Weeks After Charles Murray’s Visit, Middlebury Continues to Debate the Contours of Free Speech

Lisa Rathke, AP Images

Charles A. Murray may have moved on to other campuses, but the Middlebury College community is still debating whether it was right to invite him to speak — and taking stock of what his appearance means for the college going forward.

The political scientist’s appearance on campus on March 2 was disrupted by student protesters; after the event, the professor who had appeared on stage with Mr. Murray was injured during a confrontation. In the days and weeks that followed, students, faculty members, and administrators say the campus community has been working through the ethics of the event, though they’re not pretending they’ve reached a consensus.

“There was a lot of uncertainty,” said Elizabeth S. Lee, a senior, of the mood in the first days after Mr. Murray’s visit. “I wouldn’t say people were afraid to talk about it, but people were more staunchly for or against. I think now people are kind of moderating and creating a more fluid dialogue.”

On Thursday of last week, Ms. Lee participated in a lunchtime discussion with other students and professors and attended an evening debate about the event. The college’s president, Laurie L. Patton, was among the 60 or 70 people who attended that debate, which was sponsored by the Middlebury Debate Society and the Community Council, a group whose members include students, faculty, and staff members, Ms. Lee said.

Ms. Lee, who has emerged as a leading voice for student protesters in the media, has also met with trustees, and she said informal conversations have been taking place in and out of the classroom.

Like many members of the Middlebury community, Ms. Lee depicted a campus trying to turn an ugly scene into a more productive discussion about speech.

“People are saying, ‘I agree with this part of the protest, but I don’t understand why they did that,’” Ms. Lee said. “It’s bringing people from different perspectives together, although my friends are kind of divided.”

A Statement of Principles

One of the most assertive public statements made in response to Mr. Murray’s appearance on campus came in the form of a list of principles of “Free Inquiry on Campus,” written by a pair of Middlebury professors and signed by more than 100. The statement was first published in The Wall Street Journal on March 7.

The statement is meant as a defense of free speech, according to one of the authors, Jay Parini, a professor of English and creative writing. Among more than a dozen principles, it advocates that “all our students possess the strength, in head and in heart, to consider and evaluate challenging opinions from every quarter.”

“I think it is beyond discussion that we have to listen to people who have different points of view,” Mr. Parini said.

But some students were offended by parts of the statement, particularly the fact that the principles were described as “unassailable in the context of higher education.” After it was published, a group of students used a shared Google document to craft a response to each principle, which they called “Broken Inquiry on Campus.” Five days later, their rebuttal appeared online.

Alex C. Brockelman, a junior who was among the authors, said he wanted to dispel “a false, misleading narrative about the students, which was, ‘Well, if they didn’t want to debate with Charles Murray, then they don’t want to debate with anyone.’” He came up with the idea to respond while watching the news about his campus unfold from Paris, where he is studying abroad.

Among the professors’ principles that he sought to rebut: “Exposure to controversial points of view does not constitute violence.”

The students responded with a quote from Toni Morrison: “Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”

“To label the speaker’s claims as ‘controversial’ is to signal that the intellectual inferiority of women, minority, and low income communities is up for debate at Middlebury,” the students wrote.

Murray’s most famous book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, co-written with the psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, has been criticized both for its methodology and for one of its central arguments — that genetics may partially explain the achievement gap between black and white students.

In response to another statement by the professors — that “a protest that prevents campus speakers from communicating with their audience is a coercive act” — the students quoted from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” in which he warned of white moderates who are more committed to order than justice.

Mr. Parini also drew upon Mr. King’s writing, noting his staunch support for free speech and nonviolence. The professor said he regretted writing that the principles of free inquiry “seem to us unassailable,” but he is thrilled with the students’ level of engagement in the discussion about campus speech.

“I’m now 40 years into this,” Mr. Parini said of his teaching career. “I’ve batted my head against the wall trying to get students politically engaged. And they are.”

Tension on Campus

But some students described a tense environment on the campus. Ivan A. Valladares, a member of the Middlebury chapter of the American Enterprise Institute, which invited Mr. Murray to speak, said he felt like he’d been carrying a weight that only lifted late last week when he left for spring break. He said he’s engaged in productive conversations with students who organized the protests against Mr. Murray’s appearance and those who were supportive of it.

“A lot of students reached out to me saying they felt like their opinions, because they were conservative, or because they didn’t carry the rhetoric of leftism that dominates liberal-arts campuses, they felt that it was great that we stood there along with the AEI club and tried to engage a diversity of opinions,” Mr. Valladares said. He’s worried that conservative voices tend to get drowned out at Middlebury.

Other students are still not satisfied with what they’re hearing from some professors and administrators in the wake of the Murray event. Joshua D. Claxton, a junior, said he is hoping for an apology from Middlebury, or at least an acknowledgment that it was a mistake to give a platform to Mr. Murray.

Mr. Claxton described “a stark divide” between students who feel that no one should be prohibited from expressing their views on their campus, and those who think “free speech is different from elevated speech” — that Middlebury went beyond recognizing Mr. Murray’s right to speak by giving him a stage. He’s worried that some members of his community will soon move on from this event, while those who feel threatened by Mr. Murray’s opinions can’t.

Emma V. Bliska, a junior, helped write the students’ statement from Cameroon, where she is studying abroad. She said that tension had been brewing at Middlebury even before Mr. Murray’s appearance. Ms. Bliska started noticing it after the election, which she said demonstrated to her “what happens when illiberalism has the ability to speak unrestrained.”

But one of the first people Ms. Bliska spoke to after hearing about the protests was a political-science professor who had supported Mr. Murray’s appearance on campus. She declined to name the professor.

“I reached out and said, ‘I don’t think we agree on this, but I hope you’re doing OK,’” Ms. Bliska said. The professor agreed to review the students’ “Broken Inquiry” statement and offer critiques to make it stronger.

‘Hard Work Ahead’

The students said they’ve gotten positive feedback on their statement. Ms. Patton, the president, was not available for comment, but in a letter to the campus earlier this month she acknowledged the anger coming from both sides.

“There is hard work ahead for all of us: learning to be accountable to one another, and learning to stand in community with one another,” she wrote. “We must affirm our shared values and goals and hold each other to them, and we must listen differently, helping others to be fully heard and seen.”

In the letter, Ms. Patton also said the college had begun an independent investigation into the events surrounding Mr. Murray’s visit and was cooperating with a police investigation into the confrontation that took place after his speech.

Middlebury is now on spring break, but students don’t think that will put an end to the discussions set in motion by Mr. Murray’s speech. Some even expressed optimism that those discussions would be a boon to the campus.

“I think we are doing something meaningful at Middlebury,” Mr. Valladares said. “I don’t think that only bad will come of this.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.