The New College Protest

Last week, Charles Murray, a writer and scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, was shouted off the stage before giving a presentation at Middlebury College, a small liberal-arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. After the talk was relocated to a different location, Murray, faculty, and staff from the college were physically assaulted by protesters. Allison Stanger, a member of the political-science department who conducted the Q&A with Murray, was hospitalized for injuries and diagnosed with a concussion.

Murray, who holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of The Bell Curve(1994), which finds correlations between intelligence and success, and (2012), which discusses the polarization of communities in the United States. His latest book, , urges Americans to stem governmental overreach. Murray’s statements about race and intelligence, in particular, have garnered ,though Murray has that his views are racist, arguing that his ideas have been wildly mischaracterized.