More 'Left' violent anti-free speech - Charles Murray

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A conservative author tried to speak at a liberal arts college.
He left fleeing an angry mob.
By Peter Holley March 4 at 8:27 AM

Students at Middlebury College in Vermont protested an author who has been
called a white nationalist, causing the college to move a planned lecture to
another room on campus. (YouTube/Will DiGravio)

As the co-author of one of the 1990s' most controversial works of
scholarship, Charles Murray is no stranger to angry protesters.

Over the years, at university lectures across the country, the influential
conservative scholar and author of "The Bell Curve" says he's come
face-to-face with demonstrators dozens of times.

But none of those interactions prepared him for the chaotic confrontation he
encountered Thursday night at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vt.

"When 'The Bell Curve' came out, I'd have lectures with lots of people
chanting and picketing with signs, but it was always within the confines of
the event and I was eventually able to speak," Murray told The Washington
Post. "But I've never experienced anything like this."

The demonstrations began conventionally enough, with several hundred
organized protesters packed into a lecture hall Thursday, chanting and
holding signs. They ended with Murray being forced to cancel his lecture and
later being surrounded by an unruly mob made up of students and "outside
agitators" as he tried to leave campus, according to witnesses and school
administrators.

After swarming Murray and two school officials, the protesters shouted
profanities, shoved members of the group and then blocked them from getting
to a vehicle in a nearby parking lot. Witnesses said the confrontation was
aggressive, intimidating and unpredictable and felt like it was edging
frighteningly close to outright violence.

In a message to the campus community Friday, Middlebury President Laurie L.
Patton said her administration plans to respond to the "clear violations of
Middlebury College policy" that occurred the night before without providing
more specific information. Patton - who was on hand Thursday night - said
she was "deeply disappointed" by the events she witnessed and called the
night "painful" for many at Middlebury, a top-tier liberal arts college with
about 2,450 undergraduate students.

"Today our community begins the process of addressing the deep and troubling
divisions that were on display last night," her message said. "I am grateful
to those who share this goal and have offered to help."

"We must find a path to establishing a climate of open discourse as a core
Middlebury value, while also recognizing critical matters of race,
inclusion, class, sexual and gender identity, and the other factors that too
often divide us," the statement added. "That work will take time, and I will
have more to say about that in the days ahead."

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled Murray a white supremacist and a
eugenicist who uses "racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue
that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and
Latino communities, women and the poor."

"Murray, a statistically minded sociologist by training, has spent decades
working to rehabilitate long-discredited theories of IQ and heredity,
turning them into a foundation on which to build a conservative theory of
society that rejects equality and egalitarianism," the SPLC states.
Charles Murray. (American Enterprise Institute)

Murray bristled at the SPLC's characterization of him and blamed it for
provoking protests among college students who have failed to scrutinize his
work.

"White supremacist?" he said Friday. "Let's see: if you have a guy who was
married for 13 years to an Asian woman and who has two lovely Asian
daughters, wouldn't that disqualify him from membership in the white
supremacist club?"

Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was not invited to
Middlebury to discuss "The Bell Curve," but instead to talk about his latest
book: "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010."

His lecture was co-sponsored by Middlebury's Political Science Department.
The other sponsor was the AEI Executive Council at the college, an outreach
program by the Washington-based group that operates on dozens of campuses.

"Our goal was not to create a controversy, but to start a discussion and a
dialogue," said Alexander Khan, a member of the AEI Executive Council. "Many
members of our own club here don't agree with everything Dr. Murray has to
say, but we still believe in the importance of robust discussion and the
free exchange of opinions."

"That is a cornerstone of what it means to receive a liberal arts
education," he added.

The Associated Press reported that more than 450 alumni signed a letter
calling Murray's visit "unacceptable."

"In this case, there's not really any 'other side,' only deceptive
statistics masking unfounded bigotry," the letter said.

"Both students and other community members came out to show that we are not
accepting these kind of racist, misogynistic, eugenist opinions being
expressed at our college," Elizabeth Dunn, a student protest organizer, told
the AP. "We don't think that they deserve a platform because they are
literally hate speech."

Video from the lecture in Wilson Hall showed hundreds of students turning
their backs to Murray once he took the stage and began speaking.

Chants including "Hey hey, ho ho, Charles Murray has got to go" and "Racist,
sexist anti-gay, Charles Murray go away" followed as Murray remained at the
lectern for close to 20 minutes. The students held signs that said "No
Eugenics" and "Scientific racism = Racism."

Anticipating that the lecture might be interrupted, administrators attempted
to relocate the event and a Q&A with Middlebury professor Allison Stanger to
a location where the exchange could be live-streamed. Some of their
discussion was recorded, but the dialogue was cut short by loud protesters
who slammed chairs, chanted and periodically pulled fire alarms, which shut
down the building's power, according to Middlebury spokesman Bill Burger.

"It became very difficult to hear in there where they were recording,"
Burger said. "Nonetheless, there was a principle at work in that we were
determined to continue the event. Both sides felt like they were standing
for principle."

Murray said he felt like students were protesting a perceived persona more
than a person, one they'd labeled "a racist, sexist pseudo scientist." Asked
why he thinks he continues to arouse such passion 23 years after "The Bell
Curve" was published, Murray said he could only speculate.

"I think there is this rage on campuses about Donald Trump and - as someone
who has written pretty explicitly about my disapproval of Trump - I can
sympathize with that."

"But if you have someone that they can say, 'This is one of those people who
is the problem,' then they latch on to that person," he added. "That's who I
was to them."
Intense protests rage at Berkeley over Milo Yiannopoulos speech
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Play Video2:39
The University of California at Berkeley canceled a talk by inflammatory
Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos and put the campus on lockdown after
intense protests broke out on Feb. 1. (Video: The Washington Post / Photo:
AP)

Burger said Stanger's hair was pulled before she reached the car, twisting
and injuring the professor's neck. Burger said she later went to a hospital
and was fitted with a neck brace. (Stanger could not be reached for
comment.)

By the time Murray, Stanger and Burger made it to their car with a campus
security escort, the vehicle was mobbed by masked demonstrators who climbed
on the hood, pounded the windows and blocked the car's exit while security
struggled to clear a path, witnesses said.

At one point, a stop sign was pulled from the ground and laid in front of
the vehicle to block its path. After close to 10 minutes, the car managed to
separate from the mob, witnesses said. Minutes later, the group was forced
to leave a nearby restaurant when security informed Murray and the others
that more protesters were on their way.

Murray said he harbored no ill will toward Middlebury and praised campus
administrators for not backing down from protesters as the night
intensified.

He said he didn't want to dramatize the events or present his final
interaction with protesters as a "life-or-death situation," but noted that
the crowd was "out of control."

"Had there not been those security guards, I would certainly have been
pushed down on the ground," he said. "Maybe nothing more would've happened
after that, but certainly that would've happened."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/03/04/a-conservative-author-tried-to-speak-at-a-liberal-college-he-left-fleeing-an-angry-mob/?utm_term=.7baad9584824