, and , Americans’ views on free speech change directions every so often. One of those times was during the protests at U.S.
universities about the Israel-Hamas war. As scholars of and , we set out to find out what happened and why. The Supreme Court itself, as recently as 1989, has declared that the “bedrock principle” of the First Amendment is that “ of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
” For years, conservative politicians and commentators have warned that of free speech. But as demonstrations erupted, that the protests were filled with . Leading conservatives declared the demonstrations should be banned and halted, if necessary.
Liberals executed a similar reversal. Many of them have supported of against minority groups. But during the campus protests, liberals by university administrators, state officials and the police rights.
As researchers at Vanderbilt University’s and , respectively, we sought to determine where Americans stand. We drew inspiration from a in which 3,500 Americans answered questions about free speech. In June 2024, we asked 1,000 Americans the identical questions.
We found that the vast majority of Americans—both then and now—agree that democracy requires freedom of speech. That’s in the abstract. When the questions get more concrete, though, their support wanes.
Only about half of the respondents in both the 1939 and 2024 polls agreed that anybody in America should be allowed to speak on.