Survey Shows Nearly Half of College Students Back Violence to Silence Speech

Clear Facts

• 45% of undergraduate students surveyed believe physical violence can be justified to stop what they consider hate speech.
• 42% of students said they would rather live under a socialist system than a capitalist one.
• 22% of students surveyed said the United States deserved the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Cornerstone University President Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riaño says American higher education has lost its way after a national survey revealed alarming student attitudes toward violence and speech.

The Buckley Institute’s 2026 National Undergraduate Student Survey found that 45 percent of students accept violence to stop what they deem hate speech.

The poll also revealed 46 percent support shout-down tactics and 40 percent favor criminal prosecution for offensive speech.

“American colleges and universities for a long time now have really ceased to form students morally and are teaching resentment, teaching grievance politics, teaching violent entitlement,”

“So when graduates leave these universities, they leave with that. They’re not leaving with a moral formation of their hearts, their minds, their lives. They’re leaving with resentment.”

Moreno-Riaño warned that many employers now question the value of college degrees because graduates often lack the ability to reason and deliberate with those who disagree.

He said the root problem is not free speech but moral formation, as institutions have abandoned traditional values and embraced ideologies that foster grievance and entitlement.

“When there is no moral compass in higher ed, there’s a vacuum, and what fills it? Ideologies, communism, socialism, grievance, culture. That’s what’s happened, and it’s been happening for years.”

“I think that’s what’s happening. And if you combine that with artificial intelligence, you have sharp minds without a moral compass. That’s a very dangerous thing because a sharp mind without a moral compass is a weapon looking for a target.”

The private Christian university president argued that employers may soon bypass traditional college hiring and instead recruit directly from high schools or train their own workers.

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