April 24, 2017

Open Letter to the President of Middlebury College

Dr. Laurie Patten

President of Middlebury College

Dear Dr. Patten:

We write to protest the Middlebury administration’s punitive response to students involved in the events surrounding the Charles Murray lecture on March 2nd. Middlebury students have reported being placed on probation and having disciplinary letters added to their files for protesting his lecture. Additionally, we are concerned that the administration has taken or plans to take other more serious disciplinary actions. As academics concerned with maintaining college campuses as spaces that encourage critical thinking and that serve as welcoming and democratic spaces for all students, we write in support of these students. We exhort you to proceed with a keen sense of their well being, and their right to participate in protests for social justice, in a long tradition that includes Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Charles Murray is a widely discredited scholar who masks racist ideas under a veneer of respectability. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Murray as a “white nationalist” who is fond of “using 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.” A well-known provocateur, he has a long history of coming to college campuses to create turmoil, and foment hatred. Because his dangerous ideas are so well-known, 450 Middlebury alumni signed an open letter, published in the student paper the day prior to his lecture, protesting the event. Alumni described his invitation to campus not as “an educational opportunity, but a threat." We join these alumni in their dismay. Indeed, our own is compounded by the fact that the administration disregarded alumni and students’ clear message that Murray’s appearance was not an occasion for dialogue and free speech, but for fanning the flames of racism during a tense time in the United States, when hate crimes are on the rise.

We are aware that the protesting students, many of whom are now being disciplined by the college, possibly acted in contravention of college rules. We are also aware of the different reports of what happened after the lecture as Murray and a Middlebury faculty member were departing the hall. Competing versions of what transpired at the protests exist--whether a handful of students deliberately engaged in physical confrontation with Murray and the professor accompanying him; or whether, in a tumult aggravated by campus security, accidental violence occurred. This uncertainty does not negate basic facts—students have a right to reasonable protest; and protest by its very nature is a challenge to an authority that refuses to listen.

We believe the administration must take responsibility for what ensued during Murray’s visit, which was sorely mishandled. In his thoughtful public apology, Prof. Bert Johnson, the Chair of the Political Science Department, expressed regret that his agreement to co-sponsor the Murray lecture “contributed to a feeling of voicelessness that many already experience on this campus.” As Prof. Johnson’s words suggest, the responsibility for what happened at Middlebury cannot be placed exclusively or even primarily on the shoulders of students who are now being disciplined. The faculty and other members of the college community who invited and enabled so dangerous a figure as Murray in full knowledge of his history bear responsibility, as does the Middlebury administration that overrode objections leading up to his lecture, and disrespected students’ and alumni concerns.

To punish students and to defend Murray is to degrade the meaning of academic freedom and free speech. Instead, we hope that you might make of this occasion one that can foster critical thinking and reflection in an environment that is safe for all students, including those who are the most vulnerable. Rather than disciplining or sanctioning students in ways that might prove permanently damaging we urge you to make this an opportunity for learning, not just for the students but, indeed, for the whole college community, including faculty and staff.

Respectfully,