FIRE Probably Underestimates How Badly Universities are Burning

Sociologist and Skeptic Research Center chief researcher Kevin McCaffree reviews the latest survey findings from Freedom for Individual Rights and Expression

In this week’s Skeptic my colleague Kevin McCaffree, one of the two chief researchers for our Skeptic Research Center (SRC), reviews the findings from the latest survey published by FIRE, the Freedom for Individual Rights and Expression, and argues that as disturbing as the findings were for free speech on college campuses, the problem is likely even worse. One of Dr. McCaffree’s research specialities, which he has practiced brilliantly in the many research projects he has conducted for the SRC, is the limitations of self-report data, particularly those found in popular surveys on controversial topics, in which survey-takers are likely not completely honest about what they really think, even if asked anonymously (“I don’t want to think of myself as someone who would self-censor, when in fact I do it all the time”). Dr. McCaffree shows how this likely happens when asking students about whether or not they feel uncomfortable speaking up in class on hot-button issues, with a result that FIRE’s findings probably underestimate the problem of free expression in academia today.

Dr. Kevin McCaffree is a professor of sociology at the University of North Texas. He is the author or co-author of five books, co-editor of Theoretical Sociology: The Future of a Disciplinary Foundation, and series co-editor (with Jonathan H. Turner) of Evolutionary Analysis in the Social Sciences. In addition to these works, he has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and handbook chapters on a variety of topics ranging from cultural evolution to criminology to the sociology of empathy. His two books include Cultural Evolution: The Empirical and Theoretical Landscape, and The Dance of Innovation: Infrastructure, Social Oscillation, and the Evolution of Societies. He discussed these books, and additional topics, on The Michael Shermer Show here. Along with Anondah Saide, he is one of the two chief researchers for the Skeptic Research Center, which has conducted surveys and produced reports on many controversial topics, such as Israel-Hamas, political accuracy of liberals and conservatives, viewpoint diversity and political bias, which issues are most politically divisive, and others.

Columbia University

FIRE Probably Underestimates How Badly Universities are Burning

By Kevin McCaffree

An organization I am fond of, Freedom for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), recently released its fifth annual College Free Speech Rankings.

As a sociologist interested in the ideological capture of universities and the associated decline of educational quality, I read the report eagerly. What I came away with, however, was an unexpected realization that you won’t find in the report: we are likely vastly underestimating the severity of the problem facing higher education today.

FIRE’s survey assessed the attitudes of students towards a variety of free speech issues between January 25^th and June 17^th, 2024, and drew from an impressive sample of 58,087 students representing 257 colleges and universities across all 50 states in the country. Students were invited to take the survey from a link sent to their .edu email address or through the College Pulse app, which rewards students for taking surveys by providing “points” which can be exchanged for prizes. The survey was advertised on student-frequented websites, via email campaigns, and through “partnerships with university-affiliated organizations.”

The results of the survey suggest that a majority of politically liberal students want the following topics barred from open discussion on campus:

1)    Transgender people suffer from mental illness

2)    The organization Black Lives Matter is intolerant

3)    The deaths of at least some Gazans are justified to maintain Israeli security

4)    Abortion should be illegal

While politically conservative students are also wary of various topics—such as the idea that police are comparable to Nazis or that children should be able to “transition” their gender without parental consent—it would be misleading to suggest that conservative students were anywhere near as censorious as their liberal counterparts. The survey reveals, for example, that politically conservative students avoid discussing controversial topics at about twice the rate of liberal students. Overall, around 1 in 5 students told surveyors that, week to week, they cannot express their thoughts on different subjects because of how they feel a student, professor or administrator would respond.

Harvard University

As for the “campus behavior” metrics, FIRE found that 45 speaker events had been disrupted and 36 speaker invitations had been revoked, along with a variety of speaker withdrawals and invitation rejections. If you have something particularly intellectually or emotionally challenging to offer students, your cancellation should not come as a surprise. Some very prestigious campuses topped the list of “abysmal” schools for free speech: Harvard, NYU, Dartmouth, Syracuse University and the University of Houston were the top five.

While I value and appreciate FIRE’s investigation, the really tough pill to swallow is that assessments like this—as discouraging as they can be—actually paint a rosy and optimistic picture compared to what I suspect is actually happening across universities in the US.

Why do I say this? Two central reasons: 1) surveys can underestimate the phenomena they attempt to measure and 2) feeling comfortable discussing something is not the same thing as receiving a quality education.

1.     Surveys Can Underestimate the Phenomena they Attempt to Measure

When people exist in a highly ideological environment with strong conformity pressures, they tend to answer survey questions in socially desirable ways.

As a student, I might feel comfortable discussing controversial issues in the classroom or I might not. But whatever my true feeling, I am aware that I am supposed to feel comfortable discussing things in class. Professors are constantly encouraging “class discussions,” indeed, they are often an important part of the grading process. So, as a student, I probably understand that discussion is supposed to be a good thing, thus, when a survey asks me if I feel comfortable discussing things, I will say “yes,” even when I really don’t. This is the answer I know I am supposed to give—the socially desirable response. But it might hide how I really feel.

