Murray and Middlebury: What Happened, and What Should Be Done?

Dr. Charles Murray, a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute,  came to Middlebury last Thursday to discuss his book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

It did not go well.

Murray was invited by the Middlebury student AEI chapter, and his talk was cosponsored (but not funded) by the Political Science department. The decision by the Political Science department to cosponsor the event was not universally supported on the Middlebury campus, nor even within the political science department itself, as chair Bert Johnson discusses here. Nonetheless, after extensive campus debate, the College administration remained committed to allowing Murray to speak, although they decided that only those with valid Middlebury i.d.’s would be allowed in Wilson Hall so as to prevent outsiders from shutting down his talk.  Despite this precaution, as chronicled in numerous national news stories, Murray never got the chance to present his views before a live audience.

This was not for lack of commitment by the administration to upholding the College’s policies on free speech. At the start of the Murray event Middlebury communications director Bill Burger reminded students about College policies regarding protests and the right of speakers to be heard. Middlebury College President Laurie Patton also took the stage to note that while many – including her – did not agree with all of Murray’s research, the College was committed to upholding its policies regarding the free exchange of ideas.  But when Murray was introduced, the student crowd erupted in a barrage of chants and sign waving designed to prevent Murray from speaking. They chanted, “Who is the enemy? White Supremacy!” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away!” I was not able to get into the event due to long lines so, after lingering for some time watching the protests outside the event, I went back to my office to view the event on the Middlebury website. However, you can get a sense of just how quickly the event degenerated into mob rule in this YouTube video shot by Middlebury student Will DeGravio.

Additional video can be found on the Middlebury campus student newspaper website here.

After about 20 minutes, when it became clear that the students would not let Murray speak, administration officials escorted him to an adjoining room.  There he was interviewed by my colleague Allison Stanger who pushed back against some of his research regarding the role of race and genes in intelligence and asked him to clarify his views on other issues, drawing in part on questions submitted by other faculty. Students were able to join the debate by asking Murray questions via twitter as well.  The event was streamed live on the Middlebury College website and broadcast to the audience in Wilson Hall, but it was interrupted numerous times as fire alarms were pulled and students continued chanting slogans that were picked up by the audio feed. (It will be posted by the College on its news site sometime later.)

The chaos didn’t end after the interview concluded, however.  When Murray, Stanger and Burger, accompanied by school security, attempted to leave the building and go to the car that would take them to dinner, a crowd formed to block their path.  During the ensuing shoving, Stanger was grabbed by the hair and her neck twisted with such force she eventually went to the local hospital to be treated for whiplash.  (She is home now and recovering.)  Although they made it into the car, the crowd prevented them from easily leaving, with people leaning on the hood and climbing on top. Eventually, after nearly running over a stop sign someone had displaced in front of the car, they managed to break free and head toward the campus location for dinner. When they arrived, however, rumors began circulating that the raucous protesters were on their way to shut that down too, so the small dinner group relocated to a nearby private restaurant, where Murray dined and conversed with more than a dozen Middlebury students and faculty late into the night.

Judging by the dominant reaction online and among most of those with whom I have talked, the effort to block Murray’s speech is viewed as an ugly display of intolerance and violence, one that has made almost every national news outlet, and which has reignited debate regarding issues of free speech and ideological diversity on U.S. college campuses.  At Middlebury, the repercussions of this event are still unfolding even as I write this post. In an email to the Middlebury community, President Patton apologized to Murray and Stanger for how they were treated, expressed her deep disappointment at the reception Murray received, and pointedly noted that “We will be responding in the very near future to the clear violations of Middlebury College policy that occurred inside and outside Wilson Hall.” It seems inevitable that disciplinary action of some sort will be taken against the rioters, although how and in what form remains to be seen. (If I happened to be the parents of some of those students caught on the numerous video recordings of their violating College rules by shutting down speech, I would be worried right now.) At dinner that night after the event, Murray noted that it was the worst demonstration he had ever encountered and that he feared for his safety.  He later tweeted, “The Middlebury administration was exemplary. The students were seriously scary.” Amazingly, in a student-run blog site at Middlebury, someone posted the Orwellian claim that the protestors were the ones who had been assaulted by Burger and others. Their logic?  That they had only blocked the sidewalk and stood in front of the car, but it was Burger and others who were the aggressors in trying to reach the car and drive away.  Thus the protesters were the ones under assault.   (Note. This is not, as far as I can tell, an example of satire, although I deeply wish it was.)

Clearly the student riot has left an ugly stain on Middlebury’s reputation, although it is too early to say how indelible it might be. One alumnus noted to me that while he still hoped his children would attend Middlebury, his wife was now dead set against the idea.  I expect many others feel this way as well. How many depends, I assume, in part on how the College administration responds.  In the short run, of course, the protests prevented those students who wished to engage with Murray from hearing him speak and, more importantly, it prevented them from pressing back against his research.  Two days before Murray’s talk I spent my entire weekly politics luncheon discussing Murray’s research in the Bell Curve, and acquainting students with many of the critiques of his findings.  My presentation was attended by a packed audience of students and local residents, and many of the students went away primed to do battle with Murray.  A few of them, drawing in part on my slide presentation, put together a pamphlet outlining five criticisms of Murray’s argument in the Bell Curve, which they placed on every seat in Wilson Hall.  Unfortunately, due to the actions of protesters, my students never had the opportunity to engage Murray beyond a few questions directed at him via Twitter.  What’s worse, they now find themselves inaccurately characterized in media outlets as coddled, immature “snowflakes” and “liberal fascists” bent on promoting intolerance and hate.

The ability of a vocal minority of students to impose their will on the majority of their peers – and evidently to feel no compunction in doing so – raises some important questions regarding Middlebury College’s central mission and whether and to what degree it is in danger of slipping away. To be clear, as I noted above, not everyone was comfortable with the decision by the AEI student chapter to invite Murray in the first place, nor with the College’s choice not to rescind that invitation. Some of my colleagues felt strongly that allowing him to speak gave him a platform to spread views that they found racist and hurtful, and which many argue are based on shoddy research.  Others disagreed, noting that Murray’s views as expressed in the Bell Curve were not particularly controversial among some experts even when they first came out. Moreover, they pointed out that he wasn’t even presenting that research this time around.  Nonetheless, when it became clear that a group of students were determined to protest, I am told that administration officials reached out to them to negotiate how those protests might be conducted in a peaceful and appropriate manner consistent with Middlebury’s stated policy.  It soon became clear, however, that the protesters would accept nothing less than a complete shutdown of Murray’s talk.  This prompted the administration to develop the backup plan which they implemented when the students’ chanting prevent Murray from speaking.

Note that this is not the first controversial speaker we have invited to campus.  In fact, Murray himself came to Middlebury to give a talk a few years back and was met with no overt opposition. So what, if anything, has changed since Murray’s previous visit? When asked this question by a Boston Globe reporter early today, I openly wondered whether Donald Trump’s election, and more importantly some of the College’s reaction to his victory, may have inadvertently appeared to license the kind of behavior we saw on Thursday. It may be, I speculated, that in reassuring students that we did not support the more inflammatory rhetoric that was a hallmark of Trump’s campaign, some students took that as a sign that speech which they felt was hurtful could and should be shut down. To repeat, this is pure speculation on my part, as I made clear to the reporter.  But something seems to have changed to persuade a minority of the current generation of Middlebury students that if they don’t like what someone is saying, it is appropriate to make sure no one else hears it as well, regardless of whether they would like to.  (Elsewhere I have pointed out that even Trump’s supporters did not agree with all that he said even though they voted for him. However, that distinction has sometimes been lost on a few of my students.)

In my public comments on social media regarding the Murray incident, I have stressed the need for dialogue to discuss why the disturbing effort to shut down speech occurred, and what lessons are to be learned.   But I am increasingly worried that the time for dialogue has passed. It is understandable why some students may find Murray’s research findings offensive, although I also believe many protestors actually have almost no familiarity with what Murray actually wrote.  It is less clear, however, why so many believe that the appropriate response was not to simply skip his talk, but instead to prevent others from hearing him and, in so doing, inadvertently give him the platform and national exposure they purportedly opposed. For some reason a vocal minority of Middlebury students now believes that if they find speech hurtful, it is their right and obligation to act on those feelings by shutting that speech down.

In his magisterial work On Liberty, John Stuart Mill wrote, “But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. (italics added.)”

It easy to blame those Middlebury students – and many do – for not fully understanding the importance, particularly at an institution of higher learning, of the free expression of ideas and the need to tolerate opposing views. (After all, Mill is a dead white male!) However, I wonder whether we, as faculty, should shoulder some – most – of the blame for their ignorance?  Are we teaching students why we hold so strongly to these ideals?  Perhaps if we spent as much time discussing the reason why even speech they view as hurtful should not be suppressed as we do explaining the College honor code, Thursday’s event might not have happened.  If we do not explain to students what underlies the College’s rules regarding speech, how are they expected to understand why their actions last Thursday are viewed by so many, including almost every Middlebury student with whom I have talked, as abhorrent and unacceptable, and why some may face disciplinary action?

