I am returning today after speaking at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs about my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” Last night, I was approached by a student named Andrew who asked whether he should just remain quiet at his college, where professors routinely slam conservatives and teach highly ideological views as gospel. I went on a walk this morning around dawn and spotted this swan. I immediately thought of the young man who came up to me after my talk.
Andrew, when you find yourself surrounded by ducks, don’t try to be a duck.
There are three simple reasons. First, you will make a uniquely poor duck, and the flight South will be exhausting. Second, none of the other ducks are likely to believe that you are really a duck. Finally, and most importantly, you are not a migratory bird. You only go through this life once and either live it on your own terms or live an inauthentic life.
We have discussed how the current orthodox and intolerant environment in higher education has resulted in a culture of self-censorship. (here, here, here, and here). Surveys show conservative students are 300 times more likely to self-censor. Even the largely liberal faculty at leading schools report self-censoring to avoid being targeted.
This year, Harvard found itself in a familiar spot on the annual ranking of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): dead last among 251 universities and colleges.
What is most striking is the fact that Harvard has created this hostile environment while maintaining an overwhelmingly liberal student body and faculty. Only 9 percent of the class identified as conservative or very conservative.
Yet, even liberals feel stifled at Harvard. Only 41 percent of liberal students reported being comfortable discussing controversial topics, and only 25 percent of moderates and 17 percent of conservatives felt comfortable in doing so.
During the Harvard debate, I raised the gradual reduction of conservatives and libertarians in the student body and the faculty.
The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
According to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).
So Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large, and less than three percent identify as “conservative” rather than 35 percent nationally.
Among law school faculty who donated more than $200 to a political party, 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to Democrats.
While Professor Kennedy dismissed the notion that Harvard should look more like America, the problem is that it does not even look like Massachusetts. Even as one of the most liberal states in the country, roughly one-third of the voters still identify as Republican.
The student body shows the same selection bias. Harvard Crimson previously found that only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative, but the latest survey shows that number at 9 percent.
Some faculty members are wringing their hands over this continued hostile environment. However, the faculty as a whole is unwilling to restore free speech and intellectual diversity by adding conservative and libertarian faculty members and sponsoring events that reflect a broad array of viewpoints.
Given my respect for Professor Kennedy, I was surprised that he dismissed the sharp rise in students saying that they did not feel comfortable speaking in classes. Referring to them as “conservative snowflakes,” he insisted that they had to have the courage of their convictions.
This ignores the fact that they depend upon professors for recommendations, and challenging the school’s orthodoxy can threaten their standing. Moreover, a recent survey shows that even liberal students feel chilled in the environment created by Harvard faculty and administrators.
In other words, these are ducks surrounded by ducks who are still afraid of quacking out of turn.
Even a mute swan is actually not mute and are known to trumpet when other animals (including humans) threaten their nests or cygnets.
In other words, Andrew, if you are a swan, be a swan.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
My advice is that if you are a Jewish swan, these days, announcing such may get you harmed or even killed. Professor Turely, you offer this advice from the safety of your sheltered existence. Being on the ground level with prog/left deranged activists is another story entirely. Eliminating the funding to such stew-pots of progressive insanity is the first move to stifle this sort of agenda-driven societal manipulation. I wouldn’t suggest imperiling this students safety to make a point just at this time unless he is afforded a 24/7 security guard because the left is not composed of sane individuals that respect any restrictions on their anarchy.
OR Andrew is a duck 🦆 in an ocean of swans. Does he have more freedom as such?
A wiser instruction for young Andrew would have been for him to be a fox in a ducks clothing. He can outsmart the ducks at the pond and then eat them all for lunch at will.
What is this the ugly duckling remake?
I understand the quandary as I myself have faced this issue – though now I’m 4 decades older. I encourage Andrew to listen AND develop a strong rationale for any of his ideas/ideals. Then with a smile on your face, your facts clearly in place, and some wit interwoven into your response, say what you think. These illiberal, uneducated, and orthodox faculty and staff (and students) need to know that they can’t mesmerize and preach in an institution of higher learning. If that’s their desire, they should move into ecclesiastical work. If it’s critical thinking they want, they should be open to challenges. Socrates would be embarrassed by what the Left has wrought on our higher ed institutions.
