What Could Middlebury Have Done to Avoid a Free-Speech Fracas?

Lisa Rathke, AP Images

Officials at Middlebury College knew a speech by Charles A. Murray would be controversial. That’s why the political-science department, which co-sponsored the event with Mr. Murray, held an open meeting to discuss why it was participating.

Mr. Murray, a political scientist, is best-known for The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, in which he and his co-author, the psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, argue that genetics can at least partially explain the achievement gap between black and white students. The book has been criticized for its methods and conclusions.

Despite prior planning, the event last Thursday ended with unexpected chaos: Mr. Murray and Allison Stanger, the professor who moderated his talk, were harassed after the event, and Ms. Stanger was injured. (In a written statement on Monday, Laurie L. Patton, the institution’s president, said that the campus police department would investigate the confrontation in which Ms. Stanger was injured.)

At its open meeting last Wednesday, a day before Mr. Murray’s talk, the political-science department and other students, faculty, and staff members debated what type of speakers would be invited to the campus moving forward, said Bertram Johnson, an associate professor of political science and the department’s chair. Even Ms. Patton stopped by the meeting, he said. After Thursday night’s turmoil, Mr. Johnson said, there will probably be more debates and meetings like Wednesday’s.

But with the small Vermont college now in an unwanted national spotlight, Mr. Johnson said he’s frustrated, and he wonders what more the college could have done. The department held meetings beforehand, students and faculty members spoke about their concerns, and the department explained how it makes sponsorship or co-sponsorship decisions, he said. Administrators also fine-tuned a backup plan, he said, but the protests still went awry.

In short, if this much diligence went into hosting Mr. Murray at Middlebury, and the event still didn’t pass without incident, where can such events go right?

“I think we’ve been talking about it in lots of different forums both before and after this event on Thursday, and some people are kind of exhausted by it, to be frank,” Mr. Johnson said. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do differently. I think it could have a real chilling effect, and I don’t want it to have such an effect.”

More Activism on Campuses

Long before Mr. Murray visited Middlebury, students and faculty members debated the optics of having a conservative student organization host him, with the political-science department co-sponsoring the event and Ms. Patton introducing the controversial guest, said Kevin Moss, a professor of modern languages and literature.

It’s one thing to study and read controversial authors, but hosting them on campus could be seen as an endorsement of their views, Mr. Moss said. These questions, combined with an uptick in student activism on campuses, may be one of the reasons why the protesters’ response to Mr. Murray grew so raucous.

“I think we have a more ‘woke’ student body, a student body that’s more aware of racial issues than they were in the past,” Mr. Moss said. “I think really it’s about things like Black Lives Matter, about protests that people have seen, that they don’t necessarily have to sit down and shut up in all situations.”

The problem was that the protests eventually turned violent, Mr. Moss said. And long after the campus steps out of the national spotlight, Middlebury will still have to grapple with these hard questions of free speech and improve, he said.

“This is the worst I’ve ever experienced,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s fair to say this is probably the worst week in my career.”

Though there were a lot of discussions before the talk, administrators didn’t fully understand how upset students were, said Gloria Estela González Zenteno, an associate professor of Spanish. And students’ disconnect didn’t simply come from the event, she said, but from the 2016 presidential election and from President Trump’s first two months in office, she said.

Laurie Essig, an associate professor of sociology, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, echoed that point, saying the conversations at Middlebury were filled with people talking past each other and not enough listening and understanding.

A Hardened Divide

Mr. Murray’s talk also exposed deep divides among faculty members. In a Facebook post, Ms. Stanger wrote that she was surprised that faculty members had screamed at her from the audience, alongside students.

While these differences may have existed before, now a literal line has been drawn. Just before Mr. Murray’s visit, dozens of faculty members published a letter asking Ms. Patton to not introduce him.

For Mr. Moss, that’s troubling. He said he wants to continue to have civil debates with his colleagues that end with dinner and not a shouting match. It’s important to keep talking to each other to work to understand differing positions, he said.

As the campus evaluates what went wrong, Ms. Essig said some people will have to learn to live with a tension that may not have an easy fix.

Still, faculty members, especially those who have tenure, should ask themselves “What role did I play in this?” she said.

Ms. Essig, who was among those who signed the letter asking Ms. Patton to cancel her introductory remarks, said she didn’t attend Mr. Murray’s talk, but she said she could have met with more student groups to discuss how their protests would come off in right-wing news reports.

Now, it’s up to not just administrators, but students and faculty to move on, Ms. Essig said.

“We should be able to say, ‘I don’t agree with you but I understand that you don’t see it my way either, so let’s come up with a solution that works for both of us,’” she said.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a web writer. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.