Understanding the Campus Expression Climate A Research Report from 2019, 2020, and 2021
Citation: Zhou, S., and Zhou, S.C. (2022). Understanding the campus expression climate: A research report from 2019, 2020, and 2021. Heterodox Academy. Please direct media queries to press@heterodoxacademy.org
Introduction About Heterodox Academy’s Campus Expression Survey In recent years, concern over the state of free speech and open inquiry on college campuses has been
increasing. One of the core purposes of higher education is to train students to think critically about important, and often controversial, topics. For this to happen, campuses must welcome and encourage respectful discussion and debate. However, more and more frequently, students and faculty report being silenced — and even feeling threatened — after expressing their perspectives on controversial topics. When censorship and cancellation replace open inquiry and constructive disagreement, higher education’s academic mission is at stake. In 2018, Heterodox Academy created the Campus Expression Survey (CES) to empirically examine the extent to which college students censor their opinions when discussing controversial topics on campus and why they do so. The CES asks students to self-report on their willingness or reluctance to discuss various controversial topics (i.e., gender, race, politics, religion, and sexual orientation) in the classroom. It also asks about why they feel reluctant to have these discussions (i.e., perceived consequences for expressing an unpopular viewpoint) and demographic questions. Heterodox Academy has administered this survey each academic year since 2019. Over the past three years, the CES has changed to include relevant discussion topics and to reflect campus expression according to results from previous administrations of this survey. In addition to the core discussion topics this survey asked about every year (gender, politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation), each survey administration also asked about topics relevant to that specific year, such as Black Lives Matter in 2020 and COVID-19 in 2021. Questions asking about students’ concern over the possible negative consequences of speaking up about controversial topics also underwent some changes: • The CES asked about each controversial topic separately in 2019. Because the 2019 results did not vary among discussion topics, we adjusted the questions to ask about a nonspecific controversial topic in 2020 and 2021. • Response options for these questions were continuous in 2019, asking respondents to report the extent to which they were concerned about possible consequences, whereas they were dichotomous (i.e., yes or no) in 2020 and 2021, only asking students whether they had these concerns or not. • In 2019 and 2020, criticism from classmates was the consequence about which respondents most frequently expressed concern. In 2021, we asked about this consequence in greater detail, asking respondents about their concern over (a) other students criticizing them directly, (b) other students criticizing them behind their back after class, and (c) other students criticizing them privately in their own heads. • In 2021, we also added a section that asked if respondents would enact these consequences against a fellow student who expressed a controversial opinion with which they disagreed.
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The specific questions that compose this survey are available in the Administration Manual. Please direct any questions regarding the CES and its administration to questions@heterodoxacademy.org.
About This Report After collecting data on campus expression climate for the past three years, we combined this data (total n = 4310) to examine how campus climate has changed and/or stayed the same from 2019 to 2021 for this research report. We focus on variables for which there is data across all three years: demographic variables, reluctance to discuss tough topics, campus climate, and anticipated consequences of sharing controversial viewpoints. Given the widespread impact of the pandemic, we also discuss student responses on COVID-19 questions from fall 2020 and fall 2021. While our prior CES reports have focused on high-level findings with an emphasis on visualizing the data for general audiences, this report dives deeper into the methodology and analytical findings from these CES administrations. We invite our readers, especially those who are employed in academic contexts, to examine this report in detail and consider future research directions that could arise from these findings.
Data Collection and Analysis During each of the fall semesters between 2019 and 2021, Heterodox Academy contracted Qualtrics to administer the CES to a representative sample of traditional U.S. undergraduate students through their participant pool. We specifically asked that these respondents be students of four-year nonprofit U.S. colleges and universities between ages 18 and 24. We also asked that their colleges and universities be distributed across census regions resembling the one from Gallup/Knight Foundation’s 2018 report on free expression (i.e., 21% Northeast, 24% Midwest, 34% South, and 21% West), and that each subsample by census region has ethnic and gender distributions resembling corresponding statistics from the National Center for Educational Statistics. Reports describing the results of these annual CES administrations, along with their corresponding supplemental materials, are available on our website. For our goal of examining changes in these results over time, we combined data from these three waves into one cross-sectional data set. Details about data treatment and analysis accompany their corresponding results below. This cross-sectional data set and the R script for these analyses are available for download from our website.
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Changes in the Demographic Composition of College Students We examined several demographic variables across these three yearly samples using Fisher’s exact test, which tests for association between two categorical variables (i.e., 2019/2020/2021 compared with demographics). Although we restricted and stratified each of these samples by several demographic characteristics (i.e., census region, ethnicity, and gender), these results found several other demographic differences across these samples, included below. There were no notable differences in other demographic variables, such as year in school, sexual orientation, and family socioeconomic status.
