The discourse surrounding campus free speech — or the lack thereof — is a political wedge on the Left between liberals and newly minted progressives.

On one hand, liberals have joined the conservative outcry against campus hall monitors who sanctimoniously police university classrooms for violators of anti-racist and woke gender ideology. On the other, progressives defend their illiberal tactics and wither at the thought of state legislatures and governors stepping in to strengthen the values of the First Amendment.

The tension is at the heart of United States politics. Have institutions, including the university system, been so thoroughly captured by anti-American and illiberal ideology that the government must step in to restore viewpoint diversity, free thought, and free expression?

To help answer the question, as chairwoman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I investigated the state of free speech on college campuses and released the findings in a report .

The thrust of the report paints a grim picture: free speech is all but an illusion for many college students, teachers, and administrators.

The report highlights university policies that are flagrantly anti-free speech. Take, for example, the oxymoronically named “free speech zones,” which limit speech to highly regulated and often out-of-the-way areas of campus. Modern universities purport to be places of free debate and open discussion, but in fact, this freedom is often forced out of the classroom, where instead, students are expected to parrot their professors and peers. This policy is clearly unconstitutional, and yet dozens of schools maintain it.

Policies such as these are the reason nearly two-thirds of college students believe their campus climate prevents individuals from speaking freely on campus. These numbers are chilling.

They also reveal the extent to which universities, in practice and often in policy, have strayed from what the Supreme Court has long established: that “state colleges and universities are not enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment.”

Yet university culture is directly at odds with free speech principles. Colleges and universities have used taxpayer dollars to subsidize culturally one-sided woke faculty and administrators and to allow shout-downs , disinvitations of speakers, and “ cancelations .” A recent survey found that almost two-thirds of college students see no problem with shouting down speakers on campus, and nearly one in five considers it acceptable to use violence to stop certain speech.

Moreover, many universities require lock-step discipleship behind woke policies and politics. Coerced conformity is antithetical to academic freedom, and yet, increasing numbers of schools use political tests to exclude dissenting positions and ensure conformity. Currently, one in five schools requires faculty candidates to provide a statement on their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Take the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, which announced that by the 2024-2025 academic year, candidates seeking promotion or tenure must submit personal DEI statements.

Pushing the discipleship of DEI is not only happening at the faculty level. Over 90% of freshman orientation programs across the nation included DEI programming, while only 30% reviewed free speech or viewpoint diversity.

The fundamental telos of every academic institution is – or should be – the relentless pursuit of truth. The rampant censorship described by the committee report undermines that pursuit, but the report also offers possible solutions.

If colleges and universities cannot safeguard diversity of thought among their students and faculty on their own, then Congress may look to where the law could assist institutions in upholding First Amendment rights. Committee recommendations include institutional disclosure requirements, adoption of free speech statements, and prohibitions on the use of political tests.

Congress is not merely free to uphold the First Amendment rights of students and faculty – it is obliged to do so. Remaining silent on this issue is an easy way to lose forever these institutions to progressives who have no moral qualms about turning the university from the free market of ideas into a monolithic echo chamber of woke viewpoints.

Liberty is endowed to the people by our creator, not by government institutions. The government, therefore, has the moral obligation to protect and defend that liberty in the context of taxpayer-funded institutions such as colleges and universities.

Bottom line: our university system has been captured by anti-American and illiberal ideology, and it is time to restore viewpoint diversity, free thought, and free expression in American universities.

Virginia Foxx is a U.S. representative for North Carolina and serves as the chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.