Do College Campuses Have Less Freedom of Speech Now?
Earlier this month the president of DePaul University announced that he is stepping down following student protests that culminated in the shutting down of a speech by a prominent young conservative writer. The growing number of similar protests at other colleges and universities in recent months has a sizable number of Americans questioning whether free speech has a place on modern campuses.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 39% of American Adults think there is less freedom of speech on U.S. college campuses today than there has been in the past. Twenty-six percent (26%) believe there’s more freedom of speech, while 29% say the level of freedom is about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The national survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on June 20-21, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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