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Virginia Postrel

How Much Free Speech Will Your Child Have at College?

If you care about your college-bound child’s intellectual development, or just want to keep the kid out of trouble, you should  find out the university's attitudes to free speech.
These guys didn't think Dick Cheney deserved a free-speech zone. Photographer: Danny Chan La/Getty Images
These guys didn't think Dick Cheney deserved a free-speech zone. Photographer: Danny Chan La/Getty Images

The parents and newly admitted students visiting colleges this month are asking questions about social life, study habits and -- everyone's favorite topic these days -- job prospects after graduation. These are all important subjects, but if you care about your child's intellectual development, or just want to keep the kid out of trouble, you should also ask about the university's attitudes toward free speech.

For more than a decade I've been on the board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil-liberties watchdog group that defends the rights of college students and faculty. As you probably assumed, many cases FIRE gets involved in stem from "politically correct" censorship; but the range of university abuses is much wider than that. The motives often have less to do with ideology than with administrative bullying, paranoia or stupidity.