these forms of speech in similar ways.

One of the most surprising findings is associated with the relationship between a faculty member's political views and his or her support for these restrictions. While it is commonly assumed that the highest level of support for prohibitions of racist/sexist speech is among liberals, these data show that conservatives, not liberals, are more likely to support such prohibitions. In contrast, a faculty member's political view is strongly associated with his or her support for the right to ban extreme speakers from campus. Perhaps the targeted, personally harmful nature of racist and sexist messages [End Page 27] makes speech restrictions less abstractly political and therefore more likely to receive faculty support.

The targeted, personally harmful nature of hate speech also seems apparent in the results related to faculty gender and ethnicity. African American, Asian American, and Latino faculty groups are all more likely than White faculty to support policies regulating hate speech; women faculty are more likely than men faculty to support such policies. African American and Asian American faculty are also more likely than White faculty to support the administrative right to ban extreme speakers, although the differential of support tends to be smaller. Gender and ethnicity seem to be mutually reinforcing in terms of promoting support for prohibiting hate speech, as shown by the fact that only one half of the White male faculty support such prohibitions in comparison to at least two thirds of the other faculty groupings (and nearly four out of five of the minority women faculty). Minority faculty as a group also tend to support the right to ban extreme speakers more than do White faculty. The source of this support, which is somewhat contradictory to the relative political liberalism of minority faculty, is unclear, but may reflect that these faculty tend to equate extremism (as embodied in this particular questionnaire item) with racism (e.g., speakers from the Ku Klux Klan). If so, we have a situation where the nature of hate-based speech affects attitudes toward regulating other kinds of speech.

Institutional priorities are also related to support for regulating speech, although in less straightforward ways. The composition of the faculty is clearly related to the overall level of support for these two speech policies, with the percentage of liberal faculty negatively associated and the percentage of women faculty positively associated with support for some form of regulation. Although White faculty are less supportive of these two speech policies than faculty of color, this figure has only a modest net relationship with the dependent variables.

Institutional climate is also related to faculty attitudes in interesting ways. For example, the degree to which faculty view the student body as being of high quality is negatively related to support for prohibitions on racist/sexist speech. Faculty may believe that "better" students can effectively deal with hate speech or, perhaps, face less exposure to it. This finding is, however, somewhat at odds with the fact that the most celebrated attempts to implement restrictions on hate speech have been associated with such "high quality" institutions as Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. It may be that student activism can lead to administrative action regardless of faculty support, while also helping to involve faculty under certain circumstances (Jennings, 1993).

The extent to which the institution emphasizes social change (that is, helps students learn how to bring about social change, facilitates student [End Page 28] involvement in community service, and engages major social and environmental problems) is positively related to support for both speech policies. While this pattern of support may seem somewhat contradictory, it may be that faculty at these types of institutions are willing to define the boundaries of speech on campus to promote their educational goals. "Social-change" campuses tend to be small, private four-year colleges (Dey, 1991); their faculty may be willing to sacrifice certain speech rights to enhance the educational process and promote campus citizenship.

The regression results also show that faculty at institutions which seek to promote diversity are less likely to support the right to ban extreme speakers (and neither significantly likely nor unlikely to support prohibitions on racist/sexist speech) than those campuses with other types of climates. It may be that these campuses view intellectual diversity (as embodied in extreme and diverse thought) as being an important consideration. In any event, these findings run counter to the conventional wisdom that promoting diversity is fundamentally associated with "political correctness." This finding is important from a practical perspective, in that it suggests that campuses can strive to promote diversity without automatically creating a climate which some perceive as stifling debate and discussion within the academy.

A number of additional practical implications can be drawn from these findings. Boyer (1994) suggests that one of the primary goals of higher education is to foster an environment where students learn that they are accountable to a human community. Understanding faculty attitudes is important because faculty help set the tone for campus climate in and outside of the classroom, and provide students with an opportunity to learn about the importance of academic freedom and free speech. Classroom and extracurricular discussions may also be useful in teaching students that certain responsibilities accompany such freedoms.

