Use of the term is in many cases valuable; those opposing a particular regulation may refer to it as a speech code, while supporters will prefer to describe it as, for example and depending on the circumstances, a harassment policy.
Subsequent challenges against such language as part of harassment policies, diversity mandates, and so forth instead of being self-identified as speech codes have generally succeeded to date.
Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate, in their work The Shadow University, published in 1998, refer to a number of cases in which speech codes have been used by public and private universities to suppress academic freedom, as well as the freedom of speech, and deny due process of law (for public institutions), or violate explicit and implicit guarantees of fairness declared or implied in a student's contract of enrollment or a faculty member's contract of employment with the institution of higher education in question (at private institutions[a]).
In the University of Pennsylvania case, a freshman faced expulsion from that private school when he called African-American sorority members who were making substantial amounts of noise and disturbing his sleep during the middle of the night "water buffalo" (the charged student claimed not to intend discrimination, as the individual in question spoke the modern Hebrew language, and the term "water buffalo", or "behema", in modern Hebrew, is slang for a rude or an insulting person; moreover, water buffalo are native to Asia rather than Africa).
One author states, "Second, [speech codes] are linked to a broader ideological agenda designed to foster an egalitarian vision of social justice".
"[9] Many who argue against speech codes cite former Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., believing that "The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
"[10] As of 2021, 21.3% of 478 schools surveyed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education maintain at least one policy that is considered to substantially restrict freedom of speech.