Free Speech – Viewed by Generations

Pew Report's 2015 on Free Speech: "American Millennials are far more likely than older generations to say the government should be able to prevent people from saying offensive statements about minority groups, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data on free speech and media across the globe."

"Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups". This is "striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech."

From Chronicle of Higher Education article What Students Think about Free Speech, published on April 3, 2016 , "For today’s students, the historic link between free speech and the protection of dissenters and vulnerable groups is outside their direct experience, and too distant to affect their feelings about freedom of speech. As a result, their initial instinct was to be more trusting of the government and other public institutions, including the university, to regulate speech to protect students and prevent disruptions of the educational environment." Authors Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman write in the article, "This generation has a very strong and persistent instinct to protect others against hateful, discriminatory, or intolerant speech, especially in educational settings."

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