For understandable reasons the administration decided beforehand not to respond to the student protest with a heavy show of force, for fear of escalating the violence. To be sure, not everyone agrees with that decision.  But President Patton has made it clear that this type of student rioting will not be tolerated going forward.  Disciplining students, however, is in my view only the first step toward insuring that this unacceptable effort to suppress speech never blights Middlebury’s campus again.  Somehow we, as an academic community, must teach students the reason why when confronted with what they sincerely believe to be hurtful speech the proper response is not to impose their views on everyone else by shutting that speech down. I am not sure the best way to do this.  But, at the risk of appearing naive or hopelessly idealistic, or both, I am committed to trying.  I hope you are too. Let the teaching begin!

447 comments

  1. J Dye,

    “So if free speech shouldn’t be free, who chooses?”

    I want to address a few points you make in that sentence, and in your post at large.

    First, it is important to remember that “free speech” is not totally free. The freedom of expression embodied in the First Amendment, like most rights, is not an absolute right. There are limits on what ideas we can express, where we can express them, and when. The most famous example that comes to my mind is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s opinion in Schenck v. United States in which he stated that “[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

    Second, there are two contexts in which the free speech debate is occurring within this discussion: the nation at large and the Middlebury College community. That distinction is important. In the nation at large, any perceived infringement upon free speech by the federal government would come under intense scrutiny from the judiciary via the First Amendment. On the grounds of Middlebury College, however, those same protections do not apply. The College is not a government entity. So, in theory, the Middlebury College community could decide that “hate speech” is counterproductive to the inclusiveness required for a learning environment and ban that category of speech, all without any judicial repercussions. Conversely, as First Amendment law currently stands, any attempt to ban hate speech by the federal government would likely be struck down, as hate speech is currently protected by the First Amendment. So, context matters.

    Thus, in response to your question of “who chooses,” the community chooses. The Middlebury College community could decide, together, that certain categories of speech do not belong in the community. In the national context, any member of Congress could certainly draft a bill removing the protections for hate speech in the First Amendment. Then, Congress, as the representatives of our national community, would debate its merits.

  2. Ah, the old Oliver Wendell Holmes “shouting fire” chestnut. I suppose it’s worth pointing out that Midd ’11, like most people and especially most leftists who cite it, is turning the meaning of that phrase on its head.

    Shouting fire (falsely) in a crowded theater is a “clear and present danger” to people (the legal standard for certain exceptions to freedom of speech) because they’re in an actual crowded theater, and because fire is an overwhelming immediate physical threat. A speech by Charles Murray, even if it weren’t about “Coming Apart” but about “The Bell Curve,” and even if it took the hardest possible line implied by “The Bell Curve,” is not shouting fire in a crowded theater. It just isn’t. Nobody’s under threat of burning alive or dying of smoke inhalation within the next few moments, or deprived of easy means of getting away if they wish.

    Granted, Holmes was making an analogy to justify a broader restriction. The Schenk case was part of a line of cases in which the US government, failing as it often does to cover itself in glory, prosecuted antiwar activists and others on the left. Holmes may have changed his mind about his position in that case, though, since he dissented in a similar case, Abrams v. US (1919), writing there in defense of the”free trade in ideas” and arguing that “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Classic free-speech position.

    But even if Holmes didn’t change his mind, note that context again: the US government was prosecuting dissenters ON THE LEFT. It wasn’t cracking down on racists, trying (for instance) to shut down screenings of the pro-Klan “Birth of a Nation,” which then-President Wilson actually praised. If it had been aiming its efforts against ideas at all resembling Charles Murray’s, it would have tried to suppress racist tracts like Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race” or Lothrop Stoddard’s “Rising Tide of Color.” But no. The government’s targets were people who were the forerunners of today’s anti-Murray protesters.

    Honestly, without the First Amendment, you think the Trump government wouldn’t do the same? Analogizing campus public speeches to “shouting fire” is playing right into the hands of people who would shut you down if they could — shut YOU down, not Charles Murray. The broader the exceptions permitted to freedom of speech, the worse for the left and for anyone who dissents from officialdom or wants to hold it to account. For protesters against Murray, Heather Mac Donald, Ann Coulter et. al. to want speech restricted is just amazingly counterproductive and self-defeating. Those people have more powerful friends than you or I ever will.

    Also, as to whether the First Amendment could be repealed: Yes, although many would argue it is not merely an enactment of positive law, as you’re suggesting, but a statement of underlying natural rights that are “inalienable,” as the Declaration of Independence put it — i.e. still present and deserving of respect whether there’s a First Amendment that says so or not. If that’s the case, then no, the principle it expresses cannot (justly) be repealed. (A private association like a college, however, as I acknowledged above, can set its own rules, as you say, and can set its face against freedom of speech if it wishes. That too would be counterproductive, though, not least because it would damage that college’s wider reputation and therefore the value of its degrees.)

  3. I am very glad you clarified ‘judicial’ repercussions, though I find that rather naïve. Certainly the DOE could send a ‘Dear Colleagues’ letter any day about what exactly is necessary to continue to receive federal funding. Because the government DOES have a rather stark interest in compliance and respect for the Bill of Rights.

    I would encourage my congressmen along those lines. You guys have crossed lines and are not ‘publically’ doing anything to rectify the situation.

    The people who pay the bills are not the children on campus and these parents are also an incredibly important part of the ‘Middlebury community’. I would love to see you sell ‘we no longer believe in free speech on campus’ at the alumni dinners.

    What you and the faculty seem to forget is that Middlebury is a SERVICE industry and ‘tenure’ is not the same as ‘perpetual funding for our amusements’. You need to offer a service that people actually want and value. And by people, I mean ‘parents’.

    Missouri is already down 8% in enrollments because of their nonsense. How many jobs is a loss of 8% of the Middlebury budget?

    The fall out from such stances of free speech such as Ulrich states goes far beyond mere litigation.

  4. Students – Even if you don’t agree with Jeff, I hope you are appreciating the legal history dealing with free speech cases (students from my intro American course are familiar with these, of course.) But Jeff’s point about using free speech exceptions to prosecute those on the Left is a reminder of the point I made earlier – historically conservatives were the ones often pushing free speech exceptions – not traditional liberals. And those exceptions were used (and could be used again) to limit discussion of issues supported by Middlebury progressives.

  5. J Dye – This point regarding the impact of the Murray incident on Middlebury’s endowment and enrollment is an important one. Early (anecdotal) reports are that it has had implications (at least in the short term) for fundraising, and many alumni have said they will reconsider whether to send their children to Middlebury. Whether these are short-term blips or long-term effects will depend in part, I think, on the nature of the disciplinary action and whether the College enunciates a more binding commitment to free speech.

  6. Midd 11, I think everyone’s in agreement that order to fulfill its mission of being a place of learning, the College needs to uphold community standards of civility that are more restrictive than the rules governing speech in the broader free society we live in. I don’t think that’s where the point of disagreement is.

    Rather, to me it looks like the disagreement is about whether the expression of controversial opinions can constitute violence against marginalized groups, and should, as such, be prohibited.

    It would be very interesting to hear your thoughts on this — to what extent do you think the College should prohibit controversial discourse on campus, especially with regard to hosting visiting speakers?

  7. I have addressed each response to my own comment below.

    JEFF SMITH

    Unfortunately, you have missed my point. I did not compare Charles Murray’s talk with shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. In fact, I agree with you: the two situations are completely and utterly different. My only goal in using the example was to show that the right to free speech is not absolute.

    Whether the Trump government would impose restrictions on the free speech of U.S. citizens without the protections afforded by the First Amendment is irrelevant. Neither I, Midd Student, nor any of the protesters of Charles Murray’s talk are advocating that the First Amendment be completely repealed. I don’t think anyone wants that. We are simply questioning whether we, as a community, should address hate speech by removing the protections granted to it via the First Amendment.

    J DYE

    Honestly, I know very little about the federal funding that Middlebury receives. I don’t know whether the federal government could threaten to remove funding for Middlebury if Middlebury was not complying with the First Amendment. Even if the government could remove funding, however, Middlebury is complying with the First Amendment. Indeed, the protesters were complying with the First Amendment as well when they shouted down Charles Murray’s talk. The First Amendment is a prohibition on governmental restriction of free expression, not restriction by private individuals or even a private college.

    While I don’t want to speak for the protesters of the Charles Murray talk, my impression is that they still believe in free expression, but they think that controversial ideas and/or hate speech should be censored to prevent the further marginalization of members of the community. There is a difference between actively advocating against all free expression and advocating for censorship of hate speech.

    I agree that the fallout from the Murray event goes beyond litigation. I have no doubt that some members of the Middlebury community – parents of students, alumni, and current students – will choose not to support Middlebury, financially or otherwise, as a result of the Murray event. I also have no doubt that the conversation that has resulted from the protesters’ actions is a vital one for our community. Even if controversial speakers continue to be allowed at Middlebury, the actions of the protesters were important to voice their concerns and thereby start this conversation.

    DAN ’05

    Perhaps you are right. In my view, however, we should question whether the College should have more restrictive rules governing speech than society at large. Despite the characterization of my views as anti-free speech by Jeff Smith and J Dye, I actually think the College should not only refrain from censorship on campus, but should actively champion free expression. Ideally, I think colleges and universities should provide even more freedom to express views than society at large, no matter how controversial, offensive, or unpopular those views may be.

