The Glaring Evidence That Free Speech Is Threatened on Campus

A debate at Yale highlighted the disconnect between those who would downplay the problem, and the growing mass of evidence that they’re wrong.

At a recent Intelligence Squared / Open to Debate, an audience filled an auditorium at Yale University to weigh the timely proposition, ‘Free speech is threatened on campus.’ The debate concerned higher education generally, not just the host institution. And at the event’s conclusion, having heard arguments on both sides of the question, 66 percent of the crowd agreed: free speech is threatened. That represented a 17-point shift from a poll taken as the event began. The evidence is that persuasive.