New survey reveals college professors’ fear of being canceled

Academic freedom is under siege. A new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reveals professors are shutting their mouths and biting their tongues out of fear of being canceled.

In their newly released report The Academic Mind in 2022, FIRE (where I ve been a fellow since 2021) surveyed nearly 1,500 professors from colleges and universities across the country. The results show mass self-censorship and a widespread fear that saying the wrong thing could cost them their reputations or even their jobs.

I ve been defending free speech on campus for twenty-two years now, and it was clear that things have been getting much worse over the past couple years, FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff told me. But looking at these numbers, it s even worse than I thought.

More than half (52%) of professors reported being afraid of losing their jobs or reputations because someone misunderstands something they said or did, takes it out of context, or posts something from their past online.

Some 72% of conservative faculty members and 56% of moderates felt this way, while 40% of liberal faculty members did. Roughly one-third (34%) said they often feel they can not express their opinions because of how students, colleagues or school administration might respond.

via nypost.com

I met Greg Lukianoff last year or so at one of Gail Heriot’s memorable dinners. I was surprised and somewhat relieved to discover that he was not a right wing Trumper but an old school civil libertarian who just firmly believed in free speech and the First Amendment, shocking as that might seem.

My experience is that I’m more or less permanently in intellectual lock down mode, not that it has done me much good. Students are smart and they pick up quickly on your politics, especially if they are outside of the academic, left-wing norm. I let slip a few remarks, restraining about 95 percent of what I would like to say, and students quickly get a clue. Most of them are happy to have a professor with a different point of view, and some actually agree with me, but about 10 percent of them (I’m guessing — it could be more) seethe against my wrong think. The attempted cancellation about my comments on this blog about the slippery viral visitor from Wuhan was perpetrated not by students in my classes, but by other student activists previously unknown to me who were veritable RC anti-fans. Who knew. But lucky for me, FIRE and Greg Lukianoff were there to lend me what turned out to be a necessary helping hand. For that I’ll always be grateful.