5 minute read
Diversity in Everything, Except Opinion
By Congressman Greg Murphy (NC-03)
Since its founding more than 50 years ago, Young America’s Foundation has worked with hundreds of accomplished and articulate conservative leaders in public office to inspire young people with the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values. In 2021, YAF launched the Campus Free Speech Caucus—a bicameral force in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. This officially recognized group, whose leadership includes Senators Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn, Congressman Jim Jordan, and Congresswoman Kat Cammack, educates legislators on the threats to free speech at our nation’s universities and schools and YAF’s critical work to protect students’ rights. More than 50 members, including Congressman Greg Murphy, have joined this officially recognized congressional group. They participate in regular meetings with YAF leadership and students—discussing the latest attacks on free speech in members’ states and districts—and use their national platforms to support young people whose First Amendment rights have been violated. Congressman Murphy has taken an active role in protecting First Amendment rights at educational institutions, introducing the Campus Free Speech Restoration Act (H.R. 4007) and hosting the first-ever Campus Free Speech Roundtable, which featured testimony from YAF staff and alumni. Additionally, Senator Blackburn introduced the Campus Free Speech Resolution of 2021 (S. Res. 425), and Senator Cotton brought forward the Campus Free Speech Restoration Act (S. 3026). With the continued leadership of principled YAF allies in Congress, the The William & Berniece Grewcock Campus Free Speech Caucus will continue fighting for and protecting students’ Capitol Hill Townhouse serves as the home of Young America’s Foundation’s efforts to advance conservative ideas in free speech rights nationwide. To learn more about YAF’s efforts in the nation’s capital, please contact Capitol Washington, D.C. Hill Outreach Director Karalee Geis at 800-USA-1776 or kgeis@yaf.org.
It is tough to think of a value more American than the freedom of speech. Our First Amendment is one of the most sacred fundamental protections granted to us by the U.S. Constitution, but right now, it is under attack. For many in my generation, college was a place where free thought and civil discourse were not just accepted but embraced. We engaged in high-level conversations with professors, peers, and community members that challenged our ideals and prepared us for life outside academia. We were better because of our university experiences.
At its heart, college is supposed to be a hallmark of young adulthood, defined by its marketplace of ideas. Unfortunately, over the last few decades, the college experience has been corrupted into a bastion for unilateral thinking with one essential pillar for success—ideological conformity.
Students are realists, and they know that in order to achieve the best academic status in our current sociopolitical environment, they must feed into the narrative being taught or, at the very least, ensure their ideas do not make waves. Whether it is speech codes, safe spaces, or administrators rejecting conservative speakers on campus, nonliberal students see signs all around them opposing open dialogue.
However, censorship in higher education is not limited just to speech codes or safe spaces. Plenty of conservative students censor themselves because they realize that in higher education, there is a steep social penalty
Congressmen Greg Murphy and Jim Jordan meet with Capitol Hill interns at YAF’s Buckley Breakfast Club in June 2021 at the Foundation’s William & Berniece Grewcock Capitol Hill Townhouse.
for being outspoken on campus.
Students are marked down by farLeft professors with a grudge, while others are ostracized by their peers for ideological non-conformity. When one ideology takes all the oxygen in the room, it is not surprising that students and faculty feel implicit pressure to conform. A 2021 survey from College Pulse found that 80 percent of students self-censor at least some of the time. To be clear, self-censorship reflects the liberal takeover of education, and it is a complete disservice to our republic as we prepare the next generations of leaders.
Without the opportunity and environment to challenge themselves with opposing points of view, student growth is stunted, and our future leaders are whitewashed into obedience. While
— REP. GREG MURPHY serving as alumni president at my alma mater, Davidson College, countless students and faculty confided in me about their free speech concerns, citing marked down grades or getting passed over for tenure as reasons for their daily selfcensorship. Our colleges and universities have turned a blind eye to free speech, and the sterilization of American education is well underway.
As a member of the House Campus Free Speech Caucus, I have been dedicated to protecting our First Amendment in higher education. I introduced the Campus Free Speech Restoration Act to require institutions of higher learning to disclose their free speech policies and ensure that taxpayer dollars are only going to colleges and universities that protect the First Amendment.
In the fall, I hosted the first ever Campus Free Speech Roundtable in the U.S. Capitol with students, legal experts, and outspoken alumni from top universities to highlight the importance of intellectual diversity on campus.
Following that event, I led my colleagues in a House resolution expressing support for the First Amendment and its bipartisan impact regarding the protection of free speech and academic freedoms for students and faculty. Despite the opportunity to make free speech protections a bipartisan priority, not a single liberal colleague elected to support my resolution in support of free speech.
The situation could not be more dire. In college classrooms across the nation, institutions of higher learning are teaching diversity in everything except opinion.
We must give our students the chance to take risks, challenge their worldviews, and be unafraid to be themselves in a space that is intended to foster learning and personal growth. We must teach the next generation how to think, not what to think. Students, parents, alumni, and lawmakers must step up and speak out. Our constitutional liberties and the future of our nation are on the line.
Representative Greg Murphy is a magna cum laude graduate of Davidson College and an honors graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He is the only practicing surgeon in the U.S. Congress and previously served as president of the Davidson College Alumni Association and as a member of the College’s Board of Trustees.
