Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education

The book "Campus Misinformation" examines how politicians and pundits have manufactured the campus free speech crisis, creating a challenge to academic freedom. It argues that misinformation about colleges and universities has proliferated, with claims about a free speech crisis and a lack of intellectual diversity emerging in the mid-2010s. Bradford Vivian deconstructs the political and rhetorical development of the crisis and provides a blueprint for readers to identify and challenge misleading language.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

An incisive examination of how pundits and politicians manufactured the campus free speech crisis--and created a genuine challenge to academic freedom in the process.

If we listen to the politicians and pundits, college campuses have become fiercely ideological spaces where students unthinkingly endorse a liberal orthodoxy and forcibly silence anyone who dares to disagree. These commentators lament the demise of free speech and academic freedom. But what is really happening on college campuses?

Campus Misinformation shows how misinformation about colleges and universities has proliferated in recent years, with potentially dangerous results. Popular but highly misleading claims about a so-called free speech crisis and a lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses emerged in the mid-2010s and continue to shape public discourse about higher education across party lines. Such disingenuous claims impede constructive deliberation about higher learning while normalizing suspect ideas about First Amendment freedoms and democratic participation.

Taking a non-partisan approach, Bradford Vivian argues that reporting on campus culture has grossly exaggerated the importance and representativeness of a small number of isolated events; misleadingly advocated for an artificial parity between liberals and conservatives as true viewpoint diversity; mischaracterized the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces; and purposefully confused critique and protest with censorship and cancel culture. Organizations and think tanks generate pseudoscientific data to support this discourse, then advocate for free speech in highly specific ways that actually limit speech in general. In the name of free speech and viewpoint diversity, we now see restrictions on the right to protest and laws that criminalize speech critical of certain groups or ideologies.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the real state of campus culture and the challenges facing academic freedom in the age of misinformation. By exposing the false narratives and advocating for a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the issues, Vivian helps us to navigate the complex terrain of higher education and ensure that our institutions remain places of open inquiry and intellectual growth.

Weight: 460g
Dimension: 242 x 164 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197531273