What Drives Censorship on College Campuses? -- by Peter Arcidiacono, Cory Dowd, Matthew Lilley

There has been widespread concern about self-censorship on university campuses, and especially that conservative voices are being stifled. Using survey data from a private elite college, we show that self-censorship is not simply about being conservative: it is students with the most moderate views who self-censor the most. This pattern is associated with confidence and salience — students who are more confident in their views or who see an issue as especially important tend to hold more extreme views and to self-censor less. At the same time, conservatives self-censor at higher rates than liberals, and the same individual is more likely to self-censor on the views where they are relatively more conservative than on those where they are relatively more liberal; conservatives are also far more likely than liberals to cite concerns about social exclusion as a reason for self-censoring, and report self-censoring less outside the university community. Groups perceived as marginalized self-censor less than majority groups, and especially so on issues salient to them (e.g., Black students on BLM). Acknowledgements and Disclosures We thank Antonio Drakes, Elena Pastorino, Tyler Ransom, Audrey Wang, seminar participants at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy, Stanford University, and the Structural Applied Microeconomics Conference at Duke University. Thanks to Albert Choi, Joshua Dutton, Michelle Yang, Sravya Yellapragada, and Yufei Zheng for research assistance. This work relies on data collection by Cory Dowd for his masters thesis at Duke University. We thank Eric Mlyn, Sarah Komisarow, and Ken Rogerson as Cory's advisors, and also the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Duke Interdisciplinary Research Center for grants that supplied compensation for survey respondents. The views expressed are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the New York City Mayor's Office. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. We thank Antonio Drakes, Elena Pastorino, Tyler Ransom, Audrey Wang, seminar participants at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins School of Government and Policy, Stanford University, and the Structural Applied Microeconomics Conference at Duke University. Thanks to Albert Choi, Joshua Dutton, Michelle Yang, Sravya Yellapragada, and Yufei Zheng for research assistance. This work relies on data collection by Cory Dowd for his masters thesis at Duke University. We thank Eric Mlyn, Sarah Komisarow, and Ken Rogerson as Cory's advisors, and also the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Duke Interdisciplinary Research Center for grants that supplied compensation for survey respondents. The views expressed are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the New York City Mayor's Office. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Citation and Citation Data Copy Citation Peter Arcidiacono, Cory Dowd, and Matthew Lilley, "What Drives Censorship on College Campuses?," NBER Working Paper 35979 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35979. Copy to Clipboard Download Citation MARC RIS BibTeΧ Download Citation Data In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals—the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, the Bulletin on the Economics of Alzheimer's, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship—as well as research spotlights, lectures, and panel videos. Presenters: Melissa Dell & Ashesh Rambachan Presenter: Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham