Middlebury College students weren’t hiding anything. This week they heckled Charles Murray, their invited speaker and author of a dozen books, as he crossed the stage. They waved vulgar and crude signs at him and turned their backs on him as he took the podium. Then they deliberately drowned him out with chants of, “Shut him down! Shut him down!”

While the scene was too common to be shocking or surprising, it was appalling to the sensibilities of anyone who values free speech and open debate, and the Enlightenment ideas of tolerance and pluralism.