Speaking Freely on the West Coast

In the 1960s, California birthed the college-free-speech revolution. Today, some of its students clamor for restrictions on campus speech. According to a new survey, California – in keeping with its mixed history on free-speech issues – is home to both the nation’s best school for free expression and one of its worst.

Claremont McKenna College and California State University, Fresno were two of the 159 colleges and universities profiled in the 2021 College Free Speech Rankings, a project sponsored by RealClearEducation, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and the research firm College Pulse. Over 37,000 students responded to questions about their views on campus speech. Sponsors used the survey responses to compile a composite score for each participating school. The rankings provide prospective students and their families with a valuable resource to evaluate a school’s commitment to free expression.

The top-ranked school in the 2021 Free Speech Rankings was Claremont McKenna College (CMC), a small liberal-arts college in southern California with fewer than 2,000 undergraduates. It topped second-ranked University of Chicago by almost full two points on the Rankings’ 100-point scale.

Dialogue and debate are central to CMC’s culture. The school sponsors The Athenaeum, a public-affairs program that brings a range of speakers to campus to meet with students and discuss important political and cultural issues. It dedicates several pages on its website to affirming and explaining the school’s commitment to free expression.

According to the Free Speech Survey, 54 percent of CMC students surveyed felt it was “very” or “extremely” clear that the administration protected free speech on campus. Eighty-nine percent of students believed that, in a speech-related controversy, CMC administrators would likely defend a speaker’s right to express his views.

A review of recent history at CMC shows why students may have formed this perception. In 2017, CMC president Hiram Chodosh rebuked students for blocking the entrance to an Athenaeum lecture by conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald. The school later suspended five students for blocking the speech and posted Mac Donald’s talk in full on the CMC website.

“In the end, the effort to silence [Mac Donald’s] voice effectively amplified it to a much larger audience,” Chodosh said.

Sean Stevens, a senior research fellow at FIRE, told RealClearEducation that Claremont McKenna’s courage in the Mac Donald affair and its success in the survey are the results of strong leadership. He noted that CMC earned FIRE’s “Green Light” designation, meaning the school’s code of conduct is free of serious threats to student expression.

“Compared to most of the other colleges we surveyed, the student body was very tolerant of controversial liberal and conservative speakers. While I would stop short of saying CMC is the model school, they rank in the top 50 on every component of our rankings – and in the top two on half of them,” Stevens said.

At the other end of the rankings is 143^rd-ranked Cal State Fresno, a public university in the San Joaquin Valley. As a public institution, Fresno State is required to protect students’ free-speech rights as provided by the state and federal constitutions. Ironically, it is the public Fresno State – not private Claremont – whose speech policies are incompatible with the First Amendment.

Fresno State has a policy in its student code of conduct restricting what students can say in electronic correspondence. The rule states that no “e-mail or message shall be created or sent, nor Web pages created, that may constitute intimidating, hostile, or offensive material based on gender, race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability.”

Prohibitions on “offensive” speech by public institutions are constitutionally dubious, FIRE’s Stevens said.

“This is one of the reasons why Fresno State has a ‘Red Light’ rating,” Stevens said of the policy; “a ban on speech perceived to be ‘offensive’ violates the First Amendment.”

Fresno, which did not respond to requests for comment, struggled in other survey categories. Only 33% of its students felt it was “very” or “extremely” clear that the school protects free speech on campus. Almost 50% of students said they would be uncomfortable expressing a controversial opinion in a common campus area. Some Fresno students reported feeling alienated for holding dissenting beliefs, particularly when they disagreed with a professor.

“In an English class as a freshman, my professor strongly supported Hilary Clinton and would talk about politics openly in class,” one Fresno student said. “None of what she discussed related to the topic of English.”

As much as speech policies and professor attitudes impact school cultures, perhaps no factor is more important than student tolerance – that is, students’ willingness to hear and engage with ideas they disagree with. In this area, both Fresno State and CMC have reasons for concern.

Seventeen percent of Fresno students surveyed said it was sometimes or always acceptable to shout down a speaker or prevent them from speaking on campus. At CMC, this figure was even higher, with 33 percent of students saying that such behavior is sometimes or always acceptable.

Asked what he would tell those students, Claremont McKenna president Hiram Chodosh emphasized the importance of civil debate in a college environment.

“At CMC, we respect and engage in robust discussions around diverse viewpoints, including those with which we most strongly disagree,” Chodosh said. “We seek to examine the underlying basis for those disagreements, including any about the proper protections and limitations of free speech. This is how we can learn from disagreements and reach stronger levels of shared understanding. This is how responsible people serve and lead others, not through the sheer exercise of power, but through the power of persuasion.”