In his landmark book “Coming Apart,” Charles Murray argued that wealthy Americans are increasingly isolated in cultural bubbles, a trend that is tearing the fabric of the country apart at its seams. Last Thursday, a mob of students protesting Murray at Middlebury College went a long way to proving him right.
In an effort to seal their school’s bubble off from the voices of ideological dissent, student protesters refused to let Murray speak, descending upon his lecture in an unruly horde, ultimately leaving one professor in a neck brace for her efforts to escort him off campus.
Not coincidentally, Middlebury students are among the wealthiest in the entire country.
According to the New York Times, the average family income of a Middlebury student is $244,300, placing them in the 86th percentile nationally. Nearly one in every four Middlebury students comes from the top one percent, with 76 percent coming from the top 20.
Just over three percent of all students hail from the bottom 20 percent.
Because bubbles of class are now increasingly bubbles of culture, as Murray showed in Coming Apart, they are also increasingly less tolerant of one another.
That some of the nation’s most fiery campus protests occur at our most elite institutions is no coincidence.
More and more, Americans are burrowing into isolated pockets of society. As this trend continues, we will all become less tolerant of the cultural (including ideological) perspectives of our peers in other pockets.
That isn’t to say wealthy Americans are all liberals, because that is not true. But children of wealthy parents who attend elite colleges on the East Coast are not typically conservative. Their impulse to concentrate in predictable patterns at places like Middlebury will undoubtedly continue to leave them isolated from cultural practices of other income groups.
To recap, a group of wealthy students sealed their bubble off from a scholar who came to campus to help them learn about the dangers of sealing off bubbles. By refuting their guest speaker, Middlebury students made Murray’s argument for him.
If ever a speaker should be allowed to visit campuses like Middlebury, where offspring of the wealthiest Americans gather to prepare for their futures, it is Charles Murray.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