Nonbinary-Gender and Transgender Students We found a dramatic increase in the number of students who identified as nonbinary gender and transgender. A Fisher’s exact test indicated that gender distributions (male, female, or nonbinary; respondents could also select an “other” gender category, which we combined with “nonbinary” for analysis) were different across these three years (p < .001); distributions of men and women across these samples were constant by design, with these differences being because more recent samples contained more nonbinary students (i.e., 0.0%, with n = 0 in 2019; 0.2%, with n = 3 in 2020; and 5.0%, with n = 75 in 2021). Another Fisher's exact test with "year" (2020 and 2021; this question was not asked of respondents in 2019) and "transgender" (yes or no) also indicated that the 2021 sample (4.3%, with n = 65) contained more (p < .001) transgender students than the 2020 sample (1.4%, with n = 18).
Political Party There were also slight changes to political party membership. We used Fisher’s exact test to examine the association between “year” (three categories) and “political party” (six categories), which indicated that distributions of political affiliations were different across these three samples (p < .001). This pattern specifically indicates that more recent samples contained more Independent and Other students and fewer Republican students. 2019
% of sample in this political group
60
2020
2021
40
20
0 Democrat
Republican
Independent
Libertarian
Other
Don’t Know
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Religion There were also slight changes to religious identification. We again used Fisher’s exact test to examine the association between “year” (three categories) and “religion” (in addition to the seven religious groups in the graph below, respondents could also select “Hindu,” which we included with the “Other” religious group because of its small subsample size), which indicated that distributions of religious affiliations were different across these three samples (p < .001). This pattern specifically indicates that more recent samples contained fewer Christian students and more students who were agnostic, atheist, and of other religious affiliations. 2019
2020
2021
% of sample in this religious group
60
40
20
0 Agnostic
Atheist
Buddhist
Jewish
Christian
Other
Muslim
Importance of Demographic Variables to Student Identity We also asked how important respondents’ race/ethnicity, preferred political party, and religious beliefs were to their “sense of identity,” with responses ranging from 1 (Not at all important) to 4 (Very important). An ANOVA comparing responses to each of these questions among years indicated no differences regarding the importance of race and political party (ps > .05, η2s < .01). There were slight differences in the importance of religion (p < .01), but they were small and not practically significant (η2 < .01). 2019
2020
2021 2.95
Importance of RACE to sense of identity
3.01 2.90 2.67
Importance of POLITICAL PARTY to sense of identity
2.74 2.65 2.86
Importance of RELIGION to sense of identity
2.83 2.68
1
2
3
4
Average Importance (on a scale of 1 to 4) 5
Changes in the Campus Experiences of College Students In 2020 and 2021, we asked several questions to capture the changing nature of college education due to the pandemic. These questions were specifically about the extent to which classes were in person versus online, the quality of interactions with their classmates, and the amount of isolation they felt. A Fisher’s exact test on the responses to each of these questions by year (i.e., 2020 and 2021) indicated that corresponding patterns of responses did change between these two years (ps < .001).
Online Versus In-Person Classes Students reported if their classes were fully in person, primarily in person, equally in person and online, primarily online, or fully online. Compared with 2020, students in 2021 reported having more in-person classes and fewer online classes.
2020
5.6%
2021
Fully in-person
41.1%
0%
Primarily in-person
5.1% 20.6%
Balanced
23.8%
Primarily Online
44.0% 21.5%
20%
40%
Fully Online
19.6% 60%
7.4%
10.3%
80%
100%
Interaction Quality Students reported if their interactions with their classmates were of low quality (not much opportunity for discussion or to get to know other students), medium quality (some opportunity for discussion or to get to know other students), or high quality (a lot of opportunity for discussion or to get to know other students). Compared with 2020, students in 2021 reported more high-quality, more medium-quality, and less low-quality interactions.
2020
9.1%
2021
High Quality
21.4%
0%
Medium Quality
Low Quality 41.8%
49.1%
20.0%
58.6% 20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
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Psychological Isolation Students reported if they felt “psychologically isolated from others” “hardly ever,” “some of the time,” or “often.” Compared with 2020, students in 2021 reported feeling lonely “often” less frequently.
