Tolerance of offensive speech or expression is an acquired taste. I recall learning in school about the 1977 case, National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie as a kind of triumph of America’s dedication to the First Amendment. Yet the value of protecting the right of swastika wearing Nazis to march through a Jewish neighborhood is hardly self-evident. Nor is it self-evident what good it does us to defend the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to picket the funerals of servicemen in order to express its view the God hates the United States because it tolerates homosexuality.

For that reason, we should not view with much shock the finding of the Higher Education Research Institute that about 71 percent of college freshmen surveyed agree that “colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus.” After all, the speech of the Westboro Baptist Church is at least recognizably about a matter of public concern and an intervention into a public debate.  It is safe to assume (and is borne out by other data from the Higher Education Research Institute Survey) that only a very small proportion of our 71 percent are hardcore activists thinking of suppressing the views of their opponents. Probably, many of them are wondering why college administrations should refrain, for example, from disciplining students who publicly use racial slurs, which make no obvious contribution to campus discussions but can cause people pain and foul the atmosphere, particularly at small colleges. Indeed, while 71 percent is a bump, majorities of students surveyed by the Higher Education Research Institute have favored suppressing racist and sexist speech since the Institute started asking the question in 1992. We are dealing here not only with a recent spike in student activism but also with a general and longstanding student view of speech. If students are being schooled in the importance of speech protections, they are not convinced that speech they regard as deeply offensive should necessarily be tolerated.

Of course, one could probably convince many of those students that it’s wise to tolerate the Westboro Baptist Church, no matter how convinced one is that their speech is without any value, because limiting the power of the government to shut down dissenters is more important than protecting people’s feelings. Similarly, one could probably convince them that, in colleges and universities, which are supposed to be more, not less, devoted to freedom of discussion than other institutions, the administration’s power to curtail speech ought to be severely restricted. While activists, like anyone else who smells power and thinks himself in possession of the true religion, may not be much inclined toward tolerance, those less weighed down by self-righteousness can come to see, readily enough, how tolerance protects them.

The University of Chicago’s robust statement in favor of free expression, which the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is urging other campuses to adopt, is a good beginning, emphasizing, as it does, a university’s special interest in free speech, which follows from its devotion to inquiry: because “the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn.” That is why the university “may not restrict debate or deliberation because the ideas put forth are thought to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the members of the University community to make those judgments for themselves.”

But it is not enough to adopt such statements, or even, contrary to the spirit of the university, to indoctrinate students in a teaching about free speech. Defenders of free speech and inquiry need to consider that belief in free inquiry and free speech is not a natural state that has been unsettled by a recent wave of activism but rather a teaching that cuts against some of our strongest passions and that is exceedingly difficult to maintain. Colleges and universities, which have by and large leaped to teaching “global citizenship,” evidently confident that the national and local have been mastered by their students before their arrival on campus, should be more attentive to the roots of the argument for free expression and to guiding their students toward reflection on those roots. While such reflection is not guaranteed to lead where the staunchest advocates of freedom of discussion and inquiry hope it will go, there is little hope of renewing our evidently tired tradition of free speech without it.