A symbol often seen in the ‘60s: Crystal Reynolds displays the Black Power fist as she points out a white student in a photo doing the same during the takeover of the Indiana State University administration building on May 1, 1969, during the Hidden Black History tour on the ISU campus on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019. Students Courtney Jones and Perriel Ballard participate. Staff file photo by Joseph C. Garza
What are her rights? Taylor Bryant is an Indiana University student and Monroe County Republican Party chair. Submitted photo
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Indiana University student Taylor Bryant recently completed a survey on campus free speech issues, and she certainly has a unique perspective. A Republican and undergraduate student studying pre-law and public policy, Bryant, who is 19, also is the Monroe County Republican Party chair.
The survey, launched by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education earlier this month and required by state law, is intended to gauge student perception of free speech on Indiana’s public college campuses.
Bryant, who takes a lot of public policy classes, believes students with conservative views may be reluctant to speak in class, or in some cases, when they share their ideas, “the professor shuts it down. Whether that is to protect a student against other liberal students or to keep the classroom civil ... I don’t know, but they don’t do that with left-leaning ideas.”
From her vantage point, whereas discussion is encouraged with students expressing more liberal viewpoints, that does not happen with more conservative views.
“I will speak up if there is something I feel very passionately about not being portrayed correctly,” she said. But she feels she has to pick and choose her battles, not a choice liberal-leaning students have to make, in her assessment.
Students such as Bryant might be the impetus for free speech legislation passed by the Indiana General Assembly both last year and this year.
In early April, as result of a law passed in 2021, the Commission for Higher Education launched the free speech survey that was emailed to all full-time undergraduate students at Indiana’s public higher education institutions, including part-time students at Vincennes University and Ivy Tech Community College.
The survey is open through the month of April and asks students to answer questions about free speech and academic freedom on campus.
Indiana’s public institutions funded the survey, with each campus paying roughly $13,000, according to the state Commission. Gallup, a national polling organization, sent the survey to nearly 150,000 undergraduate students at all in-state public institutions.
Another bill that passed this year, House Bill 1190, “protects free speech at public colleges and universities” in Indiana, according to a news release from the Indiana Republican caucus.
According to Chalkbeat Indiana, the bill codifies federal free-speech protections into state law and also allows students and student groups to sue for damages.
It would prevent state education institutions from prohibiting protests or leafleting on certain areas of campus or denying those rights to student groups based on their ideology.
According to the The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, the law bans so-called “free speech zones,” which unconstitutionally quarantine expression to restricted areas of campus.
Universities could still enforce restrictions on the time, place and manner of protests or leafleting.
Also, public universities would have to submit an annual report of complaints to the higher education commission.
Students or student organizations that believe their right to free speech on campus has been violated could seek legal action; a court finding in their favor could award up to $50,000 in compensatory damages, court costs and attorney’s fees.
As required by HEA 1549 passed in 2021, the Commission has produced both a report and a survey on the topic of free speech on Indiana college campuses.
The Commission partnered with Gallup and Indiana’s public colleges to develop and administer the survey. A report on the survey’s results will be released this fall. IU student Bryant took the survey and believes it’s a good idea. “It will be interesting to see the results,” she said. Some students at Indiana State University on Thursday weren’t aware of the survey, but they believed free speech is encouraged on campus. Emily Harbison, ISU sophomore, believes faculty encourage diverse points of view. ISU junior Claire Pittman echoed Harbison’s view and she doesn’t believe students need to be hesitant about sharing their opinions on issues.
In the survey, college students attending are asked about whether they can express their views freely; whether free speech is highly valued; is it a place students can freely express opinions on race, politics and religion (the rating is from strongly agree to strongly disagree).
Another question asks if students from the following groups can openly express their opinions: males, females, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Blacks, whites, Hispanics, politically liberal, politically conservative, LGBTQ+ students and students born outside the USA.
