https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/03/middlebury-students-shout-down-lecture-charles-murray

I've been following news of this event closely since it involves my alma mater, but it is only the latest in a series of such events, the most notorious of which is probably the scandal around the ultimately canceled invitation to Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. As with the Berkeley event, the media spin of the Middlebury fiasco has reached mind-boggling intensity in both the left- and right-wing echo chambers. While it is easy to agree with the principles articulated in the statement by President Patton on the outbreak of violence after the talk, the omissions in her statement reveal not simply how unprepared Middlebury College was to prevent the violence that erupted. Middlebury was completely unprepared and seemingly ill-equipped to respond to the challenge presented by the invitation to a man such as Charles Murray to speak at the college, issued by what is claimed to be a legitimate student group but with the explicit support of at least one academic department. I believe that neither Middlebury nor Berkeley are unique in this regard. The problem is how well institutions of higher education (and other institutions in our country, no doubt) are able to respond as soon as someone involved in the instigation of such conflicts raises the flag of "free speech."

In Berkeley, the bad faith bordering on outright hypocrisy was on display from the outset. At no point did the College Republicans claim that they aligned themselves with any of the views expressed by Yiannopoulos. Indeed, they explicitly distanced themselves from him. But by wrapping themselves in the mantle of "free speech" (in mimicry of Yiannopoulos himself, of course), their purpose was impossible to miss: in an emotionally charged atmosphere, in the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, "free speech" was being deployed as a political weapon to position anyone who would protest the appearance as an enemy of free speech. And the University administration, reaffirming its commitment "to uphold the values of the Free Speech Movement" by sanctioning Yiannopoulos’ presence and protecting his freedom of expression, walked willingly, almost arrogantly, into the trap. Clearly the University was put in a difficult situation and I am certainly not saying that the university authorities should have banned this speaker. Yet even at the point at which violence forced their hand, the Chancellor of the University, who had repeatedly expressed his personal contempt for the opinions expressed by Yiannopoulos, continued to defend the rights of the speaker while remaining in utter denial that the explicit purpose of his appearance was to stoke conflict with a performance that had already left a trail of canceled appearences and even a gunshot wound at other college campuses.

The Middlebury case is less stark in its contours but nevertheless encounters the same difficulty around free speech. Charles Murray is notorious mostly for the views expressed in his 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. While I myself have not read the book, Murray's detractors base their opposition to him on their claim that, using questionable evidence subjected to even more questionable interpretation, Murray insinuates the superiority and inferiority of white and black races, respectively, based on supposedly inherent differences in intelligence. Which is to say, if this reading is correct, that Murray promotes a rational proof and justification of racism and is, himself, a racist. (This extremely negative reading of Murray's book seems to be losing currency in the present political climate, but that is not germane to the issues I am discussing here and can be left aside for now.)

But to ask whether Middlebury College should permit or ban a campus appearance by a racist is to fall once again into a trap. Murray was invited to campus by the American Enterprise Institute Club, which is a legitimately registered student organization at the college but which curiously, and in contrast to even the Democrat and Republican student groups, provides a Washington DC address as its official contact. Even more revealing is the justification that representatives for this group provided for the invitation. Under the revealing headline "AEI Middlebury Student Leadership Invites You to Argue," they announce that Murray would be discussing his 2012 book Coming Apart, a work concerning itself with, among other things, "the White working class." But rather than providing further information about the topic or elucidating in more detail the claim that the book is "particularly prescient given the recent political change in America," the AEI reps go into repeated professions of allegiance to "open and academic debate," to "examining and engaging with a wide variety of thoughts and ideas," to "intellectual diversity," and finally, to the assurance that "your presence ... will demonstrate commitment to diversity of all kinds." Why so defensive? Why so shy to present the actual claims that the speaker will explore? Does the intellectual content of the book and the erudition of a "distinguished public intellectual" not justify the event? It is not difficult to hear the unspoken echo of what the Berkeley Republicans made explicit: we would never espouse such views ourselves, but your protests against these views expose your liberal intolerance of anything that contradicts your leftist orthodoxy. And while Berkeley's administration was faced with an agonizing dilemma they did not want to face, nothing compelled the political science department to co-sponsor the event, Professor Stanger to participate in it, or President Patton to introduce the guest. Middlebury College, it would seem, proactively embraced this event as a demonstration of their commitment to "free speech," seemingly oblivious or willfully dismissive of the at least partly disingenuous justification for the invitation.

As Americans, we understand that our commitment to free speech is most tested when that speech becomes most offensive or objectionable. The First Amendment must not become a lower priority particularly at those times when the enemy seems to be storming the gates of what we hold most precious about America. Academic space is an overheated extension of our public space. It rightly makes what can sometimes seem to be exaggerated allowances for open and tolerant discussion and debate of objectionable views and odious ideologies. But cynical manipulation of free speech has been on the rise all around us for years now. It has become a valuable ally in the assault on scientific knowledge and factual evidence, endowing climate-change deniers, know-nothings, and opinionated blowhards the right to equal time with meteorologists, experts, and professional journalists inasmuch as anything less would violate their equal right to free speech. Wrap up your "alternative facts" in the banner of free speech, and you can demand not only equal time, but ultimately equal dignity and legitimacy in open debate, be it on a college campus, in a cable news studio, or in the Oval Office. If we ever see the day when the leaders of our colleges and universities start limiting the right of students to both utter and listen to the most unpopular and offensive speech, then democracy itself is already on deathwatch. But if those same academic leaders do not figure out a way to respond to those who would defend free speech by making it into an ideological litmus test, democracy will reach the same mortal end by only slightly different means.