Forced to be fair

 In my last post, I said "Most people either favor free speech for their side only, or think that controversial ideas shouldn't be discussed, or should be discussed only with restrictions."  A few days, the New York Times had a major editorial titled "America has a free speech problem."  The critical responses to that editorial from "progressive" Twitter provided many examples of the first outlook.  The second one--not discussed, or discussed only with restrictions--is not as visible, because it is found mostly among people who are less interested in politics, but it is widely held.  Back in 1949, a Roper/Fortune survey asked "should colleges have courses that take up the subject of [topic], or should [topic] be discussed in class only when students ask about it, or would it be better not to discuss it at all?"  The topics were "racial and religious prejudice," "sex education," "how to be a good parent," "religious beliefs," and "Communism."  The results:

                                 Classes      When asked    No discussion     DK

Prejudice                         38%        23%              23%                  15%

Sex                                  54%        16%              16%                  13%

Parent                              62%        17%              10%                  11%

Religion                           36%       23%              28%                  12%

Communism                    35%       24%              21%                  19%

Note that support for classes was lower for the two political issues (prejudice and Communism), and higher for two of the personal issues (sex education and parenting).  

There was also a question about how colleges should "deal with the subject of socialism versus capitalism in class discussions with students."  The options were to allow professors to give only arguments in favor of capitalism (2%); require professors to give arguments in favor of both sides but allow them to express their own opinions only if favorable to capitalism (6%);  require professors to give arguments for both sides and allow them to express opinions, but try to have professors with different opinions (27%); and require professors to give arguments for both sides, but don't let them express opinions of their own (38%).  There were also 8% who said they didn't know what capitalism and socialism were, and 18% who didn't know.  None of the options represented the standard idea of academic freedom--let professors say whatever they think--but only 27% picked the one that came closest.  The most popular one was that professors shouldn't be allowed to express their own opinions.  For the questions on whether different subjects should be discussed, there were substantial differences by education--more educated people were more likely to say that they should.  For the question on capitalism and socialism, there were some educational differences in the relative popularity of the top two answers, but they were small.  Among college graduates, 44.4% favored allowing professors to express their own opinions, 43.9% favored giving arguments on both sides and not allowing opinions.  

 These questions were never repeated, but a few later ones point in the same direction.  In 1985, one asked "do you think newspapers should be allowed to take sides in their editorial pages during election campaigns?"  44% said yes, 48% no.  In 2008, there was "the government should be allowed to require newspapers to allot an equal amount of time to liberal and conservative columnists":  62% agreed and 34% disagreed.   So there is substantial popular support for requiring educators and the media to stick to facts, or limiting the opinions that they can express.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]