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1.  73% of students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is at least rarely acceptable.
2. 40% of students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is at least rarely acceptable.
3. For every one conservative student, there are roughly six liberal students.
4. 45% of students say they have self-censored on campus at least once or twice a month.

Become an informed member of the Cal family.  Join our mailing list above to receive updates about how you can help improve freedom of expression at Cal and protect the 1st Amendment.  Learn more about the free speech ranking here: https://rankings.thefire.org/rank/school/university-of-california-berkeley

The University of California Free Speech Alliance is pleased to announce a major AFSA initiative to protect free speech.  AFSA is filing an amicus brief  (friend of the court brief) urging the US Supreme Court to review an egregious ruling in which an appeals court ruled that "Bias Incident Response Teams" do not chill speech.  Contact us to review this brief and join this effort by signing the brief.

The brief will focus on how universities are using student surveillance software to collect and record bias complaints that will remain in the record system without verification, ready to show up whenever an administrator wishes to investigate a particular student. AFSA members have already been working on this problem outside of the legal system, compiling materials students can use to question what their institution is doing and to ask it for their individual files. 

AFSA groups have been widely successful at advocating for free speech on and off campus.  Alumni at Davidson pressured faculty to affirm a Freedom of Expression statement. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Free Speech Alliance (MFSA) hosted a civil debate regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion  (DEI) policies, just a few years after Dorian Abbot, a Professor at the University of Chicago who opposed DEI, was uninvited from the campus due to his views.  The University of North Carolina the Board of Governors approved a ban on compelled political speech. In February 2023, UNC trustees voted unanimously to establish the School of Civic Life and Leadership.