No one’s humanity is up for debate. By hosting a speaker whose ideas dehumanize many students on our campus and cause very real harm both here and across the nation, Middlebury is providing support for oppressive forces already at work on campus. Charles Murray has defended and supported white supremacy, classism, ableism and misogyny through his books and interviews.
If you haven’t gotten the specifics of Charles Murray’s ideas from another source and are confused by the claims that his ideas dehumanize, this paragraph contains some of his ideas. If you don’t want to read this rubbish — skip it. The topic of his lecture on campus is his 2012 book, Coming Apart, which uses largely anecdotal evidence to blame poor people in America for being poor, attempting to explain economic inequality through a perceived gap in virtue. According to one review of Coming Apart, Murray’s argument states that “the decline of virtue in working class communities reduces ‘the ability of people to lead satisfying lives, the ability of communities to function as communities and the ability of America to survive as America’” (p. 126). Similarly blaming the problems of the U.S. on a “degenerate lower class,” Murray states in a 2014 article entitled “The Coming Apart of America’s Civic Culture” that “nothing short of a police state will force people to refrain from crime.” His previous scholarship has popularized ideas that intelligence is genetic, based on IQ and determines individual success. He argues that certain groups, specifically white men, have higher IQs and therefore are objectively more prepared to succeed than other groups.
AEI, and Laurie Patton’s Rhetorical Resilience, ask us to engage in “open and academic debate and discussion of a wide range of issues.” We believe, however, that no debate can be solely academic, but must also acknowledge that ideas have real and material impacts on people’s lives. As eight student organizations wrote in Beyond the Green last year, “When you ask us to consider the other side of the argument, you are asking us to consider our assumed inferiority as a logical position. In no way does this consideration further our (or your) education.”
Over the past few days, we have heard many people say that bringing Murray’s views to campus gives students a chance to practice countering conservative arguments. Murray is not coming to debate, and Middlebury students will not convince him to change his racist, classist, ableist and sexist views. In the current situation, a select number of students are being offered a chance to practice their debating skills at the cost of perpetuating and legitimizing harmful ideas. His arguments are not unknown to this student body. In our current political climate, radically conservative voices are creating policy for our nation from positions such as chief strategist for the Trump administration (Steve Bannon) and US Attorney General (Jeff Sessions). These voices are already granted huge amounts of power and airtime, and debunked science like Murray’s is not new or, unfortunately, fringe. Middlebury College has historically supported similarly racist and elitist efforts, such as craniology (the practice of measuring skull size to prove the superiority of white people), eugenics (a movement popular across Vermont and the world in the mid-20th century which promoted sterilization of the ‘mentally deficient’ including native, disabled, poor and queer peoples) and many other now unacceptable disciplines.
Additionally, debate is impossible when one side cares little about facts. As tenured Professors Essig and Sheridan agreed in comments to VTDigger: Murray is not “a political scientist; he’s a pseudoscience ideologue from a right-wing think tank here to promote its agenda.” Any claims that further violent and elitist arguments should not be given a platform at Middlebury. For example, when climate science is framed as a debate, it gives legitimacy to climate deniers, despite 97 percent of climate scientists supporting the evidence of anthropogenic global warming. This denial has acted to slow down action on climate change and therefore put increasing numbers of climate-vulnerable people at risk. This speaker is the equivalent to a climate change denier. The impacts of his ideas have affected welfare policy and views about class and race in very real ways; his books have been used as arguments against government welfare and for a police state.
It is not acceptable for the college to provide a platform for a speaker whose work marginalizes oppressed peoples. If you would like to engage in conversation about this event, please join us at our weekly meetings at 7 p.m. on Thursdays in Gifford Classroom — all are welcome.
Wonderbread: White Students for Racial Justice writes in about Charles Murray’s 3/2 talk: Emma Ronai-Durning 2018.5, Lucy Grinnan 2019.5, Sarah Koch 2018.5, Matea Mills-Andruk 2018.5, Kathleen Wilson 2018.5, Maddie Stewart-Boldin 2018.5
