With colleges and universities opening to some degree in just a few short weeks, I was recently asked if I thought that the campus culture wars would continue despite the rise of distance education. My answer remains the same as before COVID-19 engulfed higher education: the so-called culture wars — ranging from cancelling speakers for their viewpoints to attempts to co-opt the curriculum in the name of social justice — are overblown and not student driven. In reality, the media, a core group of activist students, and social justice minded administrators are leading this fight. In general, our nation’s Gen Z students are overwhelmingly centrist, open, tolerant of a wide diversity of views, and are not interested in the protests constantly flaring up on Twitter and social media.
Now, there is compelling new evidence which supports my argument. The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) just released its 2019 survey report on incoming college first-years and the data is remarkably encouraging. It shows that that students are interested in viewpoint diversity and ideas and not universally hoping to silence dissent. In fact, the data demonstrates that 51% of college students believe that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers from campus, proving that a large number of students simply reject this notion. It seems students on campuses nationwide are not uniformly interested in shutting down ideas that they find unpleasant.
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