Ryan Owens, also a political science professor and director of the Thompson Center, said the survey used a well-established definition of hate speech and that every member of the center’s Faculty Advisory Committee vetted and approved the questions.
“Students knew what they were talking about when they looked at this,” he said of the survey. He also said the First Amendment means nothing if it fails in turbulent times.
Downs said he was grateful the survey was conducted and that the “biggest problem is ignorance of First Amendment principles, more than disagreement with them.” He said past students gained more “thoughtful and informed opinions” as they learned more about the law.
Questions over free speech are not new to UW-Madison, where students and faculty have long leaned left.
The university was a leader in the “speech code” movement of the 1980s before a federal court struck down a student speech code and the Faculty Senate rescinded the faculty code.
More recently, the university’s initiative to respond to incidents of bias has drawn criticism from some who say the system can be used to inform on people for saying things the informants don’t like.
Since the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week, Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies have banned President Donald Trump and other users who spread misinformation online, and tech giants Google and Apple have removed social media site Parler, which is popular with right-wing conspiracy theorists, from their app stores.