    To answer you question, I think the College should allow all forms of controversial speech by visiting speakers while cultivating a conversation in the College community about how to address those same speakers. Oddly enough, I think Charles Murray is a relatively tame example compared to individuals such as Milo Yiannopoulos. Despite others describing Charles Murray’s views as controversial, he is an academic who came to Middlebury to debate his views in a measured, calm manner.

    I think the real question comes down to what the College community should do about a speaker such as Milo Yiannopoulos. I understand that Mr. Yiannopoulos has experienced a falling out with society at large and that it appears unlikely that he will be invited to speak at any colleges or universities in the future. However, he presents a particularly difficult problem: could the College community, in good conscience, have hosted a talk by Mr. Yiannopoulos, or an individual like him, on campus? From what I have read about Mr. Yiannopoulos’s talks, he is quite literally, and for lack of a better term, a troll. His talks were merely meant to demean and insult individuals on the campuses where he gave his talks. What’s more, there was little to no academic value to his talks. As a supporter of free expression, this puts me in a dilemma. I can’t call for the censorship of Mr. Yiannopoulos’s talks, as that contradicts my own support of free expression. But I also can’t in good faith call for the College to allow him to speak since I recognize that his talks are only meant to demean and insult.

    I wish I had the answer. I’m interested to hear how you, and others participating in our discussion, would like the College community to address a speaker akin to Milo Yiannopoulos giving a talk on campus.

  8. Midd ’11, thanks for your thoughtful response. To answer your question, my own personal inclination would be to take a maximalist approach in terms of inviting people to campus. I don’t just think that the College should be willing to invite controversial speakers; I think it should make a concerted effort to do so.

    I think I’m in general alignment with current Midd students in terms of desired political end state — a more just society with greater social mobility, better-functioning institutions, lower crime, more rights for the LGBT community, end the war on drugs, etc. However, I’m totally baffled by the trend of campus activists wanting to turn campuses into PC fiefdoms, because I would think that people who want to be effective activists over the long term would intentionally be exposing themselves to highly offensive and controversial ideas. You’re never going to find a safer space to explore ideas than your time at Midd. Isn’t the whole point of a safe, supportive academic community to provide the opportunity for young adults to step out of their intellectual comfort zones?

  9. Midd ’11, thanks, but my little disquisition on Oliver Wendell Holmes and “shouting fire” wasn’t aimed only at you. The phrase always seems to come up in discussions of free speech, and I’m addressing anyone here who might be prone to the usual misunderstanding of it or unaware of its odious history: It was part of a broad effort by the U.S. government to shut down political dissent. I get that you’re just presenting it (as Holmes did) to show that the right to say whatever we like is not absolute. But who ever said it was? I doubt that anyone here would suggest that freedom of speech covers statements like “Fire!” in a theater that’s not on fire, or “Pay me $100,000 cash if you want to go on living,” or “Listen closely to this plan for how we’re going to rob the bank,” or “Here, commissar, are the nuclear codes I stole from the Pentagon.” Narrow exceptions involving extortion, incitement, conspiracy, espionage, and a handful of others are already well recognized and accepted.

    But, first, those exceptions just don’t answer the questions posed here, because Charles Murray’s campus talks have never been anywhere close to fitting any of them. And second, they illustrate the dangers I’m talking about, because the authorities will always try to expand any exception, even the most obviously needed, in order to stifle legitimate speech. For instance, during Vietnam, federal prosecutors charged leaders of what were clearly political antiwar protests with “conspiracy” and “incitement.” That’s what people in power do. For virtually every controversial speech act, there’s someone who will claim it’s like shouting fire in a crowded theater, and therefore shouldn’t be permitted.

    For “hate speech,” which you mention, all the same points apply: It’s another exception that will end up swallowing the rule unless it’s applied very, very narrowly and carefully. Almost anything said in anger could be called “hate speech.” For example, why isn’t it hate speech to criticize Charles Murray the way the protesters and their supporters have been doing? I mean, some of them certainly seem to hate the guy and his ideas. The students at Claremont I quoted above lambasting Heather Mac Donald could also be said to be expressing hate. Now, I think that position would be ludicrous, but once you’ve carved out an exception, people in power will expand it if they can to suit their own purposes. So you could easily end up in a world — or on a campus — where free-speech exceptions are wielded not to shut down someone like Murray, but to shut down those who want to protest against him.

    Put another way, if the protesters’ concern is that some people are marginalized and need their voices heard, then carving out exceptions aimed at limiting freedom of speech is exactly, 180 degrees backwards. You don’t give the less powerful a greater voice by limiting speech, because the powerful will always still get to speak no matter what. You just help along efforts to shut down your own side. What benefits the powerless and voiceless is broad, robust protection for maximum freedom of speech.

    As to what free-speech principles Middlebury should adopt as a community, it might be interesting and educational to involve students in such a discussion, but I’m pretty sure the outcome of it can already be guessed. Middlebury doesn’t belong to its students; legally, they’re its *clients*. It belongs to a private nonprofit corporation run by a board of trustees that I’m betting is mostly what we nowadays call “one-percenters”: wealthy lawyers, business owners, venture capitalists, real-estate developers, etc. That’s who runs private colleges in America. (Amazingly, trustees and boards of directors are almost never the targets of student protesters anywhere, even though they’re the people who actually hold the most power.) Perhaps Middlebury’s trustees are more liberal and idealistic than most members of this privileged class, but even so, they have a fiduciary duty to act in the corporation’s interest. That’s going to include not letting Middlebury become the Bob Jones University of the left, its own closed little dogmatic world, because such a development would significantly harm its national reputation and, therefore, the value of what it offers and its ability to attract talent. Hence the Charles Murrays of the world are almost certainly going to continue to get invited to speak there no matter what the students might decide.

    As you say, the Milo Yiannopoulis case is trickier. True, he’s a troll and provocateur, not a serious academic. But from what I’ve seen, his campus appearances have focused on issues affecting the academic world, like whether “political correctness” has gotten out of control on American campuses. Some students and alumni might well feel that such issues are also worthy topics for community discussion, and therefore worth hearing about from outside speakers, including provocative speakers. If you really want a community DISCUSSION about this, as opposed to some people dictating to others, then those who might be pro-Milo, or still open to that possibility, have to be able to voice their views as freely as anyone else. In other words, to call for a discussion as you’re doing is to endorse freedom of speech, including – ironically enough — speech in favor of Milo. Because without that freedom, there’s no real discussion, right?

  10. Jeff, could you please tell me the name of that ‘right winger’ President who oversaw that Schenk case? Since you continually warn about ‘Conservatives’ who attack free speech, that person MUST be quite the staunch Conservative. If I recall correctly, that ‘right winger’ shut down presses, arrested thousands, formed secret police and actively created organizations to spy on their fellow citizens. One who actively waged a propaganda war along racial lines. My current home had racially motivated riots and book burnings in the name of this ‘Conservative’.

    Wondering Wildly what was his name.

    Like that other ‘Conservative’ who interned thousands and confiscated their property along racial lines. Who ALSO shut down the media, made propaganda films and violated the Bill of Rights regularly and vigorously. For Definitive Reasons, I’m sure.

    Is this the quality of history that you bring to students? That anyone who does something totalitarian you don’t like HAS to be a right winger? Like those other ‘right wingers’, Julius Caesar, Robespierre, Lenin, Trotsky, Castro, Mao, Chavez, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and our always beloved assassin and mass murderer ‘Che’.

    I saw all of them at the Republican meetings. Oh…wait…no I didn’t. They were totalitarians who hated free speech, rights, liberty and quite a few of the privileges that American Liberals enjoy…and they were ardent Leftists.

    As, in a smaller degree, Woodrow Wilson and FDR had little respect for anything that limited THEIR power.

    You can not and should not characterize all assaults on free speech as ONLY coming from the Right. (Yes, they did it too, not saying they didn’t) The MAJORITY of modern totalitarian systems which aren’t Islamic were done under the auspices of LEFT wing ideology. Killed MILLIONS.

    THIS should be the warning you bring to your students: That they too have the capacity, in the name of (insert fashionable outrage here) to violate human rights because they hue more to purity and ideology than humaneness.

  11. Mid ’11

    I am NOT a Constitutional scholar. I think about the issue, but do not delve into it.

    First off, you do not get to say ‘I am totally for free speech’ and then go on about ‘but we need to ban hate speech’.

    Again, who decides? I do not consider Charles Murray a hate speaker. He is certainly no Louis Farrakhan. He is not even a Reverend Sharpton. He doesn’t even have the racist chops of your average Islamic Iman speaking about Israel.

    So are we cutting THOSE kinds of ‘hateful speakers’ too? If not, why not?

    But I digress. I wanted to speak about ‘what are the limits of free speech’, at least from a very foreign perspective to you (Conservatism).

    There seems to be two generic situations where a Conservative would consider speech to be hateful and dangerous enough warrant being shut down.

    The first is that tedious ‘fire’ example. But it is not just ‘shouting fire’. It is ‘speech made to inspire and encourage criminal and seditious activities.

