BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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March 9, 2017
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March 9, 2017
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Attacks
on free speech, particularly on the nation's college and university
campuses, seem to be mounting. In early March, hundreds of students at
Middlebury College in Vermont shouted down Charles Murray, the widely
read and controversial social scientist. When Dr. Murray rose to speak,
he was shouted down by most of the more than 400 students packed into
the room. They chanted, "Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go
away." After almost 20 minutes , it was clear that he would not be able
to deliver his lecture. Anticipating that such an outcry might happen,
Murray was moved to a separate room equipped with a video camera so that
Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor of international politics and
economics could interview him over a live stream. Bill Burger, a
spokesman for the college, said that Murray's right to free speech
should be protected and that "no one should have the heckler's veto."
The
protestors at Middlebury were agitated about the 1994 book, "The Bell
Curve," in which Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise
Institute, and co-author Richard J. Herrnstein, a Harvard University
psychologist, examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic
status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat
heritable, the black/white differential had narrowed and millions of
blacks had higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors said they
were"resolutely agnostic " concerning the role of genes and the social
environment and said that even if it were determined that genetics "are
part of the story," there would be "no reason to treat individuals
differently." For the protestors, however, the very idea of discussing
the question of genetics and IQ must forever be off the table.
At
Middlebury, once the interview began in the second room, protestors
swarmed into the hallway, chanting and pulling fire alarms.Still, the
interview was completed and officials, including Prof. Stanger, escorted
Murray out the back of the building. There, several masked protestors
began pushing and shoving Murray and Stanger. According to Burger,
"Someone grabbed Allison's hair and twisted her neck." After the two
got into a car, Burger reports, protestors pounded on it, rocked it back
and forth, and jumped onto the hood. Prof Stanger later went to a
hospital where she was put in a neck brace."
Prof
Stanger, herself a liberal Democrat, says, "I was genuinely surprised
and troubled to learn that some of my faculty colleagues had rendered
judgment on Dr. Murray's work and character while openly admitting that
they had not read anything he had written. With the best of intentions,
they offered their leadership to enraged students, and we all know what
the results were. I want you to know what it feels like to look out at a
sea of students yelling obscenities at other members of my beloved
community. I saw some of my faculty colleagues who had publicly
acknowledged that they had not read anything Dr. Murray had written join
the effort to shut down the lecture. This was the saddest day of my
life. We must all recognize the precious inheritance we have as fellow
Americans and defend the Constitution against all its enemies. Both
foreign and domestic."
Whether
or not one agrees with Charles Murray is not the point. As The New York
Times declared in an editorial, "Smothering Speech At Middlebury,":
"Mr. Murray is an academic, with an argument to make about class in
America---from his 2012 book 'Coming Apart'---and maybe it is flawed.
But Middlebury students had no chance to challenge him on any of his
views. Thought and persuasion , questions and answers, were eclipsed by
intimidation. True ideas need testing by false ones , lest they become
mere prejudices and thoughtless slogans. Free speech is a sacred right
and it needs protecting, now more than ever. Middlebury's president,
Laurie Patton, did this admirably in defending Mr. Murray's invitation
and delivering a public apology to him that Middlebury's thoughtless
agitators should have delivered themselves."
There
is reason for concern that belief in free speech is diminishing among
younger Americans, particularly college students. A 2015 Pew survey
found that 40% of millennials believe the government should be able to
prevent people from saying offensive things about minority groups,
compared with 24% of baby boomers. Time Magazine notes that, "We now
live in an increasingly polarized and tribal country. We've sorted
ourselves digitally, which makes us less likely to encounter opposing
viewpoints and less worried about offending our like-minded pals.
Instead of fueling a marketplace of ideas, as the founders envisioned,
speech becomes a way for groups to police their own boundaries while
lobbing rhetorical bombs against opponents. The aim is not to debate but
to dominate....In America today, speech is everywhere. It's the
listening that has gone missing."
One
of the reasons many young people appear less committed to free speech
may be that we are failing to transmit our history and values to the
next generation. Historian David McCullough argues that bad history
textbooks are as great a threat to American freedoms as terrorists.
"Something is eating away at the national memory," he said several years
ago in his Jefferson lecture for the National Endowment for the
Humanities, "and a nation or a community or a society can suffer as much
from the adverse effects of amnesia as can an individual. For a free,
self-governing people, something more than a vague familiarity with
history is essential if we are to hold onto and sustain our freedom."
More
than two thirds of college students and administrators who,participated
in a national survey were unable to remember that freedom of religion
and the press are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. In surveys conducted
at 339 colleges and universities, more than one-fourth of students and
administrators did not list freedom of speech as an essential right
protected by the First Amendment. Allan Charles Kors, president of the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), says that, "If one
thinks of the First Amendment as a foundational American Liberty, the
ignorance and misunderstanding of it by administrators at our nation's
colleges and universities is frightening, and the general ignorance and
misunderstanding of it by students is quite depressing."
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