2020
16.6%
2021
Hardly Ever
20.6%
0%
Some of the time
51.0%
Often 32.4% 22.0%
57.4% 20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
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Consistency in Reluctance to Discuss Controversial Topics One important goal for this report is to examine reluctance to discuss controversial topics among undergraduate students and the consistency of this reluctance over time. To measure reluctance, we asked students to imagine discussing several controversial topics in a class that semester and then report if they would feel “very comfortable,” “somewhat comfortable,” “somewhat reluctant,” or “very reluctant” about speaking up and giving their views on these topics (i.e., gender, politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation). We dichotomized these responses by collapsing “somewhat reluctant” and “very reluctant” into “reluctant” and collapsing “somewhat comfortable” and “very comfortable” into “comfortable.” The proportions of students in each year who responded “reluctant” to each of the five controversial topics are depicted in the graph below. 2019
2020
2021
% of group reluctant to share views
50 40
41.2%
39.5%
31.7%
30
20 19.7%
23.7% 22.9%
30.5% 31.8%
20%
23.8%
25.0%
27.5%
27.5% 23.9%
25.0%
21.1% 15.3% 12.1%
10
8.0%
0 Gender
Politics
Race
Religion
Sexual Orientation
Non-Controversial Topics
Discussion Topics Note: In 2019, our data analysis team weighted each participant response by a small factor to adjust for the fact that our sample did not match the requested stratification (see “Fall 2019 Methods” for details). This was not necessary in 2020 and 2021. For the sake of consistency, this report removes the weighting from 2019 and treats all participant responses as raw data. However, due to this, there are very small discrepancies (i.e., less than 0.5%) between proportions visualized in this report compared with the visualizations found in the Fall 2019 report online. We encourage you to review the detailed R code available on our website.
We noted, most importantly, that students expressed consistently high reluctance to discuss controversial topics across these three years. In other words, the reported high levels of reluctance from each year of data collection were replicated across three years of independent samples, thus suggesting that reluctance to discuss controversial topics is a notable and persistent issue on college campuses.
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Campus Climate This survey also asked directly about campus expression climate. The first question asked the extent to which students agreed (on a scale of 1 = Strongly disagree to 4 = Strongly agree) with the statement: “The climate on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.” A
2019
one-way ANOVA found that agreement with this statement significantly increased over the years (p < .001, η2 = .01).
2020
2.52
2021
2.71 2.74
1
2
4
3
Average Agreement (scale of 1 to 4)
Similarly, the second question asked how frequently their colleges or universities encourage students to “consider a wider variety of viewpoints and perspectives” (on a scale of 1 = Never to 6 = Very frequently). A one-way ANOVA
2019
4.62
2021
4.62
2020
found that this frequency decreased over the years (p < .001, η2 = .02).
1
4.22 2
3
4
5
6
Average Frequency (scale of 1 to 6)
These results suggest that students’ overt perceptions of their campus expression climate have been worsening in the past three years.
99 11
Students Value Open Inquiry and Viewpoint Diversity Despite these findings, students appear to greatly value open inquiry and viewpoint diversity. In 2020 and 2021, we asked students their degree of agreement (on a scale of 1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree) on a series of questions regarding how viewpoint diversity on campus should be. Across the board and in both years of data collection, agreement to each of the following statements was high (almost all of them being above 4 on this 5-point scale). 2020
2021
Students should be able to share ideas and ask questions without fear of retaliation, even when those ideas are offensive to some people.
4.13 4.12
Professors should be able to share ideas and ask questions without fear of retaliation, even when those ideas are offensive to some people.
3.84 3.90
Colleges should encourage students and professors to share ideas and ask questions, even when those ideas are offensive to some people.
3.88 4.01
Regardless of their point of view, students should all be treated as valued contributors to conversations.
4.38 4.39 4.23
Regardless of their point of view, professors should all be treated as valued contributors to conversations.
4.22 4.43
Colleges should welcome students and professors with a lot of different points of view.
4.44
Colleges should encourage students and professors to interact respectfully with people whose beliefs differ from their own.
