Offensive speech versus academic freedom : the effect of topic relevance

Some argue that professors should monitor their speech to avoid offending students and making the university less inclusive. Others believe any censorship threatens academic freedom essential to the educational mission. I examined variables that might bear on this debate. Fifty-seven students, 15 male and 42 female, read vignettes in which professors made provocative statements concerning four controversial topics, all based on actual cases: race and I.Q., homosexuality, holocaust denial, and date rape. In each vignette, some students were said to have been upset by what happened in class. Participants were asked whether the professor's behaviour was acceptable, whether he or she should be disciplined, and why. Each topic was either relevant or irrelevant to the course (example: race discussed in a psychology course on intelligence versus used by a statistics professor to explain differential results on an exam). It was found that students were less likely to think the professor was wrong in the scenario if the controversial material was presented in a way that was relevant to the course content. They were also more likely to recommend disciplinary action against the professor when the topics were not relevant to the course material.