THE DAILY BS: HOW MUCH CAN YOU HANDLE?
SPARE ME THE BS (I’ve got things to do).
- A national survey found 45% of college undergraduates believe physical violence can be justified to stop speech they consider hateful, including 54% of liberal students.
- Another 40% favor criminal prosecution for offensive speech, while 22% agreed that America deserved the September 11 terrorist attacks.
- Cornerstone University President Gerson Moreno-Riaño warns colleges are producing angry, entitled graduates rather than teaching students how to reason and disagree.
LAY IT ON ME (I’ve got time).
Remember when college was supposed to teach young Americans how to think?
Apparently, a disturbing number of undergraduates have decided that learning to throw a punch is an acceptable substitute for winning an argument.
A new national survey from the Buckley Institute found that 45% of college students believe physical violence can be justified to stop someone from expressing what they consider hate speech.
And here’s where the numbers get especially interesting: Among self-identified liberal students, support for that proposition climbs to 54%. Among moderates, it’s 36%. Among conservatives, 30%.
So much for the old college ideal of debating difficult ideas over coffee. Apparently, some students would prefer to skip the discussion and move directly to the emergency room.
But don’t put away the smelling salts just yet. The same survey found that 40% of undergraduates believe offensive speech should be subject to criminal prosecution.
That’s right. Four in ten students surveyed were willing to involve the criminal justice system because somebody said something offensive.
And 46% supported shouting down speakers they disagreed with.
One imagines the Founding Fathers might have a few questions about how the First Amendment is being taught these days.
The survey also produced a rather breathtaking finding about American history: 22% of respondents agreed with the proposition that the United States deserved the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Yes, the attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 people.
For anyone keeping score at home, that’s a remarkably bleak assessment of the country providing these students with the opportunity to pursue their education.
And the economic findings weren’t exactly a ringing endorsement of free enterprise, either.
Forty-two percent said they would prefer living under socialism, compared with 28% who chose capitalism.
Perhaps a semester studying grocery shortages and government-controlled economies might make for an interesting addition to the curriculum.
Cornerstone University President Gerson Moreno-Riaño isn’t laughing.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, the president of the private Christian university in Michigan offered a withering assessment of what he believes is happening across American higher education.
“American colleges and universities for a long time now have really ceased to form students morally and are teaching resentment, teaching grievance politics, teaching violent entitlement,” he said.
He argued that students are graduating with an attitude shaped more by ideological grievances than by the ability to engage respectfully with opposing views.
“They’re leaving with resentment,” Moreno-Riaño said.
And he believes employers are beginning to notice.
Moreno-Riaño suggested that some businesses may eventually decide it’s easier to train workers directly out of high school than to hire graduates who arrive with expensive degrees and an impressive collection of grievances.
“We’re training people to be grieved, angry, entitled, violent,” he warned.
That’s quite a departure from the usual university advertising campaign featuring smiling graduates tossing their caps into the air.
Moreno-Riaño also criticized what he sees as an increasingly favorable attitude toward Marxism and socialism on American campuses.
He argued that when colleges stop teaching students to evaluate ideas through reasoned debate and a clear moral framework, political ideology rushes in to fill the vacuum.
There’s an especially peculiar contradiction buried in the Buckley Institute’s findings.
Among respondents who said violence could be justified to stop hate speech, 72% also acknowledged that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.
So they understand the constitutional protection. They simply appear willing, under certain circumstances, to disregard it.
Now that’s an impressive achievement in higher education: Knowing the rule and still believing somebody deserves a beating for exercising the right it protects.
The Buckley Institute surveyed 803 full-time undergraduates under age 25 attending four-year American colleges and universities between September 5 and September 14. The findings describe respondents’ expressed attitudes, not their actual behavior.
Still, the trend is difficult to dismiss. Support for using violence against hate speech rose six percentage points from last year’s survey, returning to the previous high of 45% recorded in 2023.
Support for criminalizing offensive speech also reached its highest level since the institute began asking that question three years ago.
Moreno-Riaño argues that higher education needs to rediscover its responsibility to develop students capable of reasoning, deliberating and engaging people with whom they disagree.
That used to be considered a fairly basic objective of getting an education.
Somewhere along the way, apparently, disagreeing with somebody became an occasion for punishment rather than persuasion.
And with tuition bills routinely running into tens of thousands of dollars, parents might reasonably wonder whether they’re paying for a college education or financing four years of professionally supervised outrage.
DBS WIRE SOURCES (I’ve got all day).
- Fox News — University president warns nearly half of students justify violence against hate speech
- Buckley Institute — Official 2026 National Undergraduate Student Survey findings
- Fox News — Survey finds 40% support criminal prosecution for offensive speech
- Buckley Institute — 2025 survey results for year-over-year comparison