4.44 4.53 4.37
Colleges should encourage students and professors to be open to learning from people whose beliefs differ from their own. 1
4.44 2
3
4
5
Average Agreement (on a scale of 1 to 5)
12 10
Students’ Demographic Identities Correlated With Reluctance to Discuss Controversial Topics Each year, we examined the interaction between various demographic variables and reluctance to discuss controversial topics to address the question of “who is reluctant to talk about what?” The purpose of this investigation was to determine if students from some demographic groups, especially those who are not in the majority group, might feel more reluctant to discuss controversial topics than their peers. If this were the case, it could lead to further suppression of underrepresented students and their viewpoints in classroom settings. A series of Fisher’s exact tests were conducted between each of eight demographic variables (i.e., gender, political party, race, religion, sexual orientation, year in school, family SES, and region) and if respondents were reluctant or comfortable discussing each of the five controversial topics this survey measured (i.e., gender, politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation), for a total of 40 statistical tests. The p-values, adjusted for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni correction, are below (nonsignificant p-values are not shown). Reluctance to Discuss Controversial Topics Gender
Demographics
Race
Gender
Religion
Politics
p < .01
p < .01
Sexual Orientation
Race
p < .01
p < .01
p = .04
Political Party
p < .01
p < .01
p < .01
p < .01
p < .01
p < .01
Religion
p < .01
Sexual Orientation
p < .01
Year in School Family SES Religion
Political party played the largest role across all three years. Even after correcting for multiple comparisons, students’ reluctance to discuss gender, race, politics, and sexual orientation differed as a function of their political party. Specifically, Democrat students were consistently less reluctant to discuss these four topics than were
% of group reluctant to share views
students of any other political affiliation. Democrats
50
Republicans
41% 40%
40 31%
30 20
28%
Independents
Libertarians
44% 35%
33%
31%
32%
29%
23%
20%
17%
26%
25%
19%
10 0
Gender
Politics
Race
Sexual Orientation
Discussion Topics 11
There were also some differences in reluctance to discuss controversial topics within ethnic groups and within religions. Within ethnic groups, white students reported most reluctance to discuss gender and race, whereas Middle Eastern students reported least reluctance to discuss politics. Discussing GENDER by Ethnic Groups
Discussing RACE by Ethnic Groups
Discussing POLITICS by Ethnic Groups 50
40
30
25%
23% 20%
20
19%
20%
15% 10
0
40
31%
30
25%
24%
20
19% 15%
17%
10
% of group reluctant to share views
50
% of group reluctant to share views
% of group reluctant to share views
50
Black or African American
Hispanic Middle or Latino Eastern
MultiRacial
Asian
White
40% 38%
39%
37% 30%
30
21%
20
10
0
0
Asian
40
Black or Hispanic African or Latino American
Middle Eastern
MultiRacial
Asian
White
Black or Hispanic African or Latino American
Middle Eastern
MultiRacial
White
Within religious groups, Christian students reported the most reluctance to discuss politics, agnostic and atheist students reported the most reluctance to discuss religion, and Muslim students reported the most reluctance to discuss sexual orientation. Discussing POLITICS by Religious Groups
Discussing RELIGION by Religious Groups
Discussing SEXUAL ORIENTATION by Religious Groups 50
41%
40
33% 30
31% 28%
30%
22% 20
10
0
40
34%
36%
30
28% 24%
26% 21%
20
10
Atheist
Buddhist
Christian
Jewish
Muslim
40
34% 30
27% 23%
20
19%
19%
Agnostic
Atheist
19%
10
0
0
Agnostic
% of group reluctant to share views
50
% of group reluctant to share views
% of group reluctant to share views
50
Agnostic
Atheist
Buddhist
Christian
Jewish
Muslim
Buddhist
Christian
Jewish
Muslim
There were no differences in reluctance to discuss controversial topics within years in school, family socioeconomic statuses, or geographic regions.
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Fewer Opportunities to Interact with Classmates, More Reluctance to Discuss Controversial Topics In 2020 and 2021, students rated the quality of their interactions with classmates (see page 6 for details). On this data, we conducted five Fisher’s exact tests to examine its association with reluctance to discuss each of the five controversial topics. Each of these results was significant (p < .01) after Bonferroni’s correction for multiple comparisons, indicating that students who reported having lower-quality interactions with other students were
% of group reluctant to share their views
also more reluctant to discuss all five controversial topics.
Low Quality
50
Medium Quality
High Quality
44% 41%
40 30 20
32%
35%
32%
33%
31%
28%
25%
24% 23%
23%
18%
17%
19%
10 0
Gender
Politics
Race
Religion
Sexual Orientation
Discussion Topics Note: “Interaction quality” refers to students’ “opportunity to discuss with or to get to know other students” in their class.
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Why Were Students Reluctant? Having examined if students are reluctant to discuss controversial topics by topic and by different groups of people, we also examined why students were reluctant to discuss controversial topics. Students who reported being reluctant to discuss at least one controversial topic also indicated if they were concerned that expressing these opinions would garner each of eight possible consequences; each student could indicate concern over multiple consequences. Although we asked these questions all three years, they changed between 2019 and 2020, so only responses from 2020 and 2021 were comparable. In both years, the highest proportion of students reported fearing that other students would criticize their views as being offensive. 2020
2021
60.2%
Other students would criticize my views as offensive.
