Posted on 03/07/2017 10:26:58 AM PST by SeekAndFind
At Middlebury College last week, Charles Murray needed a safe space — literally.
In a significant escalation of the campus speech wars, protesters hooted down the conservative scholar in a lecture hall and then roughed up a Middlebury faculty member who was escorting him to a car.
The Middlebury administration commendably tried to do the right thing and stand by Murray’s right to be heard, but was overwhelmed by a yowling mob with all the manners and intellectual openness of a gang of British soccer hooligans.
Sometime soon, we may yearn for the days when college students were merely childish and close-minded. If campus protests of speech begin to more routinely slide into violence, Middlebury will be remembered as a watershed.
First, there was the target. Charles Murray is controversial — mainly for his book The Bell Curve, about IQ — but he is one of the most significant social scientists of our age. He is employed by the prestigious conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, and his books are highly influential and widely reviewed. His latest, which was to be the topic of his Middlebury talk, is Coming Apart, a best-selling account of the struggles of the white working class that illuminated some of the social forces behind the rise of Donald Trump.
No one is bound to accept any of Murray’s ideas, but they are inarguably worth engaging. He exists in a different universe from Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right provocateur infamous for saying or doing anything to try to get infamous. That Middlebury protesters can’t tell the difference between the two shows that their endeavor to know or understand nothing outside their comfort zone has been a smashing success.
Second, there was the venue. No one has ever mistaken Middlebury, a small Vermont liberal-arts college founded by Congregationalists, for Berkeley. It doesn’t have a reputation as a hotbed and training ground for rabble-rousers, and yet has given us one of the most appalling episodes of anti-speech thuggery in recent memory. If it can happen at Middlebury, it can happen anywhere (or at least at Swarthmore or Bucknell).
Finally, there was the violence. The students who brought in Charles Murray framed the evening as “an invitation to argue,” and in that spirit asked professor Allison Stanger, a Democrat in good standing, to serve as Murray’s interlocutor. When chanting students commandeered the lecture hall, Stanger and Murray repaired to another room for a live-streamed discussion. Protesters found the room and pounded on the windows and pulled fire alarms. When Murray and Stanger exited at the end of the live-stream and headed for their get-away car, protesters assailed them. They shoved and grabbed Stanger, who was shaken up and later went to the hospital, and pounded on the car and tried to obstruct it.
Stanger wrote afterward that she “feared for my life.” And for what offense? Talking to someone who thinks differently than the average Middlebury faculty member or student.
Political correctness has been a phenomenon on campuses since the 1980s, but now has become much more feral. The root of the phenomenon is the idea that unwelcome speech is tantamount to a physical threat against offended listeners. If this is true, it follows that dissenting speech needs to be shunned (in safe spaces) and attacked (in protests). Shutting down a speaker and literally running him off campus is, from this warped perspective, an entirely justifiable defensive action.
Of course, speech doesn’t threaten anyone. The appropriate response to an erroneous argument is counterargument. And the free exchange of ideas always allows for the possibility that someone will actually learn something.
If campuses aren’t to sink further into their current miasma of illiberalism, administers will have to actively fight the tide of suppression. It’s not enough to say the right things about free speech; they have to punish thuggish student agitators. Otherwise, college campuses may become increasingly unsafe spaces for anyone departing from a coercive orthodoxy.
— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review
it rose to the level of hate when they physically attacked and then physically removed the speaker and the fella trying to help him-
I’ve said it before. The Leftists are creating, partly intentionally, a generation of Red Guards who love the power thrill of righteously enforcing their orthodoxy.
And when the rioters start throwing dangerous objects or mob the stage then what?
This has nothing to do with what the speakers should do but with these schools allowing this behavior without consequence.
This scum was willing to assault an old lady, probably the school’s leading light. Talk about blaming the victim.
[[An idea these snowflakes have never been taught.]]
They will learn quick enough that their hateful attacks won’t be tolerated when their clan begins getting thinned out by expulsion- There ARE limits! And they need to be taught the hard way that they crossed the lines
“Of course, speech doesn’t threaten anyone.”
Au contraire.
L
I agree.
I agree.
True. But the skools since John Dewey have intentionally been destroying virtue formation in children and emasculating males, so that the takeover of our Republic would be easy (the “happy slavery” of the irrational masses where they actually believe “snow is black” and boys can be girls and the State is god (Fichte 1810)) has been on steroids since 1970.
Socrates stated that the only purpose for education was to teach Virtue. That is because only virtuous people are “free”. The cultural Marxists with they hyper-sexualization (Sex Ed) and their lies and revisionist history, and Prussian system of forcing dependency and “group-(non)-think” on the masses, knew to DESTROY virtue formation in children was easy if they could get them OUT of the Natural family (and away from common sense and agency).
John Dewey destroyed the Classical Christian curricula for moral relativism (destruction of moral formation in children so they could never be wise (discern Good and Evil). Wisdom is only the ability to tell Good from Evil and choose Good since evil is vice (ignorance and slavery).
They were very rough too.
Whatever Charles Murray was speaking about must have really struck a nerve? The old saying “The Truth Hurts” must be true, else who would give a damn.
they would know pain for sure.
I have no regrets and I’m sure you don’t, either.
I sent a chatty email to the twenty-something seller of a car I bad bought. I said nothing negative, yet he was offended by my writing style. Apparently, one should never use humor for fear “somebody” might be offended. Therefore, he got offended just to make sure I didn’t ever do it in the future. Being offended is all about control. His behavior reminds me of an interview I read of people who went to Htler Youth camp. One incorrect word and they got punished.
I as accepted at Middlebury college and almost went there.Pretty little college in a pretty little Vermont town back then. Famous for their foreign language school where summers went spent speaking nothing but french or german or spanish.
Now, not so much.
The only flaw I can see in your argument, if you can call it a “flaw,” is that “virtue” will just be seen, and redefined, as the leftist determines. They will, and ARE, claiming that they represent virtue and morality, and it is conservatives who are immoral an not virtuous.
Do not despair, When we choose to stand up, they will back down. It’s that way with bullies.
Spoiled little brats at Middlebury!
This word gets out to alums and parents and prospectives.
Many of the “student†protesters that night at Middlebury were ringers, not actual students at the school. Middlebury has been pushing as hard as other prestigious liberal arts schools for a diverse student body, yet it remains a very preppy school. When the cameras panned the crown, I knew right away that many of the people screaming so loudly that Murray couldn’t speak were not Middlebury students. Since then, I’ve been in touch with someone who works at the school who confirmed that many of the people who prevented Charles Murray from speaking were people who came from outside and had no connection to Middlebury. However, it was Allison Stanger herself who broke the news that there were members of the FACULTY who shouted down Charles Murray, and that some of these had openly acknowledged having never read Murray’s books. THAT part, sadly, is unsurprising.
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