The First Amendment on Campus 2020 Report: College Students’ Views of Free Expression

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College students’ views on the First Amendment are a critical harbinger of our democracy. They illustrate how well an emerging generation understands our constitutional rights during an era of changing speech, communication and interaction, and how they put these rights into practice.

For the 2020 First Amendment on Campus report, Gallup conducted online surveys with a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 U.S. full-time undergraduate college students, including an oversample of students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).1 A smaller number of students in the initial sample completed follow-up, in-depth telephone interviews providing further insights into college students’ experiences and opinions.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Gallup began surveying college students on First Amendment issues in the spring of 2016. Most students at the time of the first survey have finished college; however, the latest survey — conducted in late 2019 in partnership with the Charles Koch Foundation and the Stanton Foundation — finds that among today’s college students, critical trends continue to hold.