As Middlebury College began holding hearings to try the students accused of shutting down Charles Murray’s lecture on campus last March, Murray himself weighed in on the proceedings.
In a tweet linking to the Middlebury Campus’s article reporting on the first hearing, Murray slammed the school for caving to his detractors.
“Now we know,” he wrote. “Middlebury to students: Shutting down speakers you don’t like is okay. We’ll cave.”
The American Enterprise Institute scholar, whose attempt to speak on campus in early March ended in protesters putting a sympathetic professor in a neck brace, revealed he “wasn’t ever optimistic” the school would take the appropriate steps. “I kept quiet to make it as easy as possible for Middlebury to take a strong stand,” Murray explained in a subsequent tweet.
The article he posted described weak punishments more than two dozen protesters already received:
As reported in the April 27 issue of The Campus, the College has already placed more than 30 students on probation for participating in the first protest. Probation is a form of unofficial discipline, and means that a student will have a letter placed in their file that will be removed at the end semester, as long as they do not violate another college policy.
The article also quoted Laurie Essig, an associate professor of sociology and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, an apologist for the protesters who praised the administration after a meeting. Regarding a conversation she had with administrators, Essig remarked, “I hope that Friday’s small and momentary break in business as usual might signal that as an institution Middlebury can stop punishing protesters and decide to incorporate dissent into its notions of free speech and academic freedom in the future.”
If, as Essig suggests, her meeting actually signals that Middlebury will “stop punishing protesters”, it looks like Murray’s lack of optimism was well-placed.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
