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College students believe that hate speech targeting minorities should be more harshly punished than when it targets white individuals, a recently published study found.
A national survey of 3,065 college students used hypothetical statements from either professors or students, varying the identity of the disparaged group from white, black, Jewish, Muslim, or transgender.
The severity of the speech was also toggled between “objectionable” to “explicitly hateful” as students were asked to rate the statements’ impact and how administrators should respond.
“[I]dentical statements directed at minority groups elicit stronger punitive responses than those targeting white individuals,” according to the study’s abstract.
The scholars from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford also found that students were significantly more supportive of disciplining or firing a professor for offensive speech directed at minority or marginalized groups than at white individuals.
Specifically, students were 33 percent more likely to favor suspension or termination if the target was black, and 23 percent more likely if the target was Jewish, Muslim, or transgender, compared to when the same statement was directed at a white person.
Further, students consider the same speech to be more harmful when it targets any minority group — black, Jewish, Muslim, transgender — than when directed at a white target.
Students preferred harsher punishment for offensive comments made against black people, even though they don’t actually believe those comments cause any more harm than if they were said about white people, the scholars found.
“[O]ur study reinforces prior research showing that the target’s identity influences support for speech restrictions,” the authors wrote. “Like earlier work, we find that speech targeting minority or marginalized groups is perceived as more harmful and elicits greater support for sanctions, consistent with norms favoring the protection of lower-status groups.”
The study sought to learn more about whether support for free speech regulations should follow a universalistic or particularistic approach.
“In other words,” according to the scholars, “should all individuals be treated equally, or should members of historically and present-day marginalized groups receive additional protections from harmful speech?”
Asked to weigh in on the findings, Sean Stevens, chief researcher from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan civil liberties organization dedicated to defending free speech for all Americans, said the color of one’s skin should not be relevant to free speech rights.
“That position is not consistent with the First Amendment and should be ruled in violation of it,” he toldThe College Fix.
“Administrators at state colleges and universities are bound by the First Amendment and should follow it, even if doing so upsets those calling for censorship of speech or the sanctioning of prior expression,” he said via email.
“Free speech is not just a legal concept—we also work to promote a culture of free speech, which encompasses a universalist view,” he added.
Professor Yphtach Lelkes, the point of contact for the study, did not respond toThe College Fix’s recent requests for comment.
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