Wolność debaty akademickiej dla wszystkich czy dla wybranych? Postawy studentów wobec granic wolności słowa nauczycieli akademickich
Freedom of Academic Debate: For All or for the Chosen Ones? Students’ Attitudes Towards Freedom of Speech Limits for Academics

Summary/Abstract: In recent years, there has been more and more discussion about threats to freedom of university debate and free speech in the context of a social phenomenon known as cancel culture. Cancel culture is a strategy of creating social pressure that, in universities, particularly in the West, results in the exclusion of scholars from various university activities if their actions or views have been judged offensive or reprehensible. The purpose of the study was to describe and explain students' intuitions about punishing scholars for the views that they express. A vignette survey was conducted (n = 115), in which students were presented with 16 examples of situations from university settings in which exemplary scholars expressed their, potentially controversial, left- or right-wing views in some form. The respondents judged whether the protagonist described had done something wrong and should face punishment, and if so, how severe. The results show that students relatively commonly demand that such persons be dismissed from the university or banned from academic activities: application of the harshest consequences was proposed at least once by 38% of respondents. The survey also showed that the respondents' worldview had a key influence on their decisions: when it was in line with the worldview described in the story, respondents were much more accepting. Meanwhile, neither gender, age, nor the declared value attributed to freedom of speech were significant predictors of acceptance. The obtained results significantly contribute to the discussion about contemporary trends in freedom of speech restriction in academia. They should be taken into account when planning actions aiming at safeguarding academic freedoms. They can also help better understand the sources of academic punitiveness and draw attention to the risks associated with its subjective nature.

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