    What is that? Well…it would be, say, someone, in the midst of an emotional protest, on…say a college campus…to suddenly start to scream ‘burn it down!’ or even ‘Get him!’ (Ahem) THAT person not only has lost engaged in unfree speech, but can and should be charged with inciting a riot. Inciting and encouraging a criminal activity (like, say, a Lefty film maker throwing out a movie encouraging the shooting of a President) is on VERY shaky legal grounds.

    Luckily, in those innocent bygone days, no one really took the idea of violence from the Left all that seriously…despite copious examples from history.

    (Little anecdote: Those Kent State students who were shot? They had spent three days entertaining themselves by destroying businesses, throwing things at police, burning down a campus building worth millions and throwing rocks at Guardsmen. Not something that the professors like to dwell on when their narrative is ‘governmental abuses’ instead of ‘rioting and assault’)

    Okay, what else?

    When a group is openly advocating for the removal of the government of the United States and ignoring the institutions and rights thereof. Like…the Communist Party trying to be voted into power…so that there would not BE another vote thereafter. Like trying to destroy the Constitution and the associated Bill of Rights (ahem)

    OR a group which willfully sets out to remove the freedom of speech from someone else by their actions or policies. Like a mob of hundreds of KKK member trying to scare some share cropper by a demonstration of force into silence or acquiescence.

    (Hmm…if we remove ‘KKK’ and put ‘Middlebury Students’ and change ‘share cropper’ with ‘Murray’…not exactly covering yourself with glory…)

    So there was a group which was on very shaky ground legally about free speech violations.

    Hint: It was not Charles Murray, no matter how ‘hateful’ his speech supposedly was. Frankly, it would have had to encompass ‘final solution’ levels of hate to justify in any way the incredible lawlessness by the student body.

    This doesn’t mean they didn’t have a right to protest. They had that right. They did not have a right to riot, or remove free speech from the speaker. The ADMINISTRATION might have that right (debatable since they gave permission). The student clearly did not.

  12. Jeff,

    You make a really good point with regard to the exercise of power.

    There appears to be a real up-is-down element to the political environment at Middlebury, right? A certain slice of the community — people who consider themselves either victims or “allies” — exercises a great deal of power over others through intimidation tactics while shouting from the rooftops that *they* are the powerless ones and *they* are being injured by dissent toward their agenda. Disagreement with the precepts of their argument — e.g., that the organizing principle of American society is white supremacy — is taken as further proof that their argument is correct. There’s a very strong Marxian flavor here in terms of the tendency of the “woke” community to label any disagreement with their agenda as the product of either false consciousness or deliberate racism (or other -ism).

  13. J Dye,

    Read my comment on the Schenk case again (above, April 25 at 11:52 am): It refers to “then-President Wilson” by name. That the first Red Scare, the Palmer Raids and so on occurred under Wilson is no secret. And yes, of course there have been regimes inspired by the left that have been repressive to varying degrees, up to and including the most viciously totalitarian.

    The issue at hand, however, is whether protesters at an American college in 2017, acting on behalf of causes identified with the left (antiracism, anti-white-supremacy, support for the rights of historically marginalized groups, etc.) are well served by tactics that limit freedom of speech in practice or seek to have it curtailed as a matter of policy. I think what it’s most helpful for those particular folks to consider is that limits and exceptions to freedom of speech have often in the past, in America as elsewhere, been weapons of the powerful *against* the left, against marginalized groups and against the kinds of causes the protesters represent. Conversely, free speech has typically been the friend of the left and the powerless.

    This seems to me the information that they might be missing and might find persuasive. If you think that simply excoriating the left and denouncing past leftist abuses will change the minds of people on the left today, by all means give it a try, but I don’t think it will work — and anyway, as you say, I’m a teacher, and that’s not generally the means by which teachers go about their job.

    (Also, a footnote on Kent State: The National Guardsmen at Kent State opened fire into a crowd. Unless you’ve got some kind of magic-bullet theory here, you cannot possibly believe they had some way of knowing that the specific individuals this would kill and injure had been destroying businesses, burning buildings, etc. At least one of them, Sandra Lee Scheuer, appears to have been an innocent passerby who was just walking from one class to another. And again, whatever the merits of that case, if you think that advocating something like armed government troops firing on unarmed student protesters will make you more persuasive to student protesters today, well, good luck with that.)

    Dan ’05,

    Yes, increasingly, this is why I am reluctant to call myself a “progressive” nowadays, as I did in the past, and prefer the term “liberal.” Some elements of today’s progressive movement are succumbing to ancient fallacies like the ends justify the means. This will not serve them well.

  14. Finished a few tests and a problem set, so I have a bit more space to reply… really interesting to read the thread, and I do appreciate all of the thought people have put into it and Prof. Dickinson for moderating.

    I’m grateful for your providing history of repression of leftist speech (even if not on campus, which is what I’m explicitly speaking about — I am aware of Mario Savio and the leftist origins of campus speech movements) – as I’ve said throughout, I’m wary of policy about limiting campus speech because literally there is speech repression of the left **right now**… there’s also multiple states with bills criminalizing protest right NOW which is why I have a hard time understanding why people who have a very small stake in what happens @ Midd (but allegedly a big stake in free speech) are still focused on it… not that I’m not flattered by the attention…! I’m not saying it’s not important, but the speech we should be most worried about is the speech in the most danger of suppression by the govt, not the speech that we most dislike (although I’ve seen many civil libertarians argue otherwise, and that worries me).

    I have more to say on the topic of campus speech at Middlebury (tune in–well, someday, when I get around to it–because my views are nuanced and have become more so over time at Middlebury), but I want to repeat my belief that I believe in educational institutions striving towards equity and liberation… and ‘neutral’ policies based on tradition often don’t work to those ends. Clearly, there are more fundamental misunderstandings/miscommunications in this thread (and perhaps even @midd) as people are questioning to what extent racism is an issue. But to me, an equitable education works to structure institutions and processes around the most vulnerable and historically least heard. I don’t always know what that looks like or how to best implement it (I wouldn’t say I’m most vulnerable or least heard) but that’s the principle I follow and what I want to push Middlebury towards. I understand that a government perhaps needs more “neutral” policy. Also, mentioned Freire before… still recommend his writing – I hope you would agree that that understanding of a liberatory education does not involve indoctrination.

  15. Current Midd Student,

    You mentioned that, “an equitable education works to structure institutions and processes around the most vulnerable and historically least heard”, and I’d really like to better understand what you mean by this. Which of Middlebury’s institutions and processes should be restructured (and how) in order to make the College more equitable?

  16. Current Midd wrote, “But to me, an equitable education works to structure institutions and processes around the most vulnerable and historically least heard. I don’t always know what that looks like or how to best implement it (I wouldn’t say I’m most vulnerable or least heard) but that’s the principle I follow and what I want to push Middlebury towards.” For me, I think this is a useful and important starting point for moving the dialogue forward – one on which I think (I hope) we can all agree. What I would like now is a discussion regarding Current Midd’s goal: how might we fashion a speech policy that does this without infringing on others’ rights? If individuals don’t all have equal access to the “market place of ideas”, how do we level the playing field so that marginalized voices can be heard? I have strong thoughts on this, but I’d like to hear from others first.

  17. Midd Student wrote: “Current Midd wrote, “But to me, an equitable education works to structure institutions and processes around the most vulnerable and historically least heard. I don’t always know what that looks like or how to best implement it (I wouldn’t say I’m most vulnerable or least heard) but that’s the principle I follow and what I want to push Middlebury towards.”

    There is a profound assumption in this statement that EVERYONE is to be heard!! I don’t know if Midd Student realizes it but s/he just made the argument that what happened at Middlebury is totally unacceptable and reprehensible. No one can claim that Mr. Murray is in the center of academic society. HE has certainly been marginalized in his world. Therefore he should have been heard and then sharply questioned. But, he was not. Shame on folks that I perceive Midd Student is supporting.

    Marginalization is, indeed, contextual. Every human being is on the margins in some place and at some time in their lives. I find this idea of ‘safe spaces’,’trigger warnings’, et. al., to be PC insanity on steroids. The world of human beings is inherently rough and tumble and that isn’t going to change until there is an enormous transformation in the human psyche and everyone become Conscious (see C. G. Jung and P. D. Ouspensky). That is millennia in the future, maybe not even then.

    Ann Coulter has just been refused the invitation to speak at Berkeley that two organizations there had given her and then they withdrew their support under pressure from the radical Left, threatening violence like that at Middlebury, only worse. The police chief said both the Right and Left came together to do battle there these days with real weapons. Bernie Sanders tweeted something to the effect of “What are you afraid of hearing?” and Elizabeth Warren also chastised Berkeley for their lack of spine.

    So, I don’t think the battle is between Left and Right so much as between those for freedom of thought and speech and those for PC tyranny, preventing different thoughts from being spoken in public. Here are two items by a very observant Aussie named Philip Atkinson.

    On Political Correctness:

    http://www.ourcivilisation.com/pc.htm

    Decline of our civilization:

    http://www.ourcivilisation.com/signs/chap9.htm

  18. Jeff,

    I think it is laudable as an educational attempt. However I am coming from the attitude of A.A.: the first step, the IMPORTANT step, is to admit that you (generic) have a problem.