Relatedly, even when survey takers are told that their responses will be kept confidential, there might be some lingering doubt about just how confidential the whole process will end up being. What if a website is hacked? What if the researcher accidentally releases my name along with my responses? Particularly in a highly ideologically-charged environment like a college campus, students are likely to have some doubts about whether their answers will be truly confidential. So, from the student’s perspective, perhaps they should just play it safe and, once again, provide the socially desirable response instead of being honest about how they really feel.

Yet another challenge follows from attempting to conduct a survey in a conformity-inducing environment like a modern university: pluralistic ignorance and preference falsification. If I am a student in a modern American university, I am likely aware that I am both expected to engage in class discussion and share my thoughts while, at the same time, keep my contributions to the discussion within “acceptable” bounds (i.e., don’t be critical of any groups other than white, straight, men; don’t be critical of non-Western societies; don’t be critical of liberal-aligned social movements, etc.). Spending a period of time in an environment like this gives people the impression that disagreement is not just taboo, but actually non-existent. So, when a surveyor comes along and asks a student whether they feel comfortable discussing this or that issue on campus, the response will be “yea, sure” because they have come to believe that few if any people around them actually holds a taboo/unacceptable opinion in the first place and so discussion would be unlikely to ever materialize or be consequential.

Finally, the biggest weakness of these surveys is that they cannot really account for the obvious gap between what people say and what they actually do. Perhaps, as a college student, I might have a very hard time admitting on a survey that I feel afraid to speak about a certain topic. Perhaps admitting this would make me feel bad about myself, as though I lack courage or conviction. So, I will tell surveyors that I absolutely feel comfortable speaking about controversial issues. But, in reality, when those topics come up, I end up being demure and silent despite my own intentions. Who wants to be shouted down or looked at sideways? Perhaps I’ll never be able to fully accept how fearful or cowardly I’m being, and so I’ll continue to tell surveyors I’m feeling free and comfortable while keeping dutifully silent (or acting dutifully outraged) as necessary until I graduate.

2.     Feeling Comfortable Discussing Something is Not the Same Thing as Receiving a Quality Education

Regardless of how comfortable or uncomfortable students feel discussing controversial topics on campus, a much bigger and unexamined problem is that many students just aren’t learning anything. Even if 70% of majors on campus are rigorous, informative, and open to disagreement, if 30% of every generation of college graduates is made dumber and more radicalized in highly politicized majors, this will derail cultural discourse and the capacity for actual social progress.

One study, for example, found that around two thirds of sociology professors said the field should promote their moral and political opinions and, ironically, most (51%) disagreed that the field is being undermined by political activism. These findings are probably not outliers, as a variety of college majors—from Education and English majors to Anthropology and Women’s/Ethnic Studies majors—have long been critiqued for their overt and unapologetic commitment to political orthodoxy, along with the selective and misleading presentation of information to students.  

This is not an idle or abstract concern: students in many majors are no longer being taught true or accurate information. In our own surveys at the Skeptic Research Center (SRC) (see, for example, here, here, and here), we’ve found a variety of astonishing signs of this ignorance:

·      55% of those aged 18-24 agree with the statement, “I believe racial minorities in the U.S. have no hope for success because of racism."

·      42% of those aged 18-24 agree with the statement, “I believe women in the United States have no hope for success because of sexism.”

·      71% of those aged 18-24 agree that “Prior to the arrival of the European settlers, Native American/ Indigenous tribes lived in peace and harmony."

·      40% of those aged 18-24 agree that “The 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump was fraudulent because it was tampered with by high-ranking politicians and computer programmers in Russia.”

·      43% of those aged 18-24 agree that "The Israeli government advocates for white supremacy."

·      1 in 5 people aged 18-24 believe “Israel/Jews secretly control most of the decision-making processes across key US institutions, including government and media.”

It is important that students feel free to discuss or voice unpopular opinions. But it also matters—even more so—that they are being taught rigorous knowledge about the world along with how to think clearly, and this would involve an awareness of the role of cognitive biases like confirmation bias, negativity bias and the cynical genius illusion, which systematically distort our understanding of the world in a negative direction.

Understanding the Fullness of the Problem that Faces Higher Education

I want to reiterate that I commend FIRE as an organization for investigating the topic of free speech on college campuses. No survey is perfect (this goes for our own Skeptic Research Center results discussed above, as well), and what FIRE has released in their report is informative, to be sure. I highly recommend checking it out.

At the same time however, surveys can only reveal what they are designed to measure, and they can only report the attitudes people are willing to honestly convey. What’s more, the problem on university campuses is much bigger than censorship and political orthodoxy, though, as FIRE’s results show, these are indeed serious problems. The larger problem is that 1) surveys are likely under-estimating how censorious campuses really are, and 2) professors in many popular majors, for generations now, haven’t learned much that is true about the world and so don’t even know the extent to which they are confidently spreading their own ignorance to new generations. This second point is quite independent and more severe than students’ tendencies to self-censor.

This might mean that what FIRE is doing is taking a quick and helpful glance at the tip of an enormous iceberg.