Allison Stanger, the Middlebury College professor who ended up in a neck brace after protests at the private Vermont institution spiraled out of control, wrote a piece in the New York Times Monday reflecting on the mob scene that transpired.
In early March, Middlebury students shouted down visiting speaker Charles Murray, a political scientist and co-author of the controversial 1994 work The Bell Curve. Murray had been invited by the student-run American Enterprise Institute club to speak about his 2012 book, Coming Apart.
Stanger writes:
Intelligent members of the Middlebury community — including some of my own students and advisees — concluded that Charles Murray was an anti-gay white nationalist from what they were hearing from one another, and what they read on the Southern Poverty Law Center website. Never mind that Dr. Murray supports same-sex marriage and is a member of the courageous “never Trump” wing of the Republican Party. Students are in college in part to learn how to evaluate sources and follow up on ideas with their own research. The Southern Poverty Law Center incorrectly labels Dr. Murray a “white nationalist,” but if we have learned nothing in this election, it is that such claims must be fact-checked, analyzed and assessed. Faulty information became the catalyst for shutting off the free exchange of ideas at Middlebury. We must all be more rigorous in evaluating and investigating anger, or this pattern of miscommunication will continue on other college campuses.
Read more about the SPLC from THE WEEKLY STANDARD here.
Read the rest of Stanger’s reflection here.