    The statement, the lead statement from the student posters should have been “Boy, while we felt strongly this person shouldn’t have been here, BOY DID WE SCREW UP AND I’M SORRY.”

    and not

    “I’d do it again and feel justified in doing so!”

    The arguments have been made by you and Professor Dickinson and many of the commenters here, including myself. There have been letters, op eds, lectures, blog posts, books and courses on the ill advisedness of infringing the Right of Free Speech and the wrongness of the actions of the rioters at Middlebury.

    All of that information has been rejected.

    Instead, their time is being spent looking for increasingly arcane rationalizations why THEY should have free speech and someone they don’t like should not (this is that ‘nuance’ being sought)

    Because this clearly isn’t about speech on campus.

    It is about power on campus.

    They don’t just want the right to be heard. How do you shut them up?

    It is that their words, having been weighed and measured, weren’t being OBEYED. The faculty had the temerity to disobey their diktats, EVEN as the faculty tacitly agreed with them about the so called odiousness of Murray.

    But that wasn’t enough.

    Hence, the Middlebury Riot of 2017.

  19. J Dye, I think that with any movement, there are some hardliners, some non-hardliners, some people who join up occasionally or with reservations but aren’t fully committed, and other people who haven’t joined yet at all but might be tempted to and perhaps are still thinking about it.

    What you’re describing — the “they” you refer to — is the hardliners. You may be completely right about them. I strongly object as well to the hardline position we’re hearing these days, the no-platforming, the kind of rhetoric I quoted above from (some of) the Claremont protesters, the threats to attack Republicans if they march in a parade in Portland, etc. I don’t hold out much hope for persuading those people.

    But when I talk about being persuasive, I’m thinking of the other groups, the non-hardliners and those who are less committed. Our immediate interlocutors here are people like Current Midd and Midd ’11. They seem open to reason; they’re participating here in the first place, it seems, in order to debate the issues and hear other views. I think there must be more students like them out there, perhaps many more. My premise is that some of those students and observers might be thinking too narrowly — seeing only the alignment of forces at Middlebury, where it’s possible to shout down one guy, and thinking that the causes they sympathize with can be advanced by limiting free speech. If so, they might benefit from the information that in a larger view, historically, limitations on speech and exceptions to free-speech rules have tended to damage their causes, and could certainly be turned against them again.

  20. J. Paul Everett,

    I don’t think Midd Student would disagree with the idea that everyone should be heard – her point, I think, is that historically not everyone has had the same opportunity to be heard, and that we should acknowledge this. I think that if we recognize this fact, it will be easier to work toward a free speech policy that you could support.

  21. Professor Dickinson,

    Does Middlebury have a policy where minorities are not allowed to be heard TODAY? Did they have that policy on March 2nd?

    Do minorities have the ABILITY to be heard on campus TODAY? Have they had their speakers heard? Have they had their rallies, letters to the editor and social functions permitted without problems?

    Now, does Middlebury have a policy of allowing Conservatives to be heard on campus?

    Do Conservatives have the ABILITY to be heard on campus?

    Clearly not.

    So which is the oppressed class TODAY?

    Mid Student ’11 is mistaking ‘being heard’ with ‘getting what they want’. Two different things.

  22. Please excuse me. In my haste, I ascribed statements by Current Midd to Midd ’11.

    Just out of curiosity, what is the statute of limitations on ‘historic’ wrongs. My people were enslaved and regularly murdered by the Romans. Can I throw a snit fit when I meet Italians?

    Sympathy is one thing. Policy change is one thing. Protesting is one thing.

    Rioting is quite another thing and I don’t see the level of injustice that would warrant such actions.

  23. J Dye – I don’t think anyone posting here in this later dialogue is defending rioting. And let’s not get bogged down in a debate over the scope of historical oppression – it is a pointless and nonproductive path to take – I’m much more interested for now in trying to engage with Current Midd and others on what is an acceptable free speech policy at Middlebury.

  24. “an acceptable free speech policy” – the fact that this is up for debate at a private “liberal arts” college is concerning. The implication is that ‘speech’ is for political ends and that the ‘market’ for these ends must be controlled, limited, directed. This will be the result of some moral judgement of the ‘acceptable’ outcomes of the ‘speech’.

    So we’re dealing with morality. To the extent this is imposed by the institution it simply becomes indoctrination. The college is generally seen to offer an opportunity and guidance to permit the fortunate student a broader scope to investigate, contextualize and determine their own moral beliefs. Towards this utopian end I suggest that a “policy” consist of time honored admonitions that can provide the bases of the culture of the institution including; “Query the self-righteous” “Identify and contextualize the current prejudices” “Respect informed judgement, lasting institutions, the power of ideas – reject decadence, primitivism” “Seek understanding” “Value fact over emotion” Practice the forms of dialogue, speech and writing, in the interest of clarity of thought and expression” “Engage with sympathy, intent and and with the goal of comprehending” “Eschew diatribe, embrace discipline, self-control, serenity” “Protect your morals” “Remember the past and save for the future”

    With these (and others – these just came to me as I’m writing) the college is passing on respect for discourse, humility, humanity and hope – temperament and habit. That should be enough for an institution to inculcate.

  25. Professor,

    Okay. Let me take a stab at a few questions for her.

    Were the actions of March 2nd excusable?

    Looking back, would you do anything differently?

    Who should be denied free speech in your opinion?

    What if any speech would excuse the actions of March 2nd?

    What racist policies was Murray advocating?

    Twice you have claimed to be silenced. How? What speech are you being kept from engaging in?

  26. Good questions J. Dye, although I suspect we aren’t going to get anywhere debating Murray’s past research – it’s pretty clear there’s a consistent division of opinion regarding whether he and/or his research is “racist”, and I suspect we aren’t going to get agreement on that question in this exchange. So let’s move beyond that and focus on some of the other questions you’ve raised. (And again, let’s hope more people chime in – it’s not fair for Current Midd to carry the brunt of the argument here, particularly since she’s in the middle of a importance stretch of school work!)

  27. Matt wrote “how might we fashion a speech policy that does this without infringing on others’ rights? If individuals don’t all have equal access to the ‘market place of ideas’, how do we level the playing field so that marginalized voices can be heard?”

    The “this” referred to in the first question is the “structur[ing] [of] institutions and processes around the most vulnerable and historically least heard” stated by Current Midd.

    Phrased another way, how can we create a speech policy that promotes the views of the most vulnerable and historically least heard without infringing others’ rights?

    I must admit, I have been racking my brain to come up with a speech policy that limits speech and accomplishes the goal stated above, and I cannot do so. Essentially any speech exception would, to borrow from Jeff’s prior explanations, swallow the rule.

    For example, if we say that no speech concerning white supremacy is allowed on campus, how do we define “speech concerning white supremacy”? Obviously, overtly racist statements are easy to dispel. But, what if a white Middlebury student posts something on social media stating that they prefer to date white individuals? Is that “speech concerning white supremacy”? Even more concerning, what if a history professor is lecturing about the history of the KKK? Is that “speech concerning white supremacy”?

    It is also worth mentioning, briefly, that any policy limiting specific kinds of speech “chills” speech that it may not intend to chill. For example, a student may want to make a point, in class, that is not the type of speech the policy wants to limit, but the student is concerned that the comment may violate a speech policy imposed by the College and thus does not make the comment. Can the College community accept that as a byproduct of any speech policy it imposes?

    J Dye, I will address a few of your questions.

    Were the actions of March 2nd excusable?

    Outside of the assaults on Professor Stanger and Charles Murray, the car incident, and shouting down Charles Murray, yes. It is important to remember that there were a number of people peacefully protesting at the Charles Murray talk. As a free speech advocate, my guess is that you steadfastly support their right to do so.

    Twice you have claimed to be silenced. How? What speech are you being kept from engaging in?

    My sense is that, currently, many marginalized individuals in the College community feel silenced. Not silenced in the sense that they cannot speak, but silenced in the sense that they are not heard. The Murray event provides a great example of that. A number of students went to the administration and wanted the College to revoke the invitation sent to Charles Murray to speak based on what they perceived to be his past, racist views. The administration and political science department politely declined. It’s easy to see how the students could feel as though their concerns were not heard. Now, the question becomes, how do we ensure that these individuals feel heard without infringing others rights? That gets to the questions posed by Current Midd and Matt regarding a speech policy on campus.

  28. Midd ’11 wrote: “Not silenced in the sense that they cannot speak, but silenced in the sense that they are not heard.”

    “Heard” is a code word that really means “You’re not doing what I want you to do” or “think what I want you to think, like me.” It comes from the presumption that what I WANT supersedes that which is already established in law and the Constitution, namely Free Speech. They want to be able to judge the worthiness of speakers to be sure they are Politically Correct. A truly juvenile wish to be supreme arbiter.

    The other argument that is being lost is that Mr. Murray has a NEW BOOK out about an entirely different subject and that is what he was going to be speaking on, I think. But his past book, now decades old, colors everything he has thought and done since. There is no way to not be tarred and feathered by the past for him in today’s PC culture.