Coming from a wealthy, tenured law professor, I am not sure about this advice. I hope you told him that there can be consequences to being a swan (or offered to represent him). His classes are being taught by someone who will undoubtedly disagree with everything he stands for and who, judging by the normal behavior of leftists, might try to hurt him with a bad grade. He can take your advice at his first job, but he might find that they too hold a differing point of view and will use that against him. They won’t come out and say (or maybe they will) but they will most definitely circle the wagons against him. First, colleagues will begin complaining about every thing he says or does, then there will negative reviews about his “attitude” or he “doesn’t work well with others”, then he will start getting impossible to complete projects where he will be set up to fail, then suddenly, he’s out the door. That’s how it works. Ask me how I know.
What Turley? No comment on the reporting that Trump is a Russian asset? Guess that “Russian hoax” was not a hoax. MAGAs got duped.
The only dupe is you still believing the Russia hoax.
Don’t look at me, I did not vote a KGB asset to be President. It hurts because you know it could be true, and deep down you believe it is.
No, it hurts you. This hoax fails again and again. You keep believing it. MSM tells you what to think and you just blindly believe them with out asking for proof. I believe Trump wants peace. His first admin proves it. His second, even before getting sworn in, he and his admin secured the ceasefire deal with Israel and Hamas. Hamas just released another six hostages. He is looking to broker a ceasefire and peace deal between the Ukraine and Russia.
Oh! Look! Musk and DOGE has found even more fraud!!
“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!”
“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”
“This email is a very basic pulse check https://t.co/4qEKErwSuE”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025
It is the weekend. Why would we check work e-mails on the weekend? If there is a meltdown or something I would get a text or call. Also federal law does not allow most federal employees are prohibited from working overtime without authorization.
So Musk is criticizing federal employees for doing what they should be doing. Such a moron.
They have till midnight on Monday. What they should be doing? By not doing their job? Or using a fake alias or a dead persons name to collect a paycheck? That is fraud.
1. It is not Monday yet.
2. Musk has zero authority to make us respond to an e-mail or do anything else.
3. Federal employees are workers not that much different from the private sector. It would be extraordinary rare for them to collect a paycheck based on a false name. Most federal workers are fingerprinted, which does not happen in the private sector.
1. Tomorrow is Monday.
2. Seems he does. Courts have said so.
3. Musk is bringing the receipts that says differently. If you have filled out a SF-86 and pass a SSBI, you have been fingerprinted. I know.
No court has ever ruled that Musk has any authority. They have just declined injunctions.
BTW, you work for us. We pay your paycheck with our tax dollars. Why are you not at your desk, working? If you refuse to be accountable, then you should be fired. If you are not doing your job, you should be fired. The 20/80 rule. 20% does 80% of the work. The other 80% does nothing. Which are you?
Why am I not at my desk on the weekend? Because federal law says I can’t spend government money or make any government commitments without authorization, and that includes overtime. It is directly related to not stepping on Congress’s power of the purse.
“The 20/80 rule. 20% does 80% of the work. The other 80% does nothing.”
Ummm, this doesn’t add up. Who does the rest?
So. How hard is it to take five minutes to tell us all what you have done in the last week? I know of non-federal corporations that require a weekly list of what their employees have done. Do you feel you should be exempt from that kind of accountability? To inform us taxpayers, whom pay your salaries, of what you are doing for us? What are we paying you for? What service do you provide to make our lives better? Or are you just another parasite, dependent on the opaque nature of the swamp to keep your job? Why should my tax dollars continue to pay for your job if you are not doing your job? If you are not doing your job, you should be fired.
See above. Not legal. Those who’s management told them to reply can do it Monday.
Comp time
You know, where you run your regular time hours up doing nothing and then collect straight time pay as paid time off for them.
Been there done that.
Andrew, here’s another piece of advice:
Stop wasting your time and money on college, where you aren’t likely to learn anything except that there should be a bounty on liberals, and get a job so you can actually learn something of value, and enjoy life without paying off a college loan for most of the rest of your life.
– John Underwood
Tyler, TX
I disagree, Andrew should go to college.
He should learn how to build and not tear things down.
The Ivy League schools will go die along with the Democrat Party and the current version of Communism.
There is too much government and foreign money in the Ivy League.
Professor Turley,
I disagree that one should expose oneself in a hostile environment.
