What a sorry state of affairs our society must be facing when our state legislators feel it necessary to propose a bill protecting free speech on college campuses.

Dozens of states have either passed or are now considering bills that would mandate public colleges and universities enact and enforce free speech policies. This past August, Ohio waded into the debate with its own “Campus Free Speech Act.”

Lawmakers’ desire to get involved in this issue is not misguided.

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State representatives Wesley A. Goodman (R., Cardington) and Andrew Brenner (R., Powell) announced their bill less than a week after Ohio State administrators enacted a policy prohibiting students from hanging posters or signs in their windows. The rule was put in place not because of a heinous incident, but out of fear that one might occur.

Across the country, colleges are grappling with — and largely failing on — concerns regarding free speech.

According to a recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, more than 90 percent of our country’s colleges and universities “maintain at least one policy that either restricts protected speech or can too easily be interpreted to do so.”

Additional studies have shown that current college students either devalue free speech or are ignorant to the legal parameters of the First Amendment at an alarming rate.

Last year, the Brookings Institute released a study last month that found that 40 percent of students believe “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment, 50 percent believe that upsetting speech should be shut down, and 19 percent said physical violence is an appropriate response to upsetting speech.

To be fair to students, our country’s issue with free speech is several generations deep. A study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania released last year revealed that 37 percent of Americans cannot name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.

But with the vast majority of the nation’s institutions of higher education enacting policies that censor or chill speech, it should not be a surprise that Americans are forgetting why free speech is a core pillar of democracy, education, and progress.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson said, “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” In theory, few places should fit Mr. Jefferson’s description better than a college or university. In reality, there are few places where free speech and thought are less safe.

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First Published January 31, 2018, 10:45 p.m.