Survey gauges open dialogue in Florida colleges: It’s a mix bag| Opinion

In the 2021 Florida legislative session, House Bill 233 was amended to require Florida College System (FCS) and State University System (SUS) institutions to annually assess intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity.

The second assessment has been completed and captured the views of over 49,000 students and almost 12,000 faculty and staff across 12 universities and Florida colleges.

While the initial round of surveys had troublingly low response rates, this iteration had almost a 15% response rate for students and 12% for faculty and staff.

There has been pushback against the surveys, with the United Faculty of Florida saying that taking a 10-minute survey “diverts valuable time from our core missions of teaching and research.”

The union, instead, created a website in opposition of the survey. The claims that “the survey’s detailed demographic questions pose a risk, especially to minority faculty, potentially influencing tenure decisions and fostering a discriminatory environment” are baseless as the responses are anonymous and private.

There is no way or interest in tracking any individual faculty; the intention is to assess how intellectually open and comfortable students and staff are in asking questions and fulfilling the core mission of higher education — the search for truth.

The new round of robust data presents a compelling story regarding Florida’s higher education system. Responses show that students, faculty, and staff respect and value viewpoint diversity, but there is still work to be done.

Students and staff overwhelmingly agree that political correctness has silenced important discussions that need to be had on campus.

Both agree about the importance of universities in exposing students to a variety of viewpoints, including controversial ones. It is also the case — in strong contrast to recent protesters who state that speech itself is a form of violence — that an overwhelming majority of both groups believe that it is important to maintain a distinction between speech and violence for a healthy campus.

The State University System of Florida staff and faculty are more likely than students to protect speech. When asked about the acceptability of shouting down a speaker or trying to prevent them from speaking on campus, 37% of staff believe that this is never an acceptable behavior, while a lower 29% of students claim shout-downs are never acceptable.

Similarly, when asked about the acceptability of students’ blocking others from attending a campus speech, 59% of students say that this is never acceptable, and a higher number of staff (70%) believe such behavior is never acceptable.

Florida faculty and staff are more likely than students to favor allowing ideas to be promulgated even if they find them offensive.

Regrettably, there are other areas where faculty and staff differ from students. In terms of diversity of views and ideas, 69% of students believe that their college or university is doing a good job when it comes to promoting or encouraging diverse political viewpoints, and just 48% of faculty and staff agree.

When asked how often one self-censors an opinion on a subject because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond, 18% of students report that they very or fairly often self-censor, while 53% never feel the need to silence themselves. Faculty and staff, on the other hand, are in notably worse shape.

About four in 10 (38%) report that they regularly self-censor, and just a third — 33% — rarely or never self-censor. The new survey data reveal that Florida’s faculty and staff are scared of cancel culture and self-censor at higher rates than the students that they teach.

While this problem needs to be addressed, the very positive news is that a large majority of students, faculty and staff appreciate the power of diverse ideas and want to keep Florida’s higher education system in a place where questions, debates and dialogue thrive.

Ray Rodrigues is chancellor of the State University System of Florida and Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.