It's like a game of endless tennis, the "debate" about whether campuses these days do what they should to ensure the free exchange of ideas. Critics say they don't, and point to speech codes, scandalous cases in which students or faculty have been punished for expressing their views, and so on. Status quoers say the criticisms are the "manufactured controversies" of folks with an ideological axe to grind--asserting, along the way, that the people who say they want to see free exchange on campus don't really want that at all. What they actually want, they proclaim, is to shift the balance of power so that their views are the only ones allowed. Well, that's never been why I talk about those ideas here, and it's never been why any of the people and organizations I know who care about those issues care about them, either. Still, the accusation seems to carry an awful lot of weight, considering that it circulates among people who make their living doing things like weighing evidence, assembling facts, produced reasoned analysis and things like that. In the end, it's tiresome, and like so many of the ongoing battles in the academic culture wars, it never seems to resolve. (Yes, I know I've mixed metaphors--that tennis has become war and game has become battle. Forgive me, reader, for I am only half way through my first cup of coffee.)

So while I was mixing metaphors, where I was going was this: the way to advance the discussion, and, more than that, to move from stalemated discussion to actual constructive action, is to stop arguing about how many speech codes do or do not dance on the head of a pin and to start framing practical, content-neutral, reasonable things that actual people on campus can actually do to ensure that their institution is doing what it needs to do to safeguard freewheeling study, inquiry, discussion, and debate for all. A new report issued today by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni sets out to do just that, looking at what schools across the country are doing and laying out best practices for all schools that want to fulfill their stated commitments to robust debate and the vibrant exchange of ideas.

Here's Mary Beth Marklein at USA Today:

Dozens of public and private colleges have taken steps to ensure their students are exposed to a range of intellectual views on campus, and to ensure that students can freely express their views, says a report being released Thursday.

"If you want to produce informed citizens, you have to hear both sides" of an argument, says Anne Neal, president of the Washington-based non-profit American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ACTA plans to mail its report, based on a review of more than 200 schools, to more than 9,000 trustees as part of a campaign to "reinvigorate the free exchange of ideas" on campuses, she says.

The report highlights 40 examples at public and private institutions in 24 states, including a Tufts University lecture series that features speakers, such as historian Shelby Steele and author Salman Rushdie, who hold "provocative and perhaps controversial points of view," and a University of Missouri system requirement that orientation programs explain what students can do if they think they are being penalized because of their beliefs.

Despite such cases, "the free exchange of ideas ... is in peril in today's academy," says the report. It cites a 2006 case in which a social work student sued Missouri State University after she said her grade suffered when she refused to sign a letter supporting gay adoption as part of a class project. (The case was settled out of court.) The University of Delaware revised an orientation program in 2007 after some students and parents said the exercises sought to shape their attitudes on sensitive issues, including race and sex.

Some free-speech groups argue that ACTA mostly targets liberal faculty, but Neal notes that it recently criticized a decision by private Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., founded by evangelical Christian Jerry Falwell, to end recognition of a College Democrats club. While private universities "do have the right to restrict student and faculty expression ... the decision is nonetheless unfortunate, as it is likely to make for a less vibrant intellectual environment on campus," an ACTA blog post says.

In recent years, ACTA has promoted a number of legislative efforts to require public universities to report what they do to prevent bias against students because of their political and religious beliefs.

No proposals have become law, but Neal says legislative pressure has led to some reforms. In South Dakota, the board of regents requires faculty at its six universities to include a "freedom in learning" statement in course outlines that says, in part, that students "should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study."

Critics of such policies say there's a reason not one of more than 30 states has passed bills introduced since 2004 related to free speech on campus: they represent "a manufactured controversy that distracts from the real issues affecting higher education," says Megan Fitzgerald of the Chicago-based Free Exchange on Campus Coalition, a non-profit founded in 2006 to rally against groups such as ACTA.

With a few high-profile exceptions, the coalition says, independent investigations of a liberal bias on individual campuses have turned up nothing.

That may be subject to interpretation, however. ACTA says, for example, that a 2007 campus survey of students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill found that "at least 13% of undergraduates felt they had witnessed at least one classroom situation in which unpopular or provocative ideas seemed to have been unwelcome, either because of the instructor's viewpoint or viewpoints of most students." But Ron Strauss, the school's executive associate provost, says the survey "was very valuable in that it helped us determine that this was not a major issue and it didn't sort by political point of view."

Neal says it's "simply disingenuous" to deny problems.

"Our report shows the different ways institutions are indeed taking voluntary concrete steps to address this," she says.

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that different people can look at the same information and draw different conclusions. So I ask, is 13% cause for concern, or nothing to get excited about?

You'll see specifics on what I'm talking about below. I'm referencing a story being posted today about the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which encourages colleges to develop campus climate surveys to assess whether students are free to express their unique views, without penalty and in a respectful environment. In a new report, it praises the University System of Georgia and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, among others, for having taken such steps.

But what to make of the results? As the online version of our story says, ACTA noted that 13% of undergraduates in the Chapel Hill survey "felt they had witnessed at least one classroom situation in which unpopular or provocative ideas seemed to have been unwelcome." Ron Strauss, the school's executive associate provost, said the overall findings "helped us determine that this was not a major issue and it didn't sort by political point of view."

As for the Georgia system survey, ACTA mainly lauds the system for its attention to the free-speech issue. It says the survey found "certain troubling findings (that) merit further review," but doesn't give details.

A press release on the Georgia survey notes that 13% (there's that number again) of its students agreed that professors had inappropriately presented their own political views. It comes in the second to last paragraph of the release. Higher up, research director James Bason says: "In evaluating the data, I saw no pattern of political discrimination of any particular sort." Chief Academic Officer Susan Herbst told me the survey "didn't find anything particularly worrisome" regarding classroom practices.

I urge anyone who is interested in this subject to read the survey findings themselves. Meanwhile, what do you think, readers? Cause for concern, or nothing to worry about?

Let me add one more thing about the Georgia survey: The fiercest debates over issues related to free speech in higher education center on the classroom. Critics of groups like ACTA (such as the 22-member Free Exchange on Campus Coalition mentioned in the story) argue that ACTA's foremost interest is in limiting academic freedom for faculty. Here's that group's most recent report, which calls the whole issue a "manufactured controversy."

But one of the most interesting Georgia findings, Herbst told me, was that some students felt their fellow students should be more respectful of different viewpoints. That, she says, merits further review. "I would like them to learn more about respect and tolerance. When they get out in the workplace they'll meet all kinds of people with different views," she says.

Another question, readers: Any thoughts on how to achieve that?

The ACTA report--which is directed at trustees--makes a number of recommendations. Among them: Survey the campus climate, incorporate intellectual diversity into institutional statements and policies, eliminate speech codes, encourage visiting scholar and guest lecture series, build intellectual diversity into new student orientation and strategic planning initiatives.

Sounds to me like such measures would serve everyone on campus--not just people with this or that view--and that they are all good, sound, affordable, uncontroversial steps all campuses should consider taking. Also sounds like it's really not necessary to decide what that 13 percent does or does not mean in order to go forward with the no nonsense actions recommended in the report. No "manufactured controversy" in sight.