Our results showed that faculty at institutions which emphasize social change or which are student centered tend to support some limitations of speech. We hypothesize that the faculty at such institutions feel that limitations of this sort can be consistent with the institution's educational goals. Although legal decisions help define the boundaries within which acceptable policies can be developed, campus goals for the students' education should remain a primary consideration in any discussion of speech regulation policies. Some campuses, in order to show support for the presentation of various perspectives have also created opportunities for the articulation of opposing views on an issue by sponsoring colloquia, sponsoring "open mike" sessions, or placing a podium on a campus green as a symbol of support for "free speech." Through such efforts, students learn that they have the right to express themselves without infringing on the rights of others.

The gender and racial differences found in this study highlight the importance of considering the perspectives of those most affected by particular [End Page 29] forms of speech. That is, particular faculty and student groups are most affected by sexist/racist hate speech and sometimes bear the burden of contending with the problem at a personal level. Campuses need to respond affirmatively to concerns raised by these groups, or they risk fostering the perception that such harassment is acceptable on campus. Such a perception may make it more difficult to retain women and minority faculty and students as a result.

Finally, campuses need to consider the general nature of campus relations as influences on how faculty view speech policies. Administrators who have established some level of trust or faculty involvement in their decision processes appear to have the least opposition in formulating policy. Although this observation may well apply to the implementation of any campus policy, it is no doubt especially true in cases where campus personnel are discussing hotly contested alternatives.

Given some of the limitations in the data we analyze here, future research efforts should consider a number of additional questions. First, what are the campus dynamics related to the context within which these issues are considered? Of particular importance may well be an institution's traditions including its historical legacy of racism/sexism, its history of activism, or its modes of involving students and faculty in institutional decision-making (Jennings, 1993; Hurtado, 1994). Second, how do students view these issues? Perhaps more importantly, when institutions develop policies designed to restrict speech, how are students, faculty, and staff affected? Investigating these areas will provide a broad portrait of campus attempts to protect individual rights, promote the free exchange of ideas, and promote campus citizenship.

If academia continues to view itself as a free marketplace of ideas, it is clear that hate speech, which is intended to wound and intimidate others rather than to convey information, has no real educative purpose. On the other hand, expressions of extreme views which seek to inform or persuade others in a manner that is not based in hatred clearly do. The problem, of course, is to find ways of eliminating the former without restricting the latter in order to promote the educational functions of our institutions. Constitutional limitations and court decisions are important in defining the boundaries in which such policies may be developed, with an institution's status as a public or private institution playing a role as well (Jennings, 1993).

Faculty support or opposition toward speech policies is an essential consideration in developing, adopting, and implementing these policies on every campus. Whether such initiatives first emerge from students, administrators, or the faculty themselves, faculty support and participation will greatly influence their success. Faculty are central to the campus community. As noted in a Yale University report issued after numerous controversies over campus speech policies following the Vietnam War, such "rules [End Page 30] and their enforcement must rest upon a consensus of the whole community" (qtd. in Brubacher & Rudy, 1976, p. 328). We hope this study will contribute to understanding the important issue of speech restrictions as campuses attempt to balance goals for campus citizenship and civility with attempts to promote a learning environment where various perspectives can be presented and challenged.

Eric L. Dey and Sylvia Hurtado are Assistant Professors at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan.

Note

1. Although the Carnegie faculty surveys analyzed by Ladd and Lipset and Hamilton and Hargens used a different political self-identification question, the classification of departments into the three groups were equivalent. The HERI political self-identification item is based on a 5-point scale with balanced response options: far left, liberal, middle-of-the-road, conservative, and far right. In contrast, the Carnegie item offers an unbalanced 5-point scale: left, liberal, middle-of-road, moderate, conservative, strong conservative. The effect of the Carnegie construction is an increase in the number of self-identified conservatives. Nevertheless, the procedures outlined by Ladd and Lipset (which classify departments in terms of the percentage of liberal faculty) obtain equivalent results regardless of whether the HERI or the Carnegie item is used.

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