When I was teaching in 2019, I had an experience with a student in class who wanted to ask a question but was too nervous to do so in front of other students—out of fear.

I regularly taught Introduction to Lifespan Development, a popular gen-ed class that brought in students from far beyond psychology. One of my favorite sections to teach was pubertal development. PhDs tend to specialize in niche areas, and I was no different. My specialization was the behavioral genetics of female menarche. Talk about niche.

During my 2019 lecture on adolescent physical development, in which I showed the drastic differences in male vs. female testosterone levels during puberty, students broke into small groups to apply the concepts we had just covered. As I strolled from group to group, one student stopped me.

She prefaced her question with, “I was too scared to ask in front of the class because I know it’s a controversial issue,” before moving on to pose the question of whether, given the testosterone differences in men and women during puberty, males gain an advantage in athletics. She wanted to know particularly if trans women have an advantage in sports as a result.

It’s a valid question. Yet sex differences and their implications constitute a topic considered offensive in many liberal spaces. Still, if there is a time to discuss this contentious issue, my classroom during that lecture is surely appropriate.

Yet this student is not alone. Our research at Heterodox Academy (HxA) shows as much. More than 40% of student respondents to our 2023 Campus Expression Survey reported some degree of reluctance discussing “transgender identity” in the classroom or on campus. FIRE’s 2024 survey of college students also found that 41% of students surveyed reported it difficult to discuss “transgender rights” in class.

Why are they reluctant? One big reason is because students are scared of negative social reactions from their peers in class. In our 2022 survey of students at four-year universities, we found that the primary reported reason for why students self-censor on controversial topics in the classroom was fear of negative reactions or retribution from fellow students. Students feared being attacked, made fun of, ridiculed, judged, or “canceled” by their peers.

It’s not just HxA’s research showing this kind of pattern. A 2023 survey from Constructive Dialogue Institute and More In Common found that 45% of their survey respondents said they were scared to share their views on controversial topics because they were afraid to offend their peers.

Another 2021 survey of college students also showed more than a third of students were concerned with losing their peers' respect or being ridiculed if they shared their views in the classroom.

The student in my class was not fearful of me, the professor. She was fearful of her peers’ reactions if she asked a question on a hot political topic, despite the inquiry being completely relevant to the course content we were covering.

How many other students are not asking valid questions out of fear? I suspect many, if not most. And this is a critical problem in classrooms today with regard to chilled climates of inquiry.

Critics of HxA’s mission argue that threats to free expression and inquiry are “grossly exaggerated” and that “agents of misinformation” (organizations like HxA and FIRE) have peddled an imaginary free speech “crisis” using an “organized media campaign” on campuses today.

I (obviously) disagree.

Shout-downs do occur (too) often. Research with the ‘wrong’ conclusions about protected groups receive extra scrutiny in top science journals. Accepted conference symposia get removed from programs because they could ostensibly “cause harm.” And academics get socially and professionally blacklisted or boycotted for “wrongthink.’’ These are problems to be dealt with — and significant ones. But they are the showy examples of a larger problem we are trying to solve.

If we only define threats to inquiry and free expression on campus by the media-grabbing events, critics will predictably continue to argue these are just isolated incidents, not representative, and not something worth dealing with.

And these aren’t the only ways inquiry is shut down in the classroom. This is why HxA focuses on more than just speech on campus. We also focus on the culture of the academy. Because threats to open inquiry and the free exchange of ideas on campus look like students asking their questions in private rather than in the classroom. They look like students choosing a “safer” topic for their term paper out of fear of peer review. They look like students “doing their own research” outside of class, or ignoring research on those topics altogether, rather than diving into discussion in class. They look like students missing out on developing the skills they need to have discussions about difficult topics. They look like students avoiding the discomfort of disagreement with their peers. They look like students not getting what they are supposed to—and deserve to—get out of their education.

As educators, we should be immensely disappointed and concerned every time a student wants to ask a question in private out of fear. These small classroom moments may not be worth calling the press over, but each time a question is not asked, the free exchange of ideas is, in fact, not free.