Poll: 54% of Conservative Students Will Self-Censor on Campus This Year

A new poll published this week reports that a majority of conservative college students will self-censor this fall to avoid upsetting their leftist peers. By contrast, only 15 percent of Democratic respondents claim that they will censor their own political beliefs due to social pressures.

According to a poll conducted by the College Fix, 54 percent of conservative students will self-censor this fall due to social pressures from their leftist peers.

The poll asked student respondents if they will self-censor this fall to avoid upsetting their peers. “With the current political climate, do you expect to self-censor yourself in class this semester so your professors or peers don’t take offense at your ideas?” the poll reads.

Breitbart News reported in February on a column in the Atlantic that highlighted the tendency of conservative students to hide their political beliefs around their liberal peers. The column also highlighted a statistic that suggested that many liberal students now believe that it’s permissible for them to shut down speech that they find offensive.

Nicole Neily, the president of the First Amendment advocacy group Speech First, told The College Fix that liberal students are using various tactics to pressure their Republican peers into keeping their mouths shut.

“Beyond disciplinary proceedings, students also credibly fear their peers, who are increasingly intolerant of differing viewpoints,” Neily said. “Rather than leverage the tools of discussion, debate, and persuasion, students now seem inclined to strong-arm their peers into compliance through canceling and doxxing — allegations that last forever on the internet, and have the very real possibility of ruining someone’s future professional opportunities.”

Spencer Brown, the spokesperson for the Young America’s Foundation, claimed that the poll confirms that college campuses are a hostile environment for conservative students.

“The resulting institutional reality is one where trigger warnings and speech codes take precedence over the Constitution, where students are taught to say ‘ouch’ when they hear something they disagree with, and where—confusingly—both speech deemed unpopular and silence deemed inappropriate are treated as physical violence,” Brown explained.

Breitbart News reported in October 2016 on a survey conducted by Yale students that revealed that conservative perspectives were “unwelcome” on Yale’s campus. Over 75 percent of respondents agreed that Yale “does not provide a welcoming environment for conservative students to share their opinions on political issues.”

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.