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posted by on Wednesday March 08 2017, @02:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the freedom-to,-not-freedom-from dept.

Charles Murray, controversial author of The Bell Curve, which promoted links between intelligence and race, was shouted down by protesters at Middlebury College last Thursday. PBS reports:

Murray had been invited by Middlebury's student group affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank at which Murray is a scholar. [...] Prior to the point when Murray was introduced, several Middlebury officials reminded students that they were allowed to protest but not to disrupt the talk. The students ignored those reminders and faced no visible consequences for doing so. [...]

After the students chanted for about 20 minutes, college officials announced that the lecture would not take place but that Murray would go to another location, which the college didn't name, and have a discussion with a Middlebury faculty member — livestreamed back to the original lecture site.

According to Middlebury officials, after Murray and the professor who interviewed him for the livestream attempted to leave the location in a car, some protesters surrounded the car, jumped on it, pounded on it and tried to prevent the car from leaving campus.

Other sources note that political science professor Allison Stanger, who agreed to moderate the discussion, was attacked while accompanying Murray to the car, ultimately requiring treatment at a hospital for neck injuries caused by protesters pushing her and pulling her hair.

Murray himself later gave an account of his experience on the AEI blog. He emphasized that Middlebury's administration and staff displayed in exemplary ways their encouragement of free speech:

Middlebury's stance has been exemplary. The administration agreed to host the event. President Patton did not cancel it even after a major protest became inevitable. She appeared at the event, further signaling Middlebury's commitment to academic freedom. The administration arranged an ingenious Plan B that enabled me to present my ideas and discuss them with Professor Stanger even though the crowd had prevented me from speaking in the lecture hall. I wish that every college in the country had the backbone and determination that Middlebury exhibited.

But Murray notes that the outcome was very different from his previous controversial appearances:

Until last Thursday, all of the ones involving me have been as carefully scripted as kabuki: The college administration meets with the organizers of the protest and ground rules are agreed upon. The protesters have so many minutes to do such and such. It is agreed that after the allotted time, they will leave or desist. These negotiated agreements have always worked. At least a couple of dozen times, I have been able to give my lecture to an attentive (or at least quiet) audience despite an organized protest.

Middlebury tried to negotiate such an agreement with the protesters, but, for the first time in my experience, the protesters would not accept any time limits. [...] In the mid-1990s, I could count on students who had wanted to listen to start yelling at the protesters after a certain point, "Sit down and shut up, we want to hear what he has to say." That kind of pushback had an effect. It reminded the protesters that they were a minority. I am assured by people at Middlebury that their protesters are a minority as well. But they are a minority that has intimidated the majority. The people in the audience who wanted to hear me speak were completely cowed.

The form of the protest has been widely condemned even by those who vehemently disagree with Murray, as in the piece by Peter Beinart in The Atlantic that claims "something has gone badly wrong on the campus left." He argues strongly that "Liberals must defend the right of conservative students to invite speakers of their choice, even if they find their views abhorrent."

Meanwhile, student protesters have responded with their own account, disclaiming the hair-pulling incident as unintentional and "irresponsible" but condemning the Middlebury administration for their "support of a platform for white nationalist speech." They further claimed "peaceful protest was met with escalating levels of violence by the administration and Public Safety, who continually asserted their support of a dangerous racist over the well-being of students."

Personal note: My take on all of this is that the actual subject of Murray's Middlebury talk has been lost in the media coverage, namely his 2012 book Coming Apart, which (ironically) is a detailed discussion of the problems created by a division of the intellectual elite from the white working class. He explicitly dilutes his previous connections of social problems with a black underclass by noting that many of the same issues plague poor white communities. While his argument is still based on problematic assertions about intelligence and IQ, the topic of his book seems very relevant given recent political events and issues of class division. There's some sort of profound irony in a bunch of students at an elite school refusing to allow a debate on the causes and results of division between elite intellectuals and the (white) working class. I personally may think Murray's scholarship is shoddy and his use of statistics frequently misleading (or downright wrong), but I don't see how that justifies the kind of threats and intimidation tactics shown at this protest.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @06:18PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @06:18PM (#476600)

    Since when are there different races of orcas?
    You aren't confusing species with race, are you?
    Because that would be a pretty stupid thing to do, don't you agree?

  • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:19PM (2 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:19PM (#476689) Journal

    It sure would be stupid, unless of course the variance across Orca species DNA was smaller than it is between races of Homosapien. I wish I had the link, it was an article from the old days of slashdot. Seeing as we are more enlightened now we probably should have just stoned the author to death. Either biologists are wrong and that there should instead be races of orcas (unless this changed since the Slashdot article) or there should be species of humans. This could very well be an issue arrising with many animals, the article only referenced Orcas.

    I suppose that it could also be because if a biologist can convice people that the pod they are researching is a separate species distinct from what they were before, and therefor endangered, they would stand to get more research dollars investigating them. I imagine data on the human genome is more accurate than on Orcas as well.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:07PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:07PM (#476714)

      It sure would be stupid, unless of course the variance across Orca species DNA was smaller than it is between races of Homosapien.

      And which races of homosapiens would that be?

      . Either biologists are wrong and that there should instead be races of orcas (unless this changed since the Slashdot article) or there should be species of humans.

      Or... seeing as how you can't actually back up your claim with anything, you fantasized something that confirms your racism because racism.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:30PM (#476727)

        And which races of homosapiens would that be?

        I'm guessing these folk mean "White and Non-White" as well as "Rich and Non-Rich".

  • (Score: 2) by number6x on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:50PM (5 children)

    by number6x (903) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:50PM (#476735)

    Since when are there different races of orcas?

    <sarcasm>

    There are Orcas that are black and white and there are other Orcas that are white and black. They are both white in the same places and both black in the same places, but somehow they still know the difference.

    This, along with other made up facts, are why humans learn to hate other humans for no justifiable reasons.

    </sarcasm>

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Wednesday March 08 2017, @10:13PM (3 children)

      by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @10:13PM (#476751) Journal

      Maybe the world is different, but growing up I was taught that "our differences are what make us stronger" and I have always believed this. This truth becomes evident in the educatioanl and business world in getting new ideas for solving problems as well as avoiding groupthink. I am not interested at all in what the author from the article has to say about it, all I know is that there are verifiable differences. So what? My problem is that the genetic differences between the races of man (whether or not they exist is up to you) are important to know for, at the very least, the development of targeted medicines and monitoring techbiques to catch problems before they arise. Our differences make us stronger and the genes of someone from Africa with someone from Europe will produce a child who is more resistant to skin cancer and less at risk to heart disease.

      Yet anymore instead of "our differences make us stronger" there is "no difference and if you see there is one then you are a racist". Yet as we push for the later option for humanity in the animal world they are further subdividing what was one species into multiple. So wither we accept we are different and they are different, or we accept that we are the same and they are the same. Both are fine but there needs to be consistancy. The easiest and most politically correct would probably take the genetic deviation of humans and decide that is the amount deviation acceptable for something to be one species, and we subdivide it no further than that, all of us one species. Then we go reclassify animals as either the same species or separate based on that standard.

      Now that we have genetics and all, we need to change our medical books to specify the genes associated with particular tolerances and what drugs interact best. Everyone should know what their genes are (or their doctors do) so that we subdivide only by specific chains with our genes. This way we are all the same and regarded the same with the exception of gene structure known only to ourselves, our doctors, facebook, and the NSA. Regardless of the label we are different, its a good thing, deal with it.

      Here they talk about it some, but it doesnt have the DNA variance number I was looking for
      https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/deleted-scenes/one-ocean-four-or-more-killer-whale-species [sciencenews.org]
      Been reading all day about Orca species, seeming more and more a scam for more funding

      --
      Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:45PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:45PM (#476784)

        Yet anymore instead of "our differences make us stronger" there is "no difference and if you see there is one then you are a racist".

        That is some Grade-A willful ignorance.

        The "differences that make us stronger" aren't genetic, they are cultural.. And they have always been cultural.

        And that's because genetic differences between races do not exist in any meaningful fashion so no one ever meant it the way you are using it.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 09 2017, @12:47AM (1 child)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 09 2017, @12:47AM (#476798) Journal

          No bullshit in Sulla's post. Using a simple descriptor to identify a person can get you in hot water in today's world. And, now that Sulla has reminded me, I did hear that mantra, "Our differences make us stronger." Actually, I heard it a lot as a young man. E Pluribus Unum doesn't mean everyone is the same. It means we listen to each other, we value each other, we share ideas and values.

          Sulla's post is spot on.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:01PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:01PM (#479189)

            Lol.
            That's just a fancier way of saying all y'all libruls are hypocrites cause you won't tolerate my intolerance!

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:13PM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:13PM (#476772) Journal

      Do the Orcas look like this? [wikia.com]