More than 1 in 5 college students said in a recent poll that America deserved the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001.
The survey from conservative think tank Buckley Institute found that 22% of surveyed students agreed that “America deserved Sept. 11,” when Islamic radicals hijacked commercial jets and crashed them into New York City’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Twenty-eight percent of self-described liberal students, 17% of conservatives and 16% of moderates agreed with the statement.
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The poll received responses from 803 undergraduates at American colleges.
In the survey, 42% of university students said they would rather live under socialism and 28% under capitalism. The results flip a 40% to 36% advantage capitalism had just last year in a similar poll conducted by the institute.
The think tank said the 14-percentage-point preference for socialism is the largest recorded in the poll’s five-year history.
Additional survey results show that more students see Palestine as a better ally to the U.S. (38%) than Israel (25%).
And 40% of students said that offensive speech should be subject to criminal prosecution, up from 33% last year.
“This year’s survey demonstrates that censorious attitudes remain stubbornly high on America’s college campuses,” Buckley Institute founder and Executive Director Lauren Noble said in a statement.
“During the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, America’s college students have swung heavily in favor of socialism,” Ms. Noble said. “Alarmingly, those same students are more likely to support shout downs, violence to stop hate speech, and other tools of censorship.”
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