Instead, use the time to learn about the perspectives of others, their data, motivations, and arguments.
Follow the path of public lies and private truths.
Share in private your thoughts with like minded
Wait until someone who can bear the downside proves the environment is safe, and then express one’s views.
This is both pragmatic as well as the path of those who persist in-order to fight another day.
It is like the ‘Story of ze Hippo’
In other words, Andrew, if you are a swan, be a swan.
It depends on the season
More to the point, Andrew. Life is short enough. The only real question you have to deal with is whether or not you want to spend it being a stooge or a thinker.
The beauty of free speech is that you potentially get to hear all viewpoints and then you can make your reasoned assessment (subject to change, of course, IF you are a thinker) and act accordingly based on your decided benefits versus risks. If you decide to remain silent, so be it. If it bothers you to remain silent, then you are telling yourself something. Will you listen to yourself, Andrew?
Look at the bright side, Andrew. Based on the info mentioned in this article, you could have been a prospective stooge, gone to Harvard for further indoctrination and then graduated as a confirmed stooge. And the benefits of associating with other such stooges can be quit significant….if you are not a thinker.
My brother is an associate professor at Virginia Tech and if he hopes to achieve tenure, he wisely keeps his opinions to himself. Free speech in America is not an absolute and sometimes swans do best blending in with the flock. Put another way, the nail that sticks up attracts hammers.
That concept, being true to yourself, has cost me a LOT in life. But getting older I find that not only do I still have a mind that works clearly, free of nonsense, and have become quite wealthy in the time I have been on this planet I would do it all over again. At times it has hurt and hurt me immensely, but it really is the only way.
When being true to yourself, you necessarily think. When you think and act/not act, it does not cost you more. You are just aware of the actual costs about which a non-thinker is totally clueless. And if you are willing to “do it all over again”, you obviously considered and accepted the costs. How much more satisfied can a thinker be than that?
Interesting analogy professor. Be true to yourself, who you are.
Faculty: “Duck! and Cover your mouth.“
Professor Turley: I am generally in agreement with the views you express in your Blog. But respectfully, I must ask you what “be a swan” actually means in practical terms, in light of your one-sentence recognition that students, even swans, “depend upon professors for recommendations, and challenging the school’s orthodoxy can threaten their standing.” The threat is not simply limited to the “swan’s” standing during his or her time at college; a poor or mediocre recommendation will impact that “swan” for the rest of his or her life. For example, would a “swan” at Harvard or Yale law schools, no matter how brilliant, stand a fair chance of getting hired as a law clerk by Judge Ho in the Fifth Circuit?
Jonathan: On the subject of quacking like a duck and in actuality being a shyte-bird city park lawn goose, today we have Warren Buffet on display.
That would be the billionaire Democrat donor who supported Clinton against Trump and then Biden against Trump by claiming he paid less in income taxes than his secretary – proving that truly The Evil Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share.
Today Warren Buffet is ducking his earlier claims by honking a different tune:
Warren Buffett Offers Advice to Trump on Government Spending After Paying $26.8 Billion in Tax
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/buffett-offers-advice-to-trump-on-government-spending-after-paying-26-8-billion-in-tax-5814588?src_src=partner&src_cmp=BonginoReport
To educate or to stifle creative thought. What is their mission? Contributing one dime to this bigoted outfit should be a joke. The privileged can’t wait to send little Johnny and little Suzy to this famous house of socialist propaganda so they will experience a future of keeping their opinions to themselves out of fear of retribution. Boy oh boy what a wonderful life to look forward to.
Mixed message there, isn’t it? He acknowledges that these students are reluctant to speak their mind because they don’t want it to affect them negatively. He mentions recommendations, but there’s also grades to consider. And then he says be a swan. Well, that’s what I did. It wasn’t about politics when I was going to school, but even debating professors can lead to a lesser grade. You should be a swan, but you should assume you are not going to get the recommendation you want or the grade you want either.
And here I thought that the progressives were all about equity. I have a sneaky suspicion that the boys of Harvard leadership in their formative years were card carrying members of the no girls in this club bunch. Some pigs are more equal than other pigs. The Lord of the Flies is the required handbook of conduct at Harvard. You can hear the sound of the buzzing from miles away.
Always good advice Professor Turley! I hope Andrew takes your advice to heart!