    IMHO, most of academia has lost its way, completely overtaken by radical subjective and repressive thinking. I thank God for Science, Math, Engineering, etc., where outcomes can be determined objectively. It works or it doesn’t work.

    supersede |ˌso͞opərˈsēd|
    verb [ with obj. ]
    take the place of (a person or thing previously in authority or use); supplant: the older models have now been superseded.

    ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense ‘postpone, defer’): from Old French superseder, from Latin supersedere ‘be superior to,’ from super- ‘above’ + sedere ‘sit.’ The current sense dates from the mid 17th cent.

    supercede
    verb
    variant spelling of supersede.
    usage: The standard spelling is supersede, not supercede. The word is derived from the Latin verb supersedere but has been influenced by the presence of other words in English spelled with -cede, such as intercede and accede. The spelling supercede is recorded as early as the 16th century, but is still regarded as incorrect.

  29. Midd 11, you mention in the last paragraph of your last post that students who were offended by Murray’s invitation to campus “feel as though their concerns were not heard”.

    But it’s clear that Laurie Patton was deeply aware of the level of student concern — listen to her words, and tone, and watch her body language in the video of her intro of Murray. It’s also clear that multiple professors, including and indeed especially those who supported his right to speak on campus (e.g. Bleich, Bert, Stanger, and the host of this blog to name but a few) spent much time both before and after Murray’s visit conversing with, and listening to, students who stridently opposed it.

    Let’s not forget about the professors who opposed Murray’s visit and took the initiative to lead a number of sessions in the week before the speech in which they advised students on how to disrupt his speech via “simultaneous dialogue”. In addition to providing coaching which was clearly effective in retrospect, these professors also undoubtedly provided meaningful moral support to those students who felt wronged by Murray’s visit. Meanwhile, the Campus — the College’s official newspaper — ran a series of articles ahead of the speech in which both students and faculty members forcefully argued against Murray’s impending talk.

    Given all this, it is hard for me to get my head around the assertion that this is a case of voices not being heard, or any institutional failure to listen to marginalized voices. Rather, it seems like a case of some members of the College community being very, very angry that the College listened to them and, having listened to them, decided not to change course as they had hoped it would. Is there an element to this story that I’m missing?

  30. Midd ’11

    First, you are correct. If you start making exceptions, the exceptions will swallow the law. So you can’t have exceptions (or at least too many of them) Rules to keep girlie mags from kids. The two exceptions I outlined.

    So yeah, I would be for stopping a speaker from advocating the overthrow of the American government, which is pretty darned good compared to what I have seen elsewhere in the world. But beyond that, not a lot comes to mind, though Post Modernism is on my personal ‘hate’ list for sloppy, dangerous and ill considered ideas which essentially excuse anything.

    But then again, I won’t listen to Post Modernists…

    Which gets to your second point: These aggrieved groups WERE heard. They said words. The people nodded in reception to the ideas. I am sure the administration and the political science department even said nice sympathetic words to confirm that the information was transferred.

    They were not OBEYED. They had an opinion. They made a request. They did not get the request.

    That is not a free speech issue. That is a ‘control’ issue. These are not the same issues at all.

  31. j. Dye—Spot on!! As I wrote above, “Heard” is code for YOU doing what I WANT. Tyranny writ large, for sure.

    “Which gets to your second point: These aggrieved groups WERE heard. They said words. The people nodded in reception to the ideas. I am sure the administration and the political science department even said nice sympathetic words to confirm that the information was transferred.

    They were not OBEYED. They had an opinion. They made a request. They did not get the request.

    That is not a free speech issue. That is a ‘control’ issue. These are not the same issues at all.”

  32. I am broadly in agreement here with Dan ’05, J Dye and J. Paul Everett — although I think it’s also important to thank Midd ’11 for engaging the issues, answering questions and trying to represent the protesters’ views honestly. If that representation is accurate, it sounds like the logic on which the protesters operate (and I’m guesisng not just at Middlebury, but at Berkeley, Claremont, perhaps Yale and the U of Missouri, etc.) is something like this:

    1. If we ask for something and the request is denied, or we’re outvoted, then we “haven’t been heard.”

    2. Not being heard is being “marginalized.”

    3. Being among the marginalized gives you almost unlimited moral authority. The marginalized get to decide for themselves what further actions are legitimate or not.

    If I’ve got that right, it’s a truly toxic line of thinking. Defenders not just of campus free speech, but of American and Western values generally, have no choice but to oppose it as strenuously as they can.

  33. Wow, lots to respond to, but I’ll just hit the basics/most important.

    1. No professors advocated for breaking school rules beforehand. That’s a lie, and a damaging rumor, and it needs to stop. Now.

    2. Have any of you ever been involved in campus activism? Or any activism? Because clearly you have no sense of how one goes about it. Yes, it’s about transferring power–generally to students, which, I think, is why some people are confused that this, strictly interpreted as breaking a rule and therefore being against the rule (and not as a broader expression of dissatisfaction with status quo/need for change @ Midd), Has been seen by some as a demand for more (?) admin power, which could be against student interests. If you support free speech, think about how often you support leftist campus activism… that’s generally “free” speech too, even if you don’t like it. Read more here: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/theres-no-college-p-c-crisis-in-defense-of-student-protesters-20151217
    Asking those coordinating/legitimating Murray’s visit to change their position was also speech.

    3. When I use the word marginalized, I, personally, am invoking larger power structures that go beyond Middlebury. Not a particular instance when my activist tactic didn’t garner the outcome I hoped for. You’re conflating two different things. Although marginalized students are often also activists – maybe because they need collective action (rather than their parents’ pocketbooks) to get their voices heard? Or because they want to change their community to be more supportive of them? Just a thought…

    4. Jeez, what do you have against post-modernism? Po-mo is more dangerous than Murray? Wow…. I am glad you’re not in charge of speech at Midd.

    That’s all for now, folks! And Prof., I have thoughts about how Midd’s speech principles could be more equitable/account for ‘costs’ of speech — I’ll share at some point when I have time. I do feel that’s a good place to start directing this conversation, at least on campus.

  34. Paul, J Dye, Dan, and Jeff,

    I think it is important to attempt to put yourselves in the shoes of the protesters. Let’s say you all are students at Middlebury. A speaker is invited to speak that stands for something offensive to you (say, for example, a person who is anti-free speech). As a group, you go to the Middlebury administration and express your frustration that a person who stands for something that offends you is invited to speak at the College. You think the speaker’s ideas are detrimental to the College community. The members of the administration hear your concerns, offer to facilitate discussions about the speakers views, but politely decline to rescind the invitation to the speaker.

    I think it is completely natural to feel frustrated and “not heard” after that series of events.

    I also think that, in the context of the Murray event, dismissing the frustration of the protesters is callous at best. Racism, marginalization, classism, etc; these are all real issues that affect people every day in our country right now. We can debate whether the protest of Charles Murray was warranted, whether free speech concerns outweigh the concerns of the
    protesters, or whether there are better ways to address these issues, but to refuse to acknowledge that the protesters frustration is at least somewhat understandable has just as many negative implications as the neglect of free speech rights exhibited by the protesters.

    If you want the protesters and individuals like them to acknowledge your concerns – i.e. free speech rights – you should acknowledge theirs as well.

  35. Thanks, Current Midd, for your thoughtful comments. I look forward to hearing your ideas about how Midd’s speech principles can be made more equitable.

    As we continue this very helpful dialogue, I hope those responding to Current Midd direct their comments to the points she has made, rather than rehashing statements that we have already discussed in detail.

  36. I think Midd `11 makes an important point – if this dialogue is going to lead to concrete steps to insure that a Murray-like event does not happen again – and that’s my hope in moderating this discussion – both sides need to acknowledge the issues raised by the other, and use this acknowledgement as a starting point for this conversation. Acknowledgement is not agreement – it is a sign that one recognizes the concerns raised by the other, and responds to those concerns constructively, rather than dismissing them. This is how we learn in the classroom here at Middlebury (at least that’s my goal in my classes!) and I hope we can emulate this ideal as we move forward here.

  37. Midd ’11 – This gets to the heart of the matter: how do we address the concerns of students who feel their voices are not heard in a manner that does not infringe on the rights of others?

  38. Acknowledge? Sure. I will acknowledge that all day. They want the world to be a certain way and the world does not always conform to their desires. This is frustrating.

    It does not conform to MY desires either. Do I get to riot constantly to get my own way?

    This is THE excuse. And it does not need CURRENT damages. They trot out ‘historical’. Well…a child with tens of thousands of dollars in student aid, going to one of the most prestigious colleges I never heard of, who had the administration offering every single sympathetic noise to them EXCEPT automatic compliance…this is not someone you would automatically think of as ‘marginalized’.

    Nor was it a matter of just blatant dismissal. “Oh you silly minority person. How do you say your name again? Don’t trouble your head about Jefe Murray. He’s an IMPORTANT man and you just need to sit there silently. Maybe you will learn something!” This was NOT how the conversation went.

    More along the lines of “Yes, I find his views as loathsome as you do and I really wish the AEI group would just…go away or something. But our academic traditions, legal principles and culture all strongly endorse freedom of speech. So please…PLEASE…have a BIG protest. Invite your friends! I’ll call the media! Just don’t do anything too stupid.” (Like ‘removing RIGHTS from another individual’ was basically implied. Like ‘Don’t hurt anyone’.)

