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According to a 2016 Knight Foundation survey, 78 percent of college students reported they favor an open learning environment that includes offensive views. President Trump may be surprised to learn that the U.S. adult population as a whole lags well behind, with only 66 percent of adults favoring uninhibited discourse.

At Columbia and at thousands of other schools across the United States, controversial ideas are routinely expressed by speakers on both the left and the right, and have been for decades. In fact, Columbia University is something of a magnet for provocative speakers. During the 2017–18 academic year, the conservative radio talk-show host and author Dennis Prager spoke at Columbia. The Fox News legal commentator Alan Dershowitz, the 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Herman Cain, and the immigration activist Mark Krikorian spoke too—all without incident. The conservative political commentator, author, and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, after his talk, remarked on the civility of the discussion he encountered in his visit to Morningside Heights. The conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Mike Cernovich also spoke freely at Columbia, as did Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon. These speakers encountered varying degrees of student protest, an essential feature of a true free-speech environment that not only welcomes but relishes contentious debate.

It’s true that, in recent years, there have been more than a few sensational reports—at places such as Middlebury, William & Mary, and UC Berkeley—of misguided demands for censorship on campus, providing a ready, if false, narrative about liberal colleges and universities retreating from the open debate they claim to champion.

Still, the surest evidence of censorship or the suppression of ideas on college campuses is the disinvitation of controversial speakers. There are more than 4,500 colleges and universities in the United States, and each year they host thousands of speakers of all political stripes. According to FIRE, a watchdog group that focuses on civil liberties in academia, only 11 speakers were disinvited from addressing college audiences in 2018. This is a minuscule fraction of the universe of speakers who express their views annually on American campuses.

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Because I am of the view that one such disinvitation is one too many, I have said that I will personally introduce controversial figures who were rejected elsewhere. Nevertheless, I understand when members of our university community raise alarms that certain individuals, based on their track record, cross the line from merely controversial to offensive.

When students express concern and discomfort about speech that is hateful, racist, or noxious in other ways, they are doing nothing unreasonable or historically unprecedented. A number of other democracies take a less absolute view on this topic—yet remain democracies. Moreover, the prevailing American conception of free speech and press rights is a relatively recent development when located in the sweep of time and the history of our nation. The challenge of resolving the tensions inherent in a tolerant society is still very much with us and is likely to remain so.