Censorship on Campus: What Happened to Free Speech and Free Expression?

American college campuses have long been proffered as safe places to freely exchange and discuss ideas. However, they have since become bastions of censorship of free speech and expression. Academics and students should not get a free pass to banish beliefs that do not align with their own. In the 1930s, some of the worst oppression was by students on campuses. Students were the ones who started burning books in Munich and Berlin. Guy Stern, “The Burning of the Books in Nazi Germany, 1933: The American Response,” 2 Simon Wiesenthal Ctr. Ann. 95–114 (1985). Students (along with leading Nazi party leaders) were the ones who physically assaulted Jewish professors and their literary writings. We live in a time when provocation rules and divisions manifest. Currently, campus censorship is touted as a defense to hate and offensive speech. This is a misnomer. This article briefly discusses the negative effect on our college students.