NEWS PROVIDED BY
Catholic League
Sept. 15, 2026
NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2026 /Standard Newswire/ — The following is submitted by Bill Donohue, President, Catholic League:
I have been saying for many years that there is more tolerance for free speech in your local pub than on your local college campus.
This point was driven home again with the recent publication of the 2027 survey of college students done by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Yesterday, I wrote a piece that provided the evidence. Today I want to discuss why this is happening; the analysis is my own, not that of FIRE.
Let’s focus on the three most salient examples of intolerance on college campuses. Seven-in-ten (69%) say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker; half (50%) say it is okay to block someone from speaking; 30% believe that violence is acceptable.
Why have so many college students become fascists?
Quite frankly, we are at the point where all colleges and universities need to shut down for one day and have a campus discussion about this issue.
But there is a Catch-22 to this suggestion: because the problem is homegrown on the campuses, we can’t depend on the guilty to police themselves. It must come from outside pressure.
Mattias Desmet is a brilliant Belgian clinical psychologist. He studied mass formation, which is, in his words, “a specific kind of group formation that makes people radically blind to everything that goes against what the group believes in.” It is an expression of a totalitarian mindset.
A recent example of this phenomenon was the extremist reaction to Covid by those who work in colleges, the medical profession and the media. The pandemic, he points out, was exploited by some in the ruling class to serve their quest for control. This was manifested in many ways, including censoring the voices of those who challenged the conventional wisdom.
For example, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a longtime professor of medicine at Harvard University, was fired, after a lengthy suspension, for what he said was “clinging to the truth” about Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
One of the characteristics of this kind of thinking is apropos to conditions on campus. Desmet writes that “individuals in mass formation become radically intolerant for dissonant voices. In the ultimate stage of the mass formation, they will typically commit atrocities toward those who do not go along with the masses.”
Desmet has in mind what happened in China under Mao, and in Iran during the 1979 revolution under the Ayatollah Khomeini. Although the situation on college campuses is clearly not as dire, it is disturbing enough. Radical students may not be committing atrocities, but the fact that 3-in-10 approve of violence against their ideological adversaries is only one step removed.
There are many reasons why this is happening, and there is room for disagreement. What is not debatable is that many college classrooms mimic a captive audience more than a forum for the free dissemination of ideas. The FIRE survey shows that most students are afraid to speak their mind in class on a range of subjects. Their left-wing professors, backed up by woke administrators, set the tone. Instead of encouraging the free flow of ideas, they seek to stem them.
Unless contrary views, meaning conservative ideas, are allowed to be voiced, the result is bound to be a left-wing monopoly of thought. This problem extends beyond the academy—it is a staple of the media.
There was a time when TV welcomed debates. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I flew from Pittsburgh to Washington on a regular basis to appear on the CNN show, “Crossfire.” Every night liberal and conservative guests joined liberal and conservative hosts to debate various topics. It was educational and entertaining. But liberals didn’t like it. Why? Almost every night they got crushed.
Liberals are so cocksure that they are right that they don’t believe they have to expend much energy checking the facts. That’s why they got their clocks cleaned on “Crossfire,” and later on “Hannity and Colmes,” another popular debate show that I frequented.
“Crossfire” was killed by Jon Stewart. He knew his liberal allies were failing and so he drummed up the idea that the show was an outlet for “partisan hacks.” He was interviewed on October 15, 2004 about his new book, but instead of discussing it he spent most of his time blasting Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for “hurting America” with their combative format. He helped persuade CNN president Jon Klein, and on January 5, 2005 the show was cancelled.
Had liberals made conservatives look stupid every night, “Crossfire” would still be on TV.
Every philosophical and ideological strain of thought needs to be challenged. That’s how the pursuit of truth is achieved. But this is not happening on college campuses and in the media, the result being the cultivation of close-mindedness. It gets to the boiling point when that parochialism embraces violence.
SOURCE Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
CONTACT: 212-371-3191, pr@catholicleague.org