"Many students today go quickly to the position that there is such a thing as hate speech, that they know it when they see it that and it ought to be outlawed."

"For me that’s a topic to teach, not to simply honor or denounce. I’m revealing myself here as a person whose chords and arpeggios and scales are always the history of political thought: John Stuart Mill’s 'On Liberty' is the place to start. He says that the line between your freedom and its end is where it impacts on another’s freedom. That’s the question with hate speech: When does it do that? I’ll also mention Charles Murray. That’s tricky, because his science has been discredited by his peers, and his conclusions are understood by many as a form of hate speech, because he makes an argument about the racial inferiority of Black people in their capacity to learn and to succeed in this society. It feels terrible to give him a podium and a bunch of students who would sit and imbibe that as the truth. I think if Murray is invited to campus, you can picket him, you can leaflet him, but I don’t think it should be canceled. The important thing is for students to be educated and educate others about the bad science, the discrediting of his position, and then ask, Why does he survive in the academy, and why does that bad science keep getting resuscitated? Those are important questions for students to ask and then learn how to answer. That’s what’s going to equip them in this political world."

Said Wendy Brown, the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, quoted in "Why Critics of Angry Woke College Kids Are Missing the Point" (NYT).

"One sentence in the new book by the American political scientist Charles Murray, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America, leapt out at me."

"Suggesting that the reader might imagine living in a lower-class, multiracial city neighbourhood, he writes: 'Most of the children in the bottom of the class in your child’s school are minorities.' Well, in Britain that just isn’t true. The children at the bottom of that class are likely to be white working-class boys. They are doing worse than Asians, Chinese or Afro-Caribbean children. Although Murray is writing about America, he is making an assertion about innate racial differences in intelligence. He protests that it isn’t the product of a 'racist imagination' but represents 'lived experience.' But it doesn’t, at least in Britain. So is it a generalisation based on racist assumptions? This matters because Murray has been tarred and feathered for years as a racist and eugenicist.... Murray is correct when he writes that the new ideologies of the far-left are akin to the Red Guards of Mao’s Cultural Revolution — 'and they are coming for all of us.' However, insulting and cancelling him merely inflates his martyr status while failing to subject his arguments to cool and rational dissection, as [Thomas] Sowell has done so fairly. Murray wrote Facing Reality out of alarm that ethnicity was becoming central to identity and social organisation. The reality he has to face is that his own theorising does precisely that."

From "Race claims need examining with a cool eye/Theorising about the abilities of different ethnic groups risks fuelling divisive identity politics" by Melanie Phillips (London Times).

Glenn Loury talks to Charles Murray about the "shift away from racism as a moral issue to accusations of racism as a kind of attack on [white people] as people."

"If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain."

"That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it. That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse.... On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. it is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. There is a difference between permitting a culture of casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you strongly oppose.... [W]e should have open conversations and vigorous debate about controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence."

Writes psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of "How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain," in a NYT op-ed titled "When Is Speech Violence?"

No comments permitted on that piece for some reason. I'd like to see some responses from other experts on the brain.

I mean, isn't all our hearing, thinking, and remembering done with brain cells? It's freaky, if you think about it, the way everyone who speaks to you is doing something deep inside your most precious internal organ, at the cellular level, but it's just crazy — my brain cells are getting remodeled by this thought — to think that everyone who says something to you is having a physical impact on you, the equivalent of a touching, and that those who speak in a way that isn't nice enough are committing physical violence.

By the way, the NYT doesn't say this, but Lisa Feldman Barrett was (if Wikipedia is correct) born and educated in Canada, where free speech is less well valued and protected.

"More than five dozen Middlebury College students were disciplined for their roles in shutting down a speech by the author Charles Murray in March..."

"... the college announced this week. But the students were spared the most serious penalties in the episode, which left a faculty member injured and came to symbolize a lack of tolerance for conservative ideas on some campuses," the NYT reports.

Mr. Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, [said] "The sanctions are a farce,... They will not deter anyone. They’re a statement to students that if you shut down a lecture, nothing will happen to you.”...

Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury, said he believed that while the penalties might satisfy some members of the faculty and the community... [But] “[The students] don’t understand the value of free speech at a college and what free speech really means... I think some people are going to say we should be looking more broadly at the institution and whether we taught these students properly.”

The Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy — at the University of Wisconsin — hosts Charles Murray at its "First Annual Disinvited Dinner."

Here's the announcement of the event, which is subtitled "Exercises in Applied First Amendment Theory."

The CSLD’s Disinvited Dinner is an effort to re-offer a podium to individuals whose First Amendment rights have been abridged elsewhere. In other words, this is an exercise in applied First Amendment theory. While we may disagree with the content of our speakers’ talks, that is no matter. With this dinner we celebrate and affirm First Amendment principles, the importance and meaning of academic freedom, and the search for Truth.

The keynote speaker at our first annual Disinvited Dinner will be Dr. Charles Murray, the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose 1994 New York Times bestseller The Bell Curve (1994) sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America’s class structure. Dr. Murray’s other books include What It Means to Be a Libertarian (1997), Human Accomplishment (2003), In Our Hands (2006), Real Education (2008), and the New York Times bestseller Coming Apart (2012).

Dr. Murray has the honor of being disinvited from Azusa University in 2014, and Virginia Tech in 2016. More recently a mob of leftist activists drove him from the stage at Middlebury College and put a political science professor in the hospital in so doing. Although our invitation to Dr. Murray long preceded this ugly event, it nevertheless underscores the principle we are pursuing. During our dinner, Dr. Murray will deliver a talk called "Coming Apart: Trump’s Transformation of the Right."

I like the idea of the University of Wisconsin distinguishing itself by showing a commitment to intellectual diversity and to the values that underlie the First Amendment. That doesn't mean students and others who don't like what Murray has to say must refrain from staging their own events, only that they shouldn't use their own speech and action to obstruct the people who do want to hear him. The "applied exercise" in First Amendment theory isn't just about Murray having a podium. (Give him a podium, and a lectern too.) It's also about the people who choose to "celebrate" by sitting politely through dinner in a somewhat posh club and the people who don't want to do that or can't attend an event that is "$50 by invitation only" (whatever that means).

For those who do attend, is it really possible to celebrate the First Amendment and not also the speaker? It seems to me that by attending an event in such an elegant setting, where only one person is speaking, you are inherently honoring the individual, unless you violate the social norms of an sedate dinner. You can find out about the person's ideas by reading his books and articles or by looking at on-line video of his speaking. We're not living in a time when we must see someone in in the flesh to know what he has to say. Of all the people you might take the trouble to go out and hear speak in person, should you prioritize those who've been hooted out of other places? I think the honest answer is: Yes, but only if I also want to give support to his ideas. And what about people who just don't get invited anywhere, like those Westboro Church folks or out-and-proud Nazis? They won't get an invitation to the Disinvited Dinner, but if they did, can you imagine sitting through a dinner where they were going to speak and thinking of yourself as merely celebrating the idea of the First Amendment?

For those who don't attend and who might want to oppose Charles Murray, I have 3 recommendations: 1. Educate yourself about what he actually has said so you don't hurt your own cause by saying and doing ignorant things or waste your time by fighting things you're not even against, 2. Don't help your opponent by committing or threatening acts of violence that make him seem like a sympathetic victim or a cool rebel, and 3. Don't lower yourself by looking like a mob. Use words. Good words. If you can't think of any, reread point #2 and consider doing nothing.

"Those who wanted the event to take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so."

"They couldn’t look at me directly, because if they had, they would have seen another human being," writes Allison Stanger, the professor who brought Charles Murray to Middlebury College to speak.

Students were chanting, “Who is the enemy? White supremacy,” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay: Charles Murray, go away!”...

Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. 

Stanger makes it clear that she is a Democrat, she disagrees with Murray, and the students knew that.

Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash.

Stanger tries to reach out to the student protesters:

[W]ith time to reflect, I have to say that I hear and understand the righteous anger of many of those who shouted us down. I know that many students felt they were standing up to protect marginalized people who have been demeaned or even threatened under the guise of free speech.

But for us to engage with one another as fellow human beings — even on issues where we passionately disagree — we need reason, not just emotions. Middlebury students could have learned from identifying flawed assumptions or logical shortcomings in Dr. Murray’s arguments....

There is no excusing what happened at Middlebury, and those who prevented Charles Murray from speaking must be punished for violating college rules. But what the events at Middlebury made clear is that, regardless of political persuasion, Americans today are deeply susceptible to a renunciation of reason and celebration of ignorance. 

The "events" at Middlebury showed left-wing students resorting to violence and refusing to listen to the other side. I don't see how they make anything "clear" about right-wingers. Sanger seems to be sweeping them in too because it's conciliatory. But how is that embracing reason? It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech. 

"In his 2012 book Coming Apart, conservative writer Charles Murray argues that America’s upper class has fallen out of touch with mainstream (white) culture."

"Murray calls this insular group 'elites,' but a better term might be 'fancy people.'... To help people figure out if they were fancy or not, Murray devised a quiz in his book. Last month, PBS Newshour adapted his questions into an online poll, which has garnered over 50,000 responses so far."

I hope one of the questions is: Do you use the word "garner"?

Just kidding. I took Murray's test. According to the above-quoted Washington Post story ("The most out-of-touch places in America"):

Scores range from from 0–100, a full score meaning that someone is completely in tune with working-class culture. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Newshour audience is largely composed of fancy people. The median score was around 40 out of 100.

I got a 20.

Take the test here.

"Merger marriages are what you tend to see on the weddings pages of the Sunday New York Times..."

"... highly educated couples in their 30s, both people well on their way to success. Lots of things can be said in favor of merger marriages... But let me put in a word for startup marriages, in which the success of the partners isn't yet assured...."

Writes Charles Murray in The Wall Street Journal, dispensing 5 rules for a happy life, beginning with "Consider Marrying Young." Just consider, note. There are, of course, also many reasons to consider not marrying your college sweetheart. For one thing, marriage entails only 2 parties, is intended to last for a human lifetime and tends to include children. So it's not like mergers and startups, which can last for short or long periods of time — whatever works — and involve multiple entities coming and going as suits the needs of whoever wields more economic power. It's a really bad analogy.

End unpaid internships, drop the SAT for college admissions, and stop requiring a college degree for jobs where it's not needed.

Charles Murray has some ideas about narrowing class differences in America.