It also asks, “Do instructors listen to people with different opinions?” and, “Do other students listen to people with different opinions?”
According to the Commission report, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has a database that includes information on potential violations of the freedom of expression on Indiana’s public campuses.
“Since its inception, FIRE has identified hundreds of potential cases on campuses across the country restricting speech. Over the last decade, only four of these potential cases have involved Indiana’s public institutions,” the Commission states.
FIRE also keeps a database of attempts to get colleges and universities to dis-invite speakers.
Described as a “Heckler’s Veto,” it involves the suppression of the speech by the campus in response to an actual disturbance or the threats of one.
Over the last decade, FIRE documented two attempts to get speakers dis-invited from speaking at Indiana public campuses, according to the Commission.
Other views
Attempts to reach and interview Rep. Jack Jordan (R-Bremen), who authored the free speech legislation, were unsuccessful.
Some Republican legislators have cited examples of conservative and religious groups facing alleged discrimination on college campuses in explaining the origin of the free speech legislation, according to Chalkbeat.
Paul Helmke, professor of practice at IU’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, said HB 1190 passed unopposed in both the House and Senate.
On the surface, it’s hard to argue with efforts to protect free speech. “It sounds like motherhood and apple pie-type stuff,” he said.
But the potential number of free speech violations at Indiana public colleges, as documented by FIRE, is minimal, he said.
“If there are no real problems anyone has spotted, why are they doing all this?” said Helmke. “It has to be expensive to send out the survey and compile the results.”
Helmke, former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, believes “it’s an issue that’s overblown ... I think there’s plenty of robust debate” on college campuses.
He believes college faculty encourage debate and diversity of opinion, as long as students are on point and not disruptive of class.
If students with conservative views are reluctant to express their point of view, Helmke suggests it’s not a matter of professors not allowing the speech as much as concerns about how classmates might react.
“Feeling uncomfortable in class does not mean there is a free speech violation,” Helmke said.
FIRE describes itself as nonpartisan and has supported both the survey and HB 1190.
Tyler Coward, FIRE senior legislative counsel, believes the survey that went out to students “provides valuable information to campus leadership about student perceptions on free expression.”
A nonprofit educational foundation, FIRE states its mission “is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.” It has worked on campus civil liberties issues, primarily free speech and due process, since 1999, he said.
While the organization has received millions of dollars in contributions from politically active conservative nonprofits, according to SourceWatch, Coward says no donor has influenced FIRE to take a position on a free speech controversy.
Because of FIRE’s work with colleges across the country, the number of institutional policies that restrict student speech “has gone down dramatically,” he said.
That’s not to say the work is done, he said. He described a “dramatic increase in attempts to get professors fired for their views ... and I think that’s a really troubling sign,” he said.
Also, some polling shows that students tend to be more receptive to ideas that censorship is a good thing and “that is a worrying trend,” Coward said, for example, students thinking violence to speech you dislike is appropriate.
“FIRE is not only worried about what government actors are doing, the administrators themselves, but we are worried if there is a cultural trend that turns its back to free expression,” he said.
State Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis and a retired attorney, voted in support of HB 1190. “Who’s against free speech?” he said. But he also didn’t see a need for it. “We have a whole system of federal, constitutional law about free speech that applies to state universities. And there hasn’t been a breakdown in that system,” he said. Joseph Tomain, a lecturer at IU’s Maurer School of Law, has concerns some aspects of the law could chill free speech on campus.
For example, if a claim is filed against a state education institution with regard to a free speech violation, that information would have to be provided to the Commission for Higher Education, which each year would create a report compiling the information and submitting it to the governor and General Assembly.
“Anytime the government is requiring reports to the government about speech issues, I think that raises concerns about potentially a chilling effect on speech,” Tomain said. “That is not a partisan point; it could go both ways.”
In general, he believes “to the extent this bill gives us the opportunity to have good conversations about those principles [of free speech], that could be a positive of all this, to be sure.”
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