Clemson // Courtesy
Free speech is a hallmark of the college experience, and needs to be better protected on university campuses.
College campuses provide numerous unmatched opportunities. Opportunities to grow as a person, make lifelong friends, find your passion, but, arguably most important, the opportunity to speak freely while sharing and debating your ideas with others.
The importance of free speech on college campuses can not be overlooked, especially in a time like today, where that freedom is at high risk.
This year’s Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression annual report found that “when provided with a definition of self-censorship, at least a quarter of students said they self-censor ‘fairly often’ or ‘very often’ during conversations with other students, with professors and during classroom discussions, respectively (25%, 27%, and 28%, respectively). A quarter of students also said that they are more likely to self-censor on campus now — at the time they were surveyed — than they were when they first started college.”
Although Clemson is not perfect, it protects freedom of speech on its campus better than most universities across the country. In FIRE’s 2024 report, Clemson ranked 62 out of the 248 colleges surveyed. So there is clearly work to be done, but at least we didn’t rank 246 (like South Carolina).
I’ve seen free speech fostered at Clemson myself, and I’ve heard University officials celebrate its preservation on campus. At this month’s Take Back Pride march, multiple pro-LBGTQ+ organizations rallied directly across the street from the Clemson College Republicans, two groups that definitively disagree, making their presence known and voices heard.
Additionally, earlier this year, Clemson’s board of trustees unanimously agreed to adopt the Chicago Statement, a written commitment to the protection of free speech and expression on college campuses.
Colleges and universities have served as the breeding grounds for social debate since the beginning of their long history. College is where students develop their beliefs and cement their values. This is not possible without freedom of speech. If speech continues to be censored on campuses, colleges will no longer serve as the marketplace of free ideas it always intended to be, and that would be one of American society’s greatest losses.