The president of Middlebury College on Friday apologized to a political scientist whose speech on campus was blocked by student protesters and blamed some of the ensuing violence on “outside agitators” as well.
“As many of you are aware by now, a large group of student protestors disrupted Charles Murray’s talk (Thursday) afternoon in Wilson Hall in McCullough Student Center. I am deeply disappointed by the events that I witnessed and it was painful for many people in our community to experience,” Laurie Patton, the Middlebury, Vt.-based liberal arts college’s president said in a statement.
Speaker Charles Murray wrote The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life and Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.
He is a scholar in culture and freedom at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, but the Southern Poverty Law Center considers him a white nationalist who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.”
Hundreds of chanting students drowned out Murray as he attempted to speak, and the college announced that Murray would speak from another location on campus. Students continued their protests — among the chants were “racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away,” VtDigger reported — and few heard the resulting discussion.
In addition, as Murray was leaving the student center, a group of demonstrators “aggressively confronted” Murray and Middlebury professor Allison Stanger, Patton said.
“That confrontation turned into a violent incident with a lot of pushing and shoving, and an attack on the car in which they were leaving campus. We believe that many of these protestors were outside agitators, but there are indications that Middlebury College students were involved as well,” she said.
Patton said Middlebury will take action over “clear violations of Middlebury College policy” and also said she will have more to say soon about creating a climate for open discussion while “also recognizing critical matters of race, inclusion, class, sexual and gender identity, and the other factors that too often divide us.”
“I extend my sincerest apologies to everyone who came in good faith to participate in a serious discussion, and particularly to Mr. Murray and Prof. Stanger for the way they were treated during the event and, especially, afterward,” Patton wrote.
Stanger, a professor of international politics and economics, was injured in the confrontation, according to the Addison Independent.
A college spokesman told the paper that “one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck.” She was treated at Porter Hospital and is wearing a neck brace, the paper said.
Murray posted on Twitter shortly after the event, saying, “Report from the front: The Middlebury administration was exemplary. The students were seriously scary.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. John Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.