Free Speech Slips Further on Campuses

As colleges go, so goes the nation. A new report on student views of free speech released this month should therefore give Americans some cause for concern.

Published on May 5 by the Knight Foundation in partnership with Gallup, the report contains a somewhat paradoxical series of findings: college students support restrictions on “offensive” speech in ever-greater numbers while simultaneously believing that free speech and the First Amendment are increasingly at risk.

The proportion of respondents believing that colleges should be able to restrict language containing slurs has...