    Those minorities were heard, sympathized with, given GREAT latitude to make their thoughts and feelings heard. There were issues at hand which superseded their feelings because these principles protect them too.

    They decided to have a lynch mob anyway because they thought their ‘feelings’ trumped laws, regulations and civility.

    Again, Midd ’11 and Current Midd are arguing COMPLIANCE to their diktats, not ‘being heard’.

    You can repeat that same justification ‘marginalization’ as many times as you’d like. It doesn’t make it any more legally or logically justifying of DENYING Rights for someone else, which is what you either did or basically approve of.

  39. Current Midd. I am not asking you to agree with any of this, but these are all certainly defensible points.

    1) A professor saying that they will join the students in a protest is enabling them and I would bet consequential sums that some of the faculty did just that. And if Professor Lackwit is standing their, wistfully nostalgic of his own counter culture days as Middlebury students are throwing chairs at the stage and shutting down the speech rights of a fellow human being instead of taking charge and shutting down this assault, that is ‘tacitly endorsing’ their actions.

    Did they PLAN with the students. God I hope not, but I am far less sure of this than you are. By NOT trying to take control of the situation and allowing it to continually escalate, they were ‘ambiguously’ complicit.

    2) You could have stopped your statement at ‘transferring power’. Activists want it. They are not automatically entitled to it. They make their arguments. It is put to ‘social vote’. If the majority of people don’t agree with them, maybe they throw a hissy fit of a protest. That is where ‘campus activism’ legally stops. Instead, the activists in a lot of colleges are not stopping there.

    That makes activists dangerous and untrustworthy to people who think that the rule of law is a good idea. By not only doing this, but then trying to justify denying the rule of law to others, it discredits the activists enormously.

    HR departments across the country are now quietly shuffling Middlebury resumes for jobs and internships to the bottom of the pile…and defensibly so. Who needs that kind of drama? For the non-protesting majority of Middlebury, I am hoping their families are well connected because they will need it.

    The minority students…well…I doubt you did them any favors.

    3) Don’t care what size ‘theater’ you mean. One does not riot to shut someone up. ‘Marginalization’ is not the moral trump card you feel it should be. You don’t like how society is set up. Neither do I. You don’t see me riot to get my way, though I do PEACEFULLY protest.

    4) Casuistry and Sophistry has a long tradition and putting an intellectual label on the practices for the purpose of rationalizing bad actions doesn’t suddenly make them good. I stand by ‘dangerous and sloppy’.

    A Man for All Seasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk

    Back to the original set of questions:

    Were the actions of March 2nd excusable?

    Looking back, would you do anything differently?

    Who should be denied free speech in your opinion?

    What if any speech would excuse the actions of March 2nd?

    These are, to my mind, important questions.

  40. One thing we need to do is to is to separate some words that are badly used because they mean different things to different people.

    Agree: Consent to do or act on.

    Accept: Consent to take in and consider. (Does not imply agreement).

    Differ: To hold a different viewpoint while allowing the other to hold theirs.

    Disagree: To be strongly against the other. It usually means force of some kind used against the other.

    So, please note that only Agree is that of action taking that You want.

    Midd ’11–you wrote: We can debate whether the protest of Charles Murray was warranted, whether free speech concerns outweigh the concerns of the
    protesters, or whether there are better ways to address these issues, but to refuse to acknowledge that the protesters frustration is at least somewhat understandable has just as many negative implications as the neglect of free speech rights exhibited by the protesters.

    If you want the protesters and individuals like them to acknowledge your concerns – i.e. free speech rights – you should acknowledge theirs as well.

    What does it mean to acknowledge their concerns? They WERE heard by the faculty and administration as evidenced by the pre-event discussions taking place and the administration’s communications. If by “acknowledged” you mean the same as “heard”, meaning your proposal wasn’t accepted and acted on, then you are in for a rude awakening as to the nature of the real world.

    The facts are that people at the top have the power, whether it is corporate, NGO, government, out-sized wealth, whatever. They do not give it up lightly. If you expect them to respond to your arguments and they choose not to do so, rebellion by you will get you fired and then you will be really marginalized OR you’ll form your own organization and be the Head Cheese. Then you’ll find out how the world really works, and that people, being people, will not always agree or even accept your thoughts and decisions, especially the decisions. And if they actively sabotage your plans, what will you do then? Sweet reason? Good luck.

    I led an internal consulting and training group for about 25 years. I had great people and we were very inclusive of everyone (Total of 11), including the administrative folks, etc. in all that we did, especially planning. Our training program needed significant re-thinking after 10 years and I sent the whole team off-site to re-create it with only two “must have’s” and did not attend myself because I was too invested in the old way. They came back with a great re-think that we did some adjustments and it thrived.

    I am saying this to demonstrate that I’m not some dictatorial troglodyte but was an inclusive leader of our group. BUT, the buck stopped at my desk. In the terrible period of 1979-1981 when interest rates on home building went to 17% as Reagan and his head of the Fed were squeezing a 7-10 percent inflation out of the system, I was forced to lay off three people and not fill two open positions. That was so painful I was physically sick for a week. But, we survived it and then went on to thrive for another 12 years, bringing in Lean Thinking to the organization, creating millions in savings.

    Let me give you another example. At a point in time in the mid-1970’s, the company I worked for wasn’t doing very well. Another guy and myself did a lot of night work and went thru every division of the company and figured out what they should be making with good strategy, good operational actions and leadership. We wrote up a proposal and gave it to my VP boss and he gave it directly to the President of the company. It created a negative stir among some of the upper management when it was passed around. Because we presented data that we should be making twice what we were. Too many people said that wasn’t possible and if it was, it would mean people were not doing their jobs.

    But, the President brought in a powerful consulting firm and they went thru the same exercise and said we were wrong. There was, in fact, TWICE as much as we said there was in profit to be gotten (4x what we were making). So, significant changes were made but…we did not get to do the work. Did we riot, throw a fit, at the next board meeting? Of course not. Were we heard? Definitely. But not in the way you are meaning.

    So, you should think about what your position really is. YOU are not running things. You are there to get an education and to contribute your thoughts as you may. Whether or not they are acted on is out of your hands. Doing the actions that occurred at Middlebury in my era would have landed you in jail and definitely out of the University.

    In my view, several profs and all the protesters, especially those who physically attacked the invited guest and their escorts, injuring a woman professor, should already be gone from campus, permanently. Like United that just paid an undisclosed sum to the man dragged off and injured, and has changed their corporate policies, so should that woman be compensated by Middlebury for pain and suffering, not just her physical injury costs. And Middlebury should make it very plain TO EVERYONE that their policies will never again tolerate or allow any invited speaker to experience such an event. Should it occur, punishment will be swift and sure. To do otherwise is to submit to anarchy. I doubt the Midd Administration will do anything significant because they are infected with the PC sickness and outright anarchy manifesting all over the country.

    The Rose Festival in Portland, Oregon, has been canceled due to threats of violence if it is held. A great community event canceled because the leaders of the city do not have the cojones to tell the anarchists from Eugene that violence will not be tolerated and back it up with police and the National Guard, if necessary. We cannot allow people to dictate what will not go on that has gone on for decades because they do not like some aspect of it. Otherwise, society breaks down into those willing to inflict violence running things. That’s happening all too much already in the world.

    Here are two other definitions I used in my consulting:

    Education: is for Difference. To be able to cope with and handle difference as it arises. This means to understand strategy and purpose. Far too many don’t.

    Training: is for Sameness. To be able to reproduce the same outcome every time. I don’t want my CPA to not follow the accounting rules and get me in trouble. I want him/her well trained.

    So, Midd ’11, et.al, why are you at Middlebury? If it is for education, you have a long, long way to go. Better get busy studying the great leaders of the world if you want to have any influence on the path of our country. (Where is Occupy Wall Street? No where, because they had no plans, no leaders, no strategy beyond sitting and shouting around. Where is the Arab Spring? Same place, because even those who led it admit they didn’t have a “what’s next” plan. Very foolish.) Change is hard, it is 10x as hard to do as to think up grand plans that never survive contact with reality. Trump is finding that out. You students and more than a few professors and administrators need a deep think, imho.

  41. OK, I have a specific proposal. But first: For what it’s worth, I for one have not refused to acknowledge that the protesters’ frustration is understandable. I specifically said in an earlier comment that “that losing the argument, or not getting your preferred policy” — an experience very familiar to those of us who are left of center — “is frustrating but not necessarily an injustice.”

    Current Midd is right, I think, that the term “marginalized” as we’re hearing it here conflates two things, an immediate situation (not winning a given point) and larger social conditions. But I think this conflation is coming from apologists for the protests, not from those of us who are pointing it out. Put another way, it’s true that there are people who are systematically disadvantaged in our society. (How many actual students at elite colleges this includes, given that an elite education is a great privilege denied to 99.99999% of the human race, is another question.) Even the fact of being among the disadvantaged, though, cannot mean that any given request or demand you make is a worthy one that must be met. Members of disadvantaged groups can be wrong; and even when they’re right, they benefit more than most from having orderly procedures for resolving disputes. Such procedures — elections, courts, hearings, representative assemblies, written rules that decision-makers are bound to follow, and all that other good stuff we learn about in political-science classes — always include the possibility that you’ll lose on any given question. That’s part of what makes them orderly. The other part is that such losses are not the end of the story; you can come back and try again the next time, maybe with better results. If the loss is really unfair, it might motivate more people to become active and call for change. (See, for instance, the big resistance movement that’s developed against the outcome of our recent presidential election.)

