Unfortunately, I think knocking the reporter down may have earned Gianforte votes at the end of the day. Such is the state of our culture, both in and out of the academy, at the present time.
It was always perplexing to me that a certain breed of ideologue seemed to think that it would only be their side that would resort to violence. Incidents like the one referenced, and perhaps more on point in a thread and forum discussing violence on campus, the recent clash at Berkley, make me fear we are entering a stage where that is no longer the case.
I went to Middlebury. Do I agree with shouting down an invited speaker? No. Was I embarrassed by what happened with Murray? Yes. Do I think that AEI is taking advantage of this incident to rile the far right? Absolutely. Murray received a lot of attention back in the mid-90s with his controversial “The Bell Curve”–most of it unfavorable. He dropped off the radar for 15+ years, and only reemerged back on the scene with “Coming Apart” after Trump won the presidency. AEI has thrown tons of money to fly him all over the country to speak at colleges where they know he’ll generate controversy. In my opinion, they’re hoping that he continues to draw disruptive crowds because as I said, it gets the alt-right crowd’s underpants all in a bunch. His speaking calendar is jam-packed, and part of the reason for that is because of what happened at Middlebury.
Look–there are 2,500 students at Middlebury. 60 or 70 students were involved in this protest. The majority of those students turned their back on Murray and chanted when he reached the podium. What they did isn’t illegal, but rather a relatively minor violation of the student handbook. You think kids should be expelled for turning their back on a speaker and chanting? I don’t agree with what they did, but I think the punishment of probation fits the crime.
The students who followed Murray and Stranger to the second venue and made noise outside (including the pulling of fire alarms) received harsher penalties–a note in their permanent records. Again, I think that’s appropriate. They made noise–they didn’t hurt anyone.
The last portion of this incident, and indeed the reason it even made the news, involved a group of around 10-15 agitators who surrounded the car and grabbed Stranger’s hair, leaving her with whiplash. Murray wasn’t assaulted. He wasn’t touched. Completely unacceptable behavior, and criminal. However, by all accounts, these individuals were masked and there’s no indication they were even Middlebury students. The Middlebury town police said they acted as though they had tactical training. There’s no video that identifies anyone (don’t you think if there was, you’d have seen it already?) and Stranger and Murray themselves couldn’t identify any of the individuals. If you don’t have proof that someone committed a crime, how can you punish them? This is still America after all.
No, but I do think that the students who organized the protests that resulted with an assault and battery should be expelled. The organizers did the equivalent of yelling fire in crowded theater when they branded Murray racist, sexist and anti-gay when he is nothing of the sort. You could see hate in the eyes of the protesters.
@Ohiodad51 George and West were at Swarthmore 3 years ago, speaking about Liberal Arts and the crisis of identity those schools face. If you have an extra 90 mins this holiday weekend…
That means that if X organizes a protest or other event that Y does not like, Y can show up (in black masks to avoid being identified) and cause violence to get X punished, even if violence was the furthest thing from X’s intent in organizing the protest or other event.
That is not the case here. The organizers deliberately inflamed the crowd with false charges of racism, sexism, etc., and their supporters tried to beat up Murray and succeeded in putting a professor in the hospital. The protest organizers should be expelled.
No one knows who the masked people were, or even if they were students at all. They could have showed up to do exactly what they did - turn a peaceful protest into something violent.
Before this incident, the majority of people under the age of 25 had never heard of Charles Murray. I’d love to see his speaking engagement calendar and compare pre-Trump to post-Trump bookings.
Free speech is free speech… which includes not only a speaker’s right to speak, but all protesters’ right to protest, which is another form of speech. So I disagree with the idea that the students who organized the protest should be expelled. In a democracy, protests are not illegal.
And students who disagree with the hypotheses of The Bell Curve have every right to speak strongly against them.
That said, this went beyond protest to blocking someone else’s speech… and even to violence, which IS illegal.
I agree with @arcadia – the punishments should increase with the degree of disruption caused by a student. The fact that some people were violent does not mean that a mere chanter should be punished as harshly as someone who was violent! I am not a college administrator, just a public school one, so I do not know the range of options available to them so cannot comment on what would be fitting for each type of inappropriate action in which each student engaged. But punishments should be made to match crimes, not to satisfy public outrage.
BUT…
It is terribly unfortunate that no one is stepping up, as per the honor code, to name the hairpullers and car rockers. These people should be arrested and tried and serve jail time if proven guilty. Not only the police but also the school should go all out in condemning violence and urging people to step forward if they have information. A mob mentality developed that night, and the college needs to help students see how wrong that was and teach them about historical parallels.
It is clear that college campuses, as well as all those of us who proudly identify ourselves as liberals, need to emphasize the importance of free speech in a democracy. Liberalism is losing touch with its roots.
The New York Times piece that I believe was called something like Is Intersectionality a Religion? did a great job of pointing out the flaws in the current emphasis on identity politics and political correctness among some college students. Extremism of any sort, in regard to silencing or shunning those who disagree, on any part of the political spectrum, damages democracy.
A quick search on College Confidential shows that Murray has been discussed on CC for the last 10 years. He has also been actively speaking, at colleges and elsewhere, for a long time. Again, a quick search would have revealed this to you.
As to whether his speaking engagements have further increased, have you considered it might be because he was quite prescient in Coming Apart about the divisions in this country?
Charles Murray became know in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground, a book about welfare that foreshadowed his more recent Coming Apart. His earlier work was a major driver of welfare reform during the Clinton administration. If people under 25 do not know his life’s work and only know him as some kooky racist, that is an indictment on our education system.
How did you not know that before? Without even googling I can think of this tactic being successfully used at least 200 years ago. Stagecoach and bank robbers come right to mind.
If these masked people were not students I cannot fathom how you think students should know who they are. Even is they were students, they wouldn’t necessarily be recognizable -masked - in a mob of people.
Masks work, that’s why people who don’t want to be identified use them.
It is the KKK’s favorite tactic too. And the Sons of Liberty who dumped tea in Boston Harbor in a rather well-known protest. And pretty much everyone who wants to avoid being ID’ed in a crime.
It is absolutely as credible that outsiders came masked to Midd to stir up trouble, for various reasons, as it is that it was Midd kids.
I linked below Middlebury’s policy on Demonstrations and Protests- it’s relatively short and very straightforward. It is contained in the policies set forth in the Student Handbook which the students agree to when they enroll.
What I found interesting is that there is a whole protocol that must be adhered to before any demonstration on college grounds takes place. It includes registering the protest and working with public safety to ensure all students participating understand the guidelines.
And @Zinhead raises a good point – the policy does impose certain obligations on the organizers or “hosts” as they are referred to in the policy. They are charged with setting the ground rules with Public Safety and emailing all participants advising them of the guidelines. While Public Safety reserves the right to interfere if there is violence, for non-violent but disruptive behavior the “hosts” are to be contacted first – so it seems they are looking to the “hosts” to assist in controlling the protestors if the event is being disrupted.
I do wonder whether any of these procedures were followed or if this was just a “free for all” that was sprung as a surprise. Or if the “hosts” refused to cooperate with Public Safety when approached after the disruption began. I would re-visit my thoughts on sanctions after determining whether any of the above protocols were even attempted by the organizers.