What Makes College Students Support Disciplinary Action for Objectionable Speech?
A new study by Associate Professor Yphtach Lelkes and Professor Guy Grossman finds that U.S. college students oppose punishing objectionable speech unless it is highly harmful, and hateful speech against minority groups elicits stronger punitive responses than statements directed at white students.
Key findings include:
- Students’ support for punishing objectionable speech depends heavily on how harmful the speech is perceived to be and who is being targeted.
- About two-third of students think historically marginalized groups should receive added protection from harmful speech, while about one-third think the same standard should apply to all groups.
- Students generally gave similar levels of protection to Jewish and Muslim targets, and greater protection to both than to white targets.
- Students’ broader normative views about speech rules help explain their responses across different scenarios, but those principles often weaken in the face of ideological commitments.
- A follow-up study of U.S. adults found similar overall patterns, suggesting the results extend beyond college campuses.
In early 2024, waves of protests against the war in Gaza broke out on college campuses across the U.S. These student-led protests, which led to over 3,000 arrests and a range of disciplinary actions from university administrations, shone a light on an increasingly contentious issue in higher education: the regulation of free expression.
In a new study, researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, University of Colorado Denver, and Columbia University used preregistered survey experiments with a nationally representative sample of 3,065 U.S. college students to examine how students judged objectionable statements made by either professors or fellow students — and how those judgments reflect both broader free speech principles and the pull of ideology and identity.
The researchers conducted three related experiments. In one, students were asked whether they would support a campus rule banning offensive public statements directed at different groups, randomly assigned as Black, Jewish, Muslim, transgender, or white people. In two others, students were presented with hypothetical cases involving objectionable speech by either a professor or another student, with the target group and severity of the statement varying across respondents.
“Some of the most extreme rhetoric in the Gaza war protest movement and counter-protests explicitly targeted particular groups, notably Jews and Muslims,” says Yphtach Lelkes, Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School. “We wanted to understand how students think about who is being targeted when they decide whether speech crosses the line from merely objectionable to punishable.”
The results show that students do not respond to all offensive speech in the same way. Support for punishment rose substantially as statements became more severe. The study also finds that target identity matters. Compared with otherwise identical statements directed at white people, harmful speech aimed at Black, Jewish, Muslim, and transgender people drew greater support for punishment. Students also judged such speech as more likely to cause physical or psychological harm. Jewish and Muslim targets received similar levels of protection in these judgments.
“The results suggest that, at this moment, many students see both Jews and Muslims as minority groups that deserve similar protection from harmful speech,” Lelkes says. “That does not mean students see all groups in identical ways, but it does show that they are not treating anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim speech differently in these cases.”
A central contribution of the study is that it goes beyond asking whether students support speech restrictions and instead examines the principles behind those views. Respondents were asked whether rules about offensive speech should apply equally to everyone, regardless of identity, or whether historically marginalized groups should receive added protection.
About two-thirds of students support the particularistic principle, while a third hold universalistic views. Those principles were strongly associated with students' responses in the experiments. In general, students who said marginalized groups deserve added protection were more supportive of punishment and group-specific protections. Students who endorsed equal treatment across groups were less supportive of differential protections.
The researchers found that, overall, students’ answers during the experiments tended to follow their stated principle, but when other values and attitudes, such as ideology or social identity, came into play, students’ commitment to their stated principles weakened, showing how polarization and ideology can override principled commitments to consistent standards of speech regulation.
“As primary stakeholders in university communities, students influence campus policies through their collective attitudes, actions, and advocacy efforts,” says Guy Grossman, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. “As campuses continue to serve as microcosms for broader societal debates, understanding students’ boundaries for speech regulation offers insights into the challenges of fostering inclusive dialogue while navigating the limits of free expression.”
“Expression at the Edge: Free Speech Boundaries Amidst the Gaza Crisis” was published in Science Advances and authored by Ran Abramitzky (Stanford University), Guy Grossman (Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania), Yphtach Lelkes (Annenberg School for Communication), Hani Mansour (University of Colorado, Denver), and Tamar Mitts (Columbia University)
