A full year after the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas, the consequences for Israel have been significant, with an ongoing war of survival still raging within the Gaza Strip and northern Israel.
The ramifications of the attacks were also felt across the United States in the months that followed. Many elite American college campuses descended into chaos amid pro-Hamas protests, violence, and the creation of semi-permanent encampments in campus buildings and public spaces. But amid the many campus controversies, there have been glimmers of hope.
Simply put, Oct. 7 and the events following it have been a stress test for American colleges and the institutions that are charged with safeguarding campus life, including administration, faculty, and student media. Unfortunately, the past year has shown that college leaders and student newspapers across the country have displayed an inadequate commitment to the free expression of ideas and the fair and accurate reporting of information on campus.
Over that time, some campus newspapers declined to run opinion pieces from alumni or students criticizing their administration’s response to the invasion or protests. Others fell silent rather than cover high-profile campus speaker controversies after the attacks. Many displayed a concerning tendency to report only the “right issues,” choosing political orthodoxy over the more challenging pursuit of fact and truth.
As a result, many students soon realized that the climate of free speech on campus was in decline. Others were left to wonder whether they could rely on the free flow of ideas and information—especially important at a time of violence and disruption on campus—that has been a keystone of the American college experience.
A new study just released by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which surveyed 58,807 students across 257 colleges and universities, confirms these unfortunate trends. According to FIRE, the climate for free expression on campus “radically changed” following Oct. 7. Attempts to deplatform campus speakers reached “record levels”; protesters disrupted events with “increasing frequency”; and a growing number of students approved of shouting down speakers or even using violence to censor unpopular messages.
The FIRE report ranks three elite, private colleges—Harvard, Columbia, and NYU—at the very bottom of the list. Each now has an “abysmal” speech climate. The outlook for free speech at UPenn, fourth from the bottom of the rankings, is merely “very poor.” It’s no surprise that these four schools represented the face of the campus protests and encampments over the past year.
These illiberal trends matter greatly to the students living on campus, who are essentially a captive audience, dependent on college administrators and their student newspapers for accurate, up-to-date information about their community. But these issues also extend beyond the college campus to affect all of us for one important reason: Student newspapers and college journalism programs are critical talent pipelines for American mainstream media.
Today’s campus journalists graduate to eventually become tomorrow’s correspondents and editors in major newsrooms. Many issues facing traditional American journalism today—lack of trust, biased reporting, and the prioritization of political agendas over the facts—are exacerbated when freethinking students are denied these opportunities, which are often the first step toward a future career.
It’s a troubling, self-reinforcing cycle.
However, the Oct. 7 attacks and protests that followed also encouraged some courageous student journalists to be part of the solution. A small but mighty cohort responded to the deteriorating situation on campus by founding alternative student newspapers at Columbia, NYU, and Penn. Others got involved by signing up to write for their college’s existing alternative paper, reinvigorating ongoing efforts to promote balance within campus coverage.
My organization, The Fund for American Studies, supports fact-based campus reporting at 17 student newspapers through our Student Journalism Association. The program provides financial grants, training, and mentorship to help young journalists produce quality journalism in a sustainable manner. SJA-affiliated student papers produced more than 30 articles and first-person accounts over the past year that shed light on the riots and encampments for local students and national audiences alike.
Having access to news that is trustworthy, fact-based, and grounded in courageous reporting is just as important on campus as it is across our society—whether during times of war, protest, or peace.
To bring balance back to the media landscape, we must create opportunities for young journalists who embody traditional journalistic principles to have successful careers in the media, starting by opening up the campus media pipeline.
By doing so, we can reform American journalism from the inside out and help return facts and truth to their privileged places in our society.
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