Governor Youngkin spoke for half an hour, paying homage to Thomas Jefferson and the First Amendment – warning his audience that free speech was in danger.
"I’m extremely worried about the state of our college and university campuses today."
He then cited statistics to explain his concerns.
“In 2023 a study found that 63% of students believe that shouting down a speaker is acceptable. Thank you for allowing me to speak today," he joked before citing additional stats.
"One in five students self-censor because of fear of how other students, professors or administrators would respond. Twenty seven percent of students think usjng violence to stop a campus speech is at least rarely acceptable. This is a shocking report card!”
A report card produced by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE – a group that has received funding from a variety of conservative foundations, some linked to billionaire Charles Koch.
Those who attended the event received a report from FIRE ranking colleges for their free speech policies. It rated Virginia Commonwealth University as below average, said Virginia Tech and James Madison were slightly below average while Washington and Lee, George Mason and the University of Virginia were above average. In fact, UVA ranked sixth in the nation for protecting free speech, but Youngkin claimed former Vice President Mike Pence had faced considerable opposition when he spoke on UVA’s campus.
“And there were attempts to disinvite him, to put it mildly.”
In fact, very few objected to Pence, and his speech was warmly received.
Youngkin did offer a nod to Charlottesville, essentially conceding there should be some limits to what people can say in public.
“We cannot look the other way or mask ourselves in protecting unbridled expression of anything while violent rhetoric escalates into physical violence.”
But he implied faculty members and students were at risk because of what he called “group think.”
“Should a professor have a career threatened, because they swim upstream against the vast majority of the political leanings of the rest of the faculty? Should students who challenge the status quo be ostracized because they don’t subscribe to the same group think?”
The governor provided no data on the prevalence of such problems, and he did not take questions from the audience. The conference packet also included a pamphlet entitled Resisting Cancel Culture, and a booklet attacking 13 state schools in Virginia. It claimed they restricted free speech or barred online comments about their policies by requiring a university login and password for access.
Another handout suggested these resources be used by administrators as they prepare a narrative action plan for addressing free speech and intellectual diversity at their schools -- a document that must be submitted to the Secretary of Education by March 1st
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
