On Feb. 20, 2020, we sent the following open letter to the senior administration:

An open letter to President Patton and her Senior Leadership Group:

As a group of faculty who came together in the wake of Charles Murray’s last visit to Middlebury in 2017, we are truly saddened and baffled that we are facing his return to campus this Spring. We believe that over the past three years, our campus has grown significantly in becoming a more inclusive, self-aware, and responsive institution that is open to frank conversations about racial and other inequities that structure our community and broader world. A lecture by an ultimately insignificant, debunked pseudo-scholar, arguing that race, class, and gender inequalities are a product of genetics rather than social systems and practices, would typically be a laughable and easy-to-ignore event. However, this particular insignificant, debunked pseudo-scholar’s presence reopens many wounds that we have worked hard to heal over the past three years.