Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, author Charles Murray reflected on the madness surrounding his appearance at Middlebury College in early March.
“I expected the protests would occur,” Murray said. “What we didn’t know was whether they would keep it up forever.”
“Some of them bragged about it. And by them, I mean faculty members,” Murray told Carlson, noting admissions by faculty that they had never read his work before protesting his event.
Professor Allison Stanger, who was also at the center of the chaos that took place in early March, noted in an op-ed for the New York Times that she was disheartened to learn that many of her colleagues that protested Murray’s event had not read his work.
“This past month, as the campus uproar about Dr. Murray’s visit built, I was genuinely surprised and troubled to learn that some of my faculty colleagues had rendered judgment on Dr. Murray’s work and character without ever having read anything he has written,” Professor Allison Stanger wrote.
“This was not going to be a lecture demonizing welfare mothers and things like that,” Murray explained. “I was going to say, ‘You as members of the new elite need to be aware of the ways in which the elite is screwing the working class in this country.'”
“Fifty years ago that would have been a message most likely delivered by someone on the left,” Carlson responded. “Now, you’re a fairly famous libertarian-ish person trying to deliver this and you get shouted down. What does that tell you about the current state of the left?”
“A couple of points, Tucker. One of them is, they didn’t know what I was going to say, so it wasn’t that they were contesting that message,” Murray explained. “Second thing is, remember, this was 100 to 200 kids out of 2500. So I think with all of these protests on campuses, there is a large, I suspect, silent majority. What scares me is they are cowed.”
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.