As a college professor, I have the chance to visit numerous college campuses nationwide and meet thousands of undergraduates every year, and I’ve noticed there has been a considerable change among undergraduates since the November election.
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s victory, there is less patience for cancel culture on campuses. Whereas students were afraid to speak up and share opinions on contentious topics for years out of fear of social, academic, or reputation consequences, those sentiments appear to be changing, and many students are now demanding more intellectually open campuses by challenging those attempting to silence dissent.
In January, a group of keffiyeh-wearing students staged a demonstration during a history of modern Israel class at Columbia University. While one of the protesters filmed, another disrupter read a prewritten anti-Israel statement, beginning, “We’re giving you an inside scoop on Columbia University’s normalization of genocide.”
Other protesters handed out flyers with anti-Israel propaganda.
As Campus Reform reported, the students called Israel an “apartheid state,” saying Columbia should have named the class “history of the occupation from the point of view of the colonizers” and continued making absurd comments such as soldiers “raid[ing] homes of martyrs and refugees to try on their underwear.” The activists eventually left, shouting, “Free Palestine!” A month later, the students who disrupted the class are being investigated, and two were expelled.
In less than a year, quite a bit has changed at Columbia when it comes to expression and behavior. This is a positive as Columbia has been one of the most troubling campuses nationwide for free speech and disruptions. In this case, Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong issued a statement in response to the class disruption, which declared that Columbia “strongly condemn[s] this disruption, as well as the fliers that included violent imagery that is unacceptable on our campus and in our community.”
Armstrong took the appropriate presidential position that no “group of students has a right to disrupt another group of students in a Columbia classroom,” and such behavior was in breach of school rules and that the school would “move quickly to investigate and address this act.” She concluded powerfully, “We want to be absolutely clear that any act of antisemitism, or other form of discrimination, harassment, or intimidation against members of our community is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
Columbia students have had enough of their educational experience disrupted and have been deprived of their right to hear ideas, which is a right at the center of the collegiate experience. Students in the class told the activists to leave and demanded they remove their face coverings. Although the students holding the line against the disruptors were unsuccessful at unmasking the activists, they spoke up and had enough. One student confronted the protesters and asked, “Is this why you came to Columbia? Is this what you’re paying for? Is this why you’re here? You think this is what you do in a classroom?” This brave act revealed that students may have hit their limit with cancel culture.
Thousands of miles away on the West Coast, a similar story played out at Stanford University. In this case, Larry Summers, former treasury secretary and Harvard University president, was shouted down, ironically, during Stanford’s democracy and disagreement class. The class was intended to “model civic disagreement,” and the stage was taken over for about 20 minutes by a group of a dozen student activists, who prevented Summers from explaining his opposition to the wealth tax and threw fake bills onto the stage and accused him of supporting a corporate oligarchy.
The protesters left the room, and Summers spoke as the class resumed. Unlike when Judge Kyle Duncan was prevented from speaking on campus in 2023, the Summers protesters were met with immediate student opposition, like at Columbia.
The Stanford Review reported that the student crowd “vehemently disapproved of the protesters’ actions,” and when well-worn platitudes such as “put people over profits” and “we need clean air, not another billionaire” were yelled by the protesters, the student crowd drowned them out with “let him speak.” The outlet pointed out that the student audience even “poked fun at the apparent lack of enthusiasm among the protesters” and that one audience member yelled, “At least have a little bit of energy.” The mood at Stanford seems to be changing, and students no longer have much interest in having their educational experiences threatened.
THE CAMPUS MOB STRIKES AGAIN AT STANFORD
However, these two recent and public examples of students pushing back against attempted class cancellations do not mean that cancel culture and speaker shout-downs will end on campuses soon.
They do, though, help bolster what I see and hear from students when I visit various campuses: Students want viewpoint diversity, and they want to be able to figure out their ideas and not be bullied into illiberal groupthink. These changes toward open expression are good for education and, by extension, good for the nation.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.