What liberals and conservatives get wrong about free expression on college campuses

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Timothy Ryan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Mark McNeilly, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

(THE CONVERSATION) When it comes to understanding disputes over free expression on college campuses, such as speakers getting disinvited or having their speeches interrupted, conservatives tend to blame liberal professors for indoctrinating students and ostracizing those who don’t agree with liberal viewpoints. One prominent conservative organization, Turning Point USA, has gone so far as to create a database of faculty it says “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

Liberals, in contrast, argue that concerns about free speech on college campuses are overblown. They also accuse conservatives of co-opting the language of free speech proponents in an effort to falsely position themselves as victims.

Our research indicates that each of these narratives is flawed. We are researchers who study political behavior, as well as strategies for business.

For the past year, we have been studying free expression issues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a campus that has had a number of flare-ups related to free expression in recent years. We wanted to look beyond single episodes and better understand the typical student’s experience concerning free expression.

We found that students who identify with the political right do indeed face fears of being ostracized that students who identify with the left do not. However, we also found signs that right-leaning students worry at least as much about reactions from peers as from faculty. Much of this plays out silently in classrooms at Chapel Hill and – we believe – at...