JULY 16, 2024, NEW YORK, NEW YORK — Heterodox Academy (HxA), a non-partisan, non-profit organization committed to improving institutions of higher education by advocating principles of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement released a research report showing how comfortable or reluctant more than 4,700 undergraduate students are discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at their university, and what political variables are associated with greater reluctance.

The report details four key takeaways:

• Over 47% of CES respondents at least somewhat reluctant to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict;

• Republicans, Independents, and unaffiliated students more reluctant to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict than Democrats;

• Students with more extreme ideological orientation more open to discussing Israeli-Palestinian conflict than moderates;

• When students feel that their campus climate is supportive of viewpoint diversity, they are less reluctant to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The new report is part of HxA’s larger annual Campus Expression Survey that surveyed a nationally representative convenience sample of full-time college undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities within the US. Survey respondents were recruited online using stratified sampling via CloudResearch. The analyses are based on data from 4,730 respondents. Note that these data were collected in November and December 2023, and so do not reflect events on campus since data collection.

HxA created the Campus Expression Survey in 2019 to measure the extent to which students feel reluctant to discuss various topics on their campuses, including timely topics unique to each year’s campus climate, with a focus on identifying variables associated with students’ reluctance to express their views. More reports based on these data can be found on HxA’s website.