Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for The Heritage Foundation, Jonathan Butcher discusses students' right to free speech and expression and how that is being challenged on college campuses around the country. 

· How can colleges protects students' right to express themselves? How is this being challenged? 

· Read more about free speech and the importance of student activists on college campuses. 

University of Virginia students need little convincing that the freedom to speak and demonstrate is a relevant, important issue for everyone on campus. I’ll be taking part in a discussion at the University of Virginia College of Law this week about the state of campus free speech.

But around the country, the right of students to express themselves — and be protected while doing so — is being challenged.

Yet some deny there’s a problem. In August, Vox cited data from Georgetown University and said that to call the state of free speech on campus a “crisis” is “more than a little overblown.” Others have expressed doubts, too. But to embrace that stance, one must ignore the last three raucous years’ worth of free speech-related incidents on campuses — ranging from the University of Missouri to Middlebury, Vermont, to Berkeley, the birthplace of the 1960s free-speech-on-campus movement.

Students and faculty across the ideological spectrum have found themselves at the center of various events involving campus censorship lately. Last October, just two hours down Interstate 64 at William & Mary, Black Lives Matter protesters shouted down Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, an ACLU representative.

Read the full article about free speech on college campuses by Jonathan Butcher at The Heritage Foundation.