The illiberal injustice against Charles Murray

Why Middlebury leftists should have welcomed the conservative political scientist — not run him out of town

Charles Murray speaks.
(Image credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Charles Murray deserved better.

The violent protests that greeted the conservative political scientist when he tried to speak at Middlebury College last week could be easily dismissed as the latest episode in the by-now tiresome campus speech wars. They shouldn't be. Murray isn't just another right-wing gadfly who enjoys provoking left-wing outrage. In a very real sense, if the left thinks he isn't worth debating, then one has to wonder who they think is.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.