College campuses are Petri dishes to see what unbridled liberalism grows into: intolerance and fascism. Even though liberals are always talking about tolerance, you can really see what they think of intellectual diversity by seeing how they stamp it out in places where they have power.

A new bombshell statistic by the Young America’s Foundation (YAF) shows just how bad things have become for conservatives on campus, as judged by how frequently conservative speaking events are disrupted. According to the Independent Journal Review:

Today, a whopping 46 percent of events with conservative speakers hosted by were disrupted. In the year before the election, this number was less than 15 percent.

These events were either disrupted by protesters, stalled by university administrators, or outright canceled. This intolerance toward conservative views is the greatest threat to free speech on our nation's college campuses today.

Aggression toward conservatives on campus is at an unprecedented and unsustainable level. It should not be the case that 1-in-5 students are afraid to express controversial opinions on campus, according to a poll conducted by The Polling Company, Inc. on behalf of Young America’s Foundation.

Perhaps we should be thankful that twenty percent of students still have the mental fortitude to hold unpopular beliefs? Here's more from IJR:

The epitome of this growing threat is the recent unconstitutional suppression of free speech by the University of California, Berkeley. The University stymied every effort to provide a venue to host Ann Coulter, a prominent conservative author and speaker, and then used viewpoint-discriminatory restrictions by selectively enforcing an unwritten “high-profile speakers” policy.

The university used this unwritten policy only twice. First against David Horowitz, also a prominent conservative and New York Times rated best-selling conservative author, then against Coulter. Furthermore, the University of California Police Department at Berkeley has an official “stand-down” policy, effectively giving protesters permission to veto conservative speech.

Here's the thing: with the left pushing back on conservatives -- and actually violating the Constitution to do so -- it's time for conservatives to fight back. YAF, along with the Berkeley College Republicans, is doing just that by suing Berkeley to make sure that freedom of speech is guaranteed for all students.... Yes, even conservatives ones.

One resource for students trying to find a college that does not squelch free speech is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's college rating system, the Spotlight Database. This database, which rates over 400 of the nation’s top colleges and universities, is "the only database of United States college speech policies." The University of California Berkeley, if you are wondering, has earned a yellow light, if that gives you any indication of how intolerant the college campuses have become for conservatives on campus.

Image Credit: Wikimedia