52.2% 33.0%
The professor would say my views are wrong.
29.2% 32.1%
The professor would criticize my views as offensive.
28.7% 29.2%
The professor would give me a lower grade because of my views.
23.8% 30.4%
Someone would post critical comments about my views on social media.
28.7% 23.3%
Someone would file a complaint claiming my views violated a campus harassment policy.
I would cause others psychological harm.
0
19.8% 16.4% 20.7% 20
40
60
80
% Agree
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In 2021, we also asked students what they would actually do if one of their classmates expressed an opinion with which they strongly disagreed. These responses indicated that most students would not enact these negative actions toward a classmate who expressed an opinion with which they strongly disagreed. Contrarily, 64% of students said, “I would ask questions about their opinion so I can understand it better.” These results suggest that students are self-censoring to avoid negative consequences that are unlikely to happen, and that their dissenting opinions are most likely to garner genuine inquiry instead. These results have important practical implications: Correcting this student misconception about the likely response to their dissenting opinions might be one potential intervention to curb self-censorship and improve campus expression. Read more about these results in our 2021 CES report.
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Impact of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 Given the widespread impact of COVID-19 on higher education and society in general, we added a few questions in 2020 and 2021 to ask about students’ views on COVID-19. We compared their 2020 answers with their 2021 answers to assess for changes in their views from the height of the pandemic (2020) to when things had calmed down slightly thanks to the availability of vaccines (2021). First, we asked students about their overall concerns about getting COVID-19 (on a scale of 1 = Not at all worried to 5 = Extremely worried). There was a slight decline in students’ worry that they may get COVID-19 (Cohen’s d = -0.15). 2020
2021
2.62
Are you worried that you may get the coronavirus (COVID-19)?
2.45 1
2
3
4
5
Average Worry (scale of 1 to 5)
There were also slight declines in student agreement (on a scale of 1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree) surrounding the threat of COVID-19 (Cohen’s d = -0.06) and support for restrictive measures (Cohen’s d = -0.14). 2020
2021
3.95
I believe COVID-19 is a major threat to the health
3.88
of the U.S. population.
I support measures to
3.75
restrict the movement and 3.57
interaction of people to curb the spread of COVID-19. 1
2
3
4
5
Average Agreement (scale of 1 to 5)
Finally, there were shifts in student reactions to the vaccine. In 2020, before vaccines were available, just 59% of students said “Yes” that they would get the vaccine if it were available that day. In 2021, however, 80% of students said “Yes” that they had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
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Future Directions This survey data is a good starting point to understanding the state of campus expression. It provides an overall view of what topics students avoid discussing, which students are avoiding such discussions, and why. Further research using different methodologies is needed to follow up on and supplement these self-reported cross-sectional survey results. For example, to get a true view of campus expression over time, future research should do so in a longitudinal study and by asking questions about why students self-censor consistently in every wave so that these responses are comparable across time. These questions were not consistent in our CES administrations because we adapted and improved them based on what we learned in previous responses to these questions. Future research might also look into the self-censorship of extreme minority groups because, having used a representative sample of U.S. undergraduate students, their responses are not well represented here. To understand campus expression in actual conversations, instead of hypothetical ones like in this survey, future research could capture behavior (or lack thereof) during such conversations, and experience sampling could capture participant-reports of their self-censorship while they are in progress. Following up on the relationship between interaction quality and reluctance to discuss controversial topics, experimental research can examine if this relationship is causal (i.e., if helping students get to know one another better reduces said reluctance). Finally, field studies should examine norms-based interventions that make students aware about the likely responses to their opinions (i.e., their classmates would more likely respond with genuine interest and curiosity instead of criticism). This research and other research like it would supplement the current report to provide a more complete and valid understanding of campus expression.
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Questions about administering the CES on your campus? Contact us at questions@heterodoxacademy.org.
About Heterodox Academy Heterodox Academy is a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to improve the quality of research and education by promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning. Our community is made up of more than 5,000 professors, educators, administrators, and students who come from a range of institutions—from large research universities to community colleges. They represent nearly every discipline and are distributed throughout 49 states and across the globe.
Acknowledgments This data collection project and associated report were made possible in whole through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. The support of generous donors makes HxA’s work possible. If you are interested in making a gift, please visit heterodoxacademy.org/donate or contact dinsmore@heterodoxacademy.org.