The Middlebury College Republicans announced Wednesday that they have invited controversial conservative author and speaker Charles Murray to speak on campus in March — and that Murray has accepted the invitation.
Murray was scheduled to speak at Middlebury in 2017, but massive student protests that ended in violence resulted in the event being canceled. Ultimately, Murray delivered his talk via live-stream on the school’s website. The series of events captured national press attention and attracted public outrage.
The student organizers said they hope the upcoming event will give Murray what he was denied in 2017: the chance to speak on campus.
Murray is set to speak on March 31 at 4:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall, the same auditorium where he was shouted down in 2017.
Dominic Aiello and Brendan Philbin, co-presidents of the Middlebury College Republicans, wrote an op-ed in the Middlebury Campus explaining their reasoning for bringing Murray to campus, and their process in planning the event.
“We believe that the way the administration and the protestors handled the 2017 event was a stain on Middlebury’s reputation and a betrayal of its mission of ‘creating a world with a robust and inclusive public sphere,’ per the college’s Policy on Open Expression,” the students wrote.
Murray is currently a W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. He is coming to Middlebury to speak about his upcoming book, “Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class.” The book reportedly takes on the ideas that race and gender are social constructs, and that class is a function of privilege, in an “investigation of the genetics and neuroscience of human differences.”
Murray is famous for his ideas that some groups are disadvantaged because they cannot compete with the intellectual, psychological, and moral superiority of white men. He is a proponent of eliminating welfare, affirmative action, and the Department of Education.
Murray made his first visit to Middlebury in 2007 to speak about his most well-known book, “The Bell Curve.” His 2017 visit was centered around his book “Coming Apart.”
The 2017 event resulted in a protest by several hundred students, which stopped Murray from being able to successfully speak. After the event’s live-stream, protesters surrounded moderator Allison Stanger, a professor of political science, ultimately pulling her hair and twisting her neck so badly that she had to go to the hospital.
Middlebury disciplined 74 students for the incident.
Aiello and Philbin wrote that for Middlbury to live up to its mission statement, it must be willing to “listen to, understand and challenge” controversial ideas like Murray’s.
“A college and its students should not only engage with ideas that run counter to their own beliefs, but they should also seek them,” they wrote. “We believe that it is when our own perspectives are challenged — not reinforced — that we are able to develop as thinkers.”
They added that because Murray’s work is influential in mainstream politics, he deserves to be heard.
The co-presidents said a lack of adequate preparation by students, faculty and staff to “thoroughly consider the most effective ways to respond to the event” in 2017 was one of the reasons for the strife that ensued.
They said this time, they began planning the event in September, and decided to announce it to the public now, two months before the actual event. After the event proposal was submitted in late September, Aiello and Philbin said a dialogue opened up with the administration about how safety could be ensured this time.
The students said they worked with their club’s adviser, former Gov. Jim Douglas, as well as several other faculty members, to plan the event. They said they took “several recommendations” from the Engaged Listening Project in an attempt to format the event in a way that will acknowledge as many voices as possible.
“Each year Middlebury hosts nearly 300 speakers who come to campus from across the country and around the world, invited either directly by the institution, by its faculty, or by its registered student organizations,” Middlebury spokesperson Sarah Ray wrote in a statement to the Middlebury Campus, which first reported on the upcoming event. “With each event, we are committed to providing a forum in which the Middlebury community can engage in a thoughtful, rigorous, and respectful manner.”
“We not only welcome but also encourage any and all constructive forms of support or opposition to this event,” the op-ed concluded. “We are fervent supporters of the right to peacefully protest and look forward to receiving input from the community in the coming months.”