PDRI-DevLab Co-Director Guy Grossman Co-Authors New Study on Campus Speech Regulation

PDRI-DevLab is pleased to share a new study co-authored by Faculty Director Guy Grossman, published in Science Advances. The study, “Expression at the Edge: Free Speech Boundaries Amidst the Gaza Crisis,” examines how U.S. college students evaluate objectionable speech and when they support disciplinary action on university campuses.

Using preregistered survey experiments with a nationally representative sample of 3,065 U.S. college students, the study finds that support for punishing objectionable speech depends heavily on how harmful students perceive the speech to be and who is being targeted. Students were more likely to support disciplinary action when speech targeted historically marginalized groups, and the study found similar levels of protection for Jewish and Muslim targets.

The research offers timely evidence for universities navigating questions of free expression, inclusion, polarization, and campus safety.

The study was authored by Ran Abramitzky (Stanford University), Guy Grossman (University of Pennsylvania), Yphtach Lelkes (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania), Hani Mansour (University of Colorado Denver), and Tamar Mitts (Columbia University).

Read the full article here.