Professors are inviting dialogue. That’s not the same as free speech

Samuel J. Abrams
FIRE

I regularly teach a freshman seminar at Sarah Lawrence College. And every semester, without fail, the same scene plays out. A student lingers after class, or appears at my office door, or sends a carefully worded late-night email, sharing a view they would never dream of voicing to their peers. Sometimes it’s a defense of Israel, or abortion rights, or gun control, or simply to confide that they are not extremely liberal.

I thought about those students when I read the new Gallup and Lumina Foundation report, “The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes.” Its central message is reassuring: the critics of higher education are exaggerating. But before accepting that reassurance, it helps to know who’s offering it. The Lumina Foundation is one of the most influential funders in American higher education, with an endowment of roughly $1.4 billion and a mission organized explicitly around equity and increasing college access and graduation rates.

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