Study: Conservative Students Are Far More Tolerant than Liberal Students

A new study backs up the conventional wisdom among conservatives that college campuses are a hotbed of intolerance toward those who aren’t liberal.

The survey of more than 1,000 undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that while most professors who discuss politics are fair to both sides, a large segment of students are not.

In fact, conservative students – according to the study – are more tolerant toward other viewpoints than are liberal students. 

Specifically, the study found that 19 percent of liberal students but only 3 percent of conservative students believe it is appropriate to “create an obstruction” so that a campus speaker who holds “objectionable” political views cannot address the audience. Similarly, 19 percent of liberal students and only 1 percent of conservative students say it’s OK to “form a picket line to block students” from entering an event with a speaker who has objectionable views. The Atlantic was the first to report on the study. 

The liberal students were asked to consider “objectionable” content a speaker might address, such as “same-sex marriages should not be recognized as valid in the United States” and “the United States should build a wall on its southern border to decrease undocumented/illegal immigration.”

“Although students across the political spectrum report facing…