Charles Murray, a conservative writer, has slammed Middlebury College students after they protested against his event at the school. His scheduled lecture was disrupted by protesters on Thursday night.
Murray said that he has never encountered anything like the environment at Middlebury College, TIME reported. Protesters chanted about how racist, sexist and anti-gay the social scientist is and that they cannot tolerate his message of hatred.
Charles Murray became controversial for his 1994 book entitled "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life." It gained backlash for linking intelligence with race and the author has been deemed as a "white nationalist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
According to the Associated Press, via the Washington Post, Professor Allison Stanger was injured after the protest against Charles Murray. The demonstration got violent after the talk and a protester pulled Stanger's hair, causing her to twist her neck.
Murray took to Twitter to praise the