Free Speech and Multiculturalism In and Out of the Academy

Abstract

The debate over hate speech in the United States and the accompanying changes in the political culture of the university provides an opportune case to explore the impact of changing norms of free speech on political tolerance toward unpopular groups. I offer a theory of opinion change that identifies the population groups that should be most susceptible to the new norms against hate speech that originated on college campuses around the country in the 1980s. The predictions from this theory are tested using a battery of tolerance items asked repeatedly in General Social Surveys gathered between 1976 and 2000. The analysis shows that the intellectual campaign against hate speech has significantly reduced support for the free speech rights of racists. This retreat in levels of tolerance is most evident among college students who were educated since the mid-1980s, when debates over multiculturalism and political correctness reached their peak. At the same time, levels of tolerance for nonconformist ideas and lifestyles have remained generally high among today's college students and are almost always significantly higher than the national average. The general stability in aggregate levels of tolerance both in the general population and in various demographic groups only serves to highlight the few dramatic changes that have taken place.