    To override the procedures because you didn’t get your way, and force the outcome you want anyway, is abandoning orderly decision-making in favor of a sheer contest of power, one in which the winner will be whomever shouts the loudest or shoves the hardest. Contests of power are almost always won by the powerful, not the disadvantaged — which is why resorting to force, while justifiable in very rare cases, should never be done for “light and transient causes,” as the American Founders famously put it.

    But to the practical suggestion. Mine is modeled in part on the American Founding: At Middlebury or any other campus where these are truly live issues, I would recommend a broad, campus-wide debate, including what they used to call “teach-ins” back in the day. (It sounds like such a program already got started in the run-up to Murray’s visit.) It should be made clear to students that this isn’t just talk, that in fact it’s aimed at students weighing in as a body on some specific plan for what to do about controversial guest speakers: how to select them, how they can be challenged, who gets to veto them, etc. Students should perhaps be asked to elect representatives to a committee to draft such a plan, which could then be further debated. Some pains should be taken to ensure that this committee is as representative of the entire student body as possible, not just self-appointed from among those who are already activists.

    The teach-in part of the debate could cover any relevant issue and every perspective on campus speech that anyone considers important. If the students are really to be well served, though, it should include outside perspectives, including this: Someone whom students would respect — a Bernie Sanders-type figure, for instance, or a few of them — should be asked to come in and explain what’s at stake in all this for a college’s reputation. What happens to Middlebury’s national standing, **and therefore the value of its degrees,** if it comes to be seen as a place that won’t invite conservatives, or that shies away from controversy, or where free speech is considered a lesser value? In other words, if there are supposedly benefits to the “marginalized” from some more restrictive speech policy, what are some of the costs? (Presumably the marginalized who have chosen to attend an elite college are there in part because they hope the degree will be valuable, i.e. worth as much as possible in the eyes of people beyond the campus, and will thus make them and their offspring less marginalized. So they might find outside perspectives on this quite interesting.)

    Then, after thorough but not interminable discussion, there should be a vote of the whole student body, referendum-style, and this is important: by secret ballot. I think some of the current activists might be surprised at the result.

    Such a vote and the plan it yields will, I think, still ultimately just be advisory, because as I said earlier, private colleges are non-profit corporations legally under the control of their trustees, who have a fiduciary duty to pursue the best interests of the organization as they see them. It appears that the Middlebury protesters have not challenged that fact, meaning they’re happy letting a board of one-percenters have the final say. But if a broad approach like I’ve described, with widespread student involvement, produced a consensus for a particular way forward, I think there’s little danger that it wouldn’t be heard.

  42. Literally, no one threw chairs. And Murray’s speech rights were not infringed upon (if anyone’s access to speech was, it *might* be the students that invited Murray). I can still think they were wrong to invite him. And you can still feel that the protesters were wrong, and that Murray should’ve been heard because students invited him, but that doesn’t mean that you can lie about what happened. Were you there? Because I was, and hyperbole is not helping your cause.

    Also, protest is protected in the faculty handbook. As a free speech advocate, I should hope that that cheers you–academic freedom and all that…

    Jeff Smith, thanks for your proposal. I think framing discussion as dialogue (where both “sides” can be moved), rather than debate, would be good. I would offer a different process but I like the way that your process includes students. More to come…

  43. As we continue this dialogue, I would like to reiterate Current Midd’s point: hyperbole is not helping anyone’s cause. Passions run deep on both “sides”, and that is an indication of the importance of the issues and how deeply people care about it. That’s all to the good, and I don’t want to squelch anyone’s passion, but let’s keep this conversation both civil and rooted in fact as much as possible. Exaggerating what happened at the protest detracts from the more important issues at stake.

    A couple other points as we move forward: Current Midd is right that the faculty handbook protects the right to protest, although it is clear based on the administration’s decision to punish those who shouted Murray off the stage that not all the students protests were conducted in accordance with how the administration interprets the handbook language. And I think there is disagreement regarding whether Murray’s speech rights, and those of other students who wanted to engage in a dialogue with him, were infringed upon or not – not everyone shares Current Midd’s view here. But at this point I’m not sure it is worth trying to reach a consensus on either of those points. Instead, it may be more productive to address whether the post-Murray debate has been difficult in part because those on either side are focusing on slightly different aspects of the Murray visit. As Jeff puts it, there is “an immediate situation (not winning a given point by which I think he means not preventing, or partially preventing, Murray from having a platform to speak), and a larger social condition in which groups do not feel their free speech is as effective as that exercised by others.

    As for Jeff’s suggestion for a campus-based reprise of the Constitutional Convention (my words, not his!) I would point out that I’ve conducted these (on a much smaller basis, of course) at my weekly politics luncheons, where students have had spirited and ongoing discussion regarding all aspects of Murray’s visit. I encourage Midd students to attend these.

  44. Yes, just to clarify, the models I had in mind were the great American debates of the Founding era: first over independence, when town meetings all over the country were debating and passing resolutions on what to do about the crisis with Britain, ultimately informing the debates at the Second Continental Congress that led to the Declaration; and then the Constitutional framing debates of 1786-89, which also involved meetings and conventions all over the country as well as the Constitutional Convention itself, along with innumerable pamphlets, broadsides, open letters, newspaper essays, etc. on all sides. To me these are both inspiring examples of free discussion involving the people at large in thinking through great and difficult questions.

  45. Current Midd Student,

    You mentioned that,

    “No professors advocated for breaking school rules beforehand. That’s a lie, and a damaging rumor, and it needs to stop. Now.”

    It has been widely reported that professors led meetings ahead of Murray’s visit in which the professors endorsed “simultaneous dialogue” as a resistance tactic. Was that inaccurate reporting?

    Midd ’11,

    To your hypothetical question, for what it’s worth, I would not object to literally anyone coming to speak on campus. I have a fair amount of firsthand experience being offended by Midd visiting speakers…I joined the Marines while I was at Midd, which was also around when the invasion of Iraq was gearing up. The school hosted many antiwar speakers and activists at that time, a fair number of whom were also quite anti-military in a morally righteous and condescending kind of way. While it was aggravating to hear people give talks in which they said mean things about “my people”, it was also a great growing experience, both intellectually in terms of thinking through “if they’re wrong then how are they wrong” and also in terms of general emotional self-management.

    I’m not saying that my own lived experience gives me carte blanche to pontificate upon current Midd kids as to what should/should not offend them, I’m saying I just don’t get their overall approach. I don’t get the self-defensive impulse here, especially given that the students in question form the politically dominant faction on campus. I would think that campus activists would relish the opportunity to mix it up with opposing views when the immediate intellectual and social environment gives them much more of a “home court advantage” relative to society as a whole.

  46. Well, 200 students screamed unrelentingly to not allow him to speak or others to listen.

    When he repaired to a studio, these same people pounded on the walls to try to drown out the video stream.

    A fire alarm was pulled for the same purpose.

    When he was LEAVING, he was accosted and assaulted, despite being escorted by two security guards AND faculty. Who knows what would have happened if he tried to leave alone.

    AFTER he left, protestors STILL chased him from one restaurant to another.

    I am interested in what other interpretation there is than silencing him (maybe permanently) to justify such actions.

    Hyperbole is a mistake. So is minimizing.

  47. I just finished reading the comments of Charles Murray.

    According to him, the faculty went to the protestors, and tried to negotiate a settlement: “You guys get to come in, scream at the top of your lungs for 20 minutes, get lots of footage for Youtube so you can show how ‘keen’ you are but then you guys leave, Murray speaks and everyone just TAKES TURNS.” EVERYONE gets free speech and their voices heard.

    Except that the protestors would not accept ANY limitations on their shouting.

    They were offered a protest. They were also offered a display to scream at the ‘Other’.

    That wasn’t enough. There is this thing called ‘arguing in good faith’.

    I am a bit fuzzy on why STUDENTS get to dictate any terms on what ideas they are exposed to, save that of not participating (Lord knows I didn’t read everything on my reading list). Do they get to ‘vote’ on if they learn calculus? Do they get to vote on if they want to read Faulkner when he is on the reading list? No?

    Are they there to have their minds broadened with new and uncomfortable challenges to their mindset or are they there for constant self congratulation on values they already hold?

    How is this any different?

  48. Current Midd and Midd ’11

    Here is another question:

    What would it take for you to allow Murray to speak on your campus? What kind of protest and for how long would you require to feel that your voices were ‘heard’? What was lacking that made you feel ‘unheard’ besides, you know, capitulation on the part of the faculty?

    Assume capitulation is off the table because the vast majority of teachers, students and the wider world think you are wrong. You don’t have to agree you are wrong. But we had a vote. You lost. That is how democracy works.

    What would make you feel, if not okay, better about it that was not done by the administration?

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