College students protest speaker branded white nationalist
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Hundreds of college students on Thursday protested a lecture by a writer some called a white nationalist, forcing the college to move his talk to an undisclosed campus location from which it was live-streamed to the original venue but couldn’t be heard above protesters’ chants, feet stamping and occasional smoke alarms.
Speaker Charles Murray wrote “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” and “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” The Southern Poverty Law Center considers him a white nationalist who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.”
Murray hasn’t responded to an email seeking comment.
Middlebury College students turned their backs on Murray just as he started to speak Thursday and chanted “Who is the enemy? White supremacy!” ”Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray, go away!” and “Your message is hatred. We cannot tolerate it.”