A new coalition of American universities is committing to protecting the First Amendment on college campuses, but some critics are skeptical that the initiative will do anything to protect students and faculty members who deviate from the dominant liberal views of the day.

Announced this week, the Campus Call for Free Expression represents an unprecedented pledge by 13 college presidents “to champion free expression on their campuses at a crucial moment for American democracy,” according to a press release by the nonpartisan organization spearheading the project, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

The schools plan to pursue coordinated campus activities each academic year that advance “the principles of critical inquiry and civil discourse.” Yet as to whether this commitment will make meaningful change, the president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, Peter Wood, says, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Mr. Wood tells the Sun that the pledge will have varying effects on the participating colleges, as they have divergent cultures surrounding free speech issues. One of the participating schools, the small liberal arts college Claremont McKenna, ranked sixth out of 203 in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 2023 survey of American campuses with the best free speech records, while Ivy League member Cornell University placed at a low 154.

“There is no harm in the college or university declaring once again that it supports free speech,” Mr. Wood says. “But in most of these cases, the institutions have long-standing arrangements that cut against free speech.”

The initiative does not require member schools to address the underlying power structures that fuel the culture of fear stifling discourse. Campus leaders hold increasingly unchecked authority to expel students, remove adjunct professors, or investigate tenured faculty who propagate speech with which they do not agree, the director of campus rights advocacy at FIRE, Alex Morey, argues.

“We hear from students and faculty that they are self-censoring so that they don’t end up getting investigated, even if they have the right to express themselves on their campuses,” Ms. Morey tells the Sun.

Severe shortfalls in student enrollment might be one reason schools are so quick to respond to student demands. Small liberal arts colleges and big state universities alike are struggling to stay in business. The latest example is West Virginia University, which cut nearly three-dozen academic programs due to budget shortfalls stemming from low enrollment.

According to recent polls, Americans have lost confidence in higher education in recent years, and most worry a four-year degree is not worth the price tag. 

Faced with a financial incentive for appeasement, “colleges are not likely to be very bold in telling the students things that they don’t want to hear,” Mr. Wood says. “The tacit message is, ‘Come here and you’ll be in your comfort zone and we’ll guarantee it.’” 

Ms. Morey, though, suggests schools might be better served by expanding the range of viewpoints allowed on campus. “Administrators do themselves a big favor when they allow a wide variety of speech on their campus,” she says. 

In one recent high-profile controversy, Texas A&M settled a million-dollar lawsuit filed by the new head of its journalism department, Kathleen McElroy, who was fired after conservative alumni criticized her work around diversity. Meanwhile, universities with high rankings on FIRE’s list — like the University of Chicago, which earned the no. 1 spot — deal with far fewer complaints alleging civil rights violations. 

“Presidents are starting to figure out that censorship could really be costly,” Ms. Morey says of the schools that signed onto the initiative. “If you violate someone’s constitutional rights, there’s a price to pay.”

The First Amendment protections proposed by the pledge will be most effective if introduced during the onboarding or orientation process for administrators, teaching staff, and students, Ms. Morey recommends, so that a “free speech culture is baked into the way the school presents itself.” 

Presidents must understand that part of their education mission “is to stand up for the right of people to say unpopular things,” Ms. Morey says. “There’s a big misconception that if you tolerate a wide range of speech, that means you agree with all the speech you tolerate.”

Otherwise, this pledge will join the many others released by elite colleges, which “wind themselves up with great gusto,” Mr. Wood says, “then go and fire a professor who says something that annoys the president.”

Campuses might better foster a marketplace of ideas — and also remedy their poor public relations on the national stage — if they resolve to educate students that academic freedom is a bedrock individual right. 

“When students learn about how writers, artists, intellectuals, activists, and others around the world have been persecuted for their free expression, they understand the ramifications of squashing another’s speech,” the director of Free Expression and Education at PEN America, Jonathan Friedman, tells the Sun. “That is the beginning of the questioning and curiosity that is so valuable in higher education.”