Preserving the Free Speech of College Students at California’s Private Colleges and Universities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 124
  In Roundtable Session: Political Issues in Higher Education

Abstract

In California, the state legislator approved a law called “Leonard’s Law” which specifically delineated that “no private postsecondary educational institution shall make or enforce any rule subjecting any student to disciplinary sanctions solely on the basis of conduct that is speech or other communication that, when engaged in outside the campus or facility of a private postsecondary institution, is protected from governmental restriction (California Education Code: 94367). With almost no attention given to Leonard’s Law by the empirical and legal literature, the primary purpose of this study is to examine institutional speech code policies at private colleges and universities in the state of California to determine in the decades following the passage of Leonard’s Law.

Authors

• Kevin M. Collins, Claremont Graduate University

• Edith Pomposo, University of Southern California