Letter from Middlebury Faculty
Dear President Patton, We the undersigned faculty respectfully request that you, as our president, cancel your introductory remarks at the Charles Murray event on Thursday. Mr. Murray is, as you know, a discredited ideologue paid by the American Enterprise Institute to promote public policies targeting people of color, women and the poor. His work has employed a combination of eugenics and other pseudo-science that has time and time again shown to be based on false premises, inadequate research and erroneous conclusions. He is not an academic nor a “critically acclaimed” public scholar, but a well-funded phony. His research is an insult to the intellectual integrity of Middlebury College. To introduce him—even to critique his arguments—only lends legitimacy to his ideas as worth engaging with. To be clear, this is not a case of disagreeing with the ideas of a fellow scholar. Rather, this is to recognize that this event was organized by a chapter of the American Enterprise Institute, is funded by the AEI, and that Mr. Murray has been peddling AEI propaganda as a “public scholar” since the 1990s. Let the AEI be responsible for explaining to the College and the wider community why they hosted someone whose scholarship has been thoroughly discredited and who denies the basic human dignity of members of our community. Rather than lend legitimacy to this event, we respectfully request you stand up for a campus that is intellectually open and culturally diverse, but one that does not fall prey to the designs of external organizations who peddle partisan propaganda in the guise of “public scholarship.” Respectfully, Tara Affolter, Assistant Professor, Education Studies Holly Allen, Assistant Professor, American Studies Molly Anderson, Professor, Food Studies Dima Ayoub, Assistant Professor, Arabic Mez Baker-Medard, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies Jim Berg, Visiting Assistant Professor, English and American Literatures Sony Bolton, Postdoctoral Fellow in Spanish Susan Burch, Professor, American Studies Maggie Clinton, Assistant Professor, History Carolyn Craven, Visiting Assistant Professor, Economics Adam Dean, Assistant Professor, Political Science Laurie Essig, Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Florence Feiereisen, Associate Professor, German Irina Feldman, Assistant Professor, Spanish J Finley, Assistant Professor, American Studies Ellery Foutch, Assistant Professor, American Studies Juana Gamero de Coca, Associate Professor, Spanish Randall Ganiban, Professor, Classics Eliza Garrison, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture Gloria Gonzalez-Zenteno, Associate Professor, Spanish Roman Graf, Professor, German Ben Graves, Visiting Instructor, English and American Literatures William Hart, Associate Professor, History Rachael Joo, Assistant Professor, American Studies Antonia Losano, Professor, English and American Literatures Joyce Mao, Associate Professor, History Peter Matthews, Professor, Economics Bettina Matthias, Professor, German Tamar Mayer, Professor, Geography Jamie McCallum, Assistant Professor, Sociology-Anthropology Sujata Moorti, Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Kevin Moss, Professor, Russian Linus Owens, Associate Professor, Sociology-Anthropology Nicholas Poppe, Assistant Professor, Spanish William Poulin-Deltour, Associate Professor, French Fernando Rocha, Associate Professor, Portuguese Daniel Rodrigues-Navas, Postdoctoral Fellow, Philosophy Marcos Rohena-Madrazo, Assistant Professor, Spanish Patricia Saldarriaga, Professor, Spanish Paula Schwartz, Professor, French Michael Sheridan, Associate Professor, Sociology-Anthropology Daniel Silva, Assistant Professor, Portuguese Usama Soltan, Associate Professor, Arabic John Spackman, Associate Professor, Philosophy Carly Thomsen, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Rebecca Tiger, Associate Professor, Sociology-Anthropology Jacob Tropp, Professor, History Ioana Uricaru, Assistant Professor, Film and Media Culture Edward Vazquez, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture Hector Vila, Assistant Professor, Writing Max Ward, Assistant Professor, History Marion Wells, Associate Professor, English and American Literatures Linda White, Associate Professor, Japanese Carrie Wiebe, Professor, Chinese Mark Williams, Professor, Political Science Catharine Wright, Senior Lecturer, Writing-GSFS Orian Zakai, Visiting Assistant Professor, Modern Hebrew Patricia Zupan, Professor, Italian Middlebury Faculty write in about Charles Murray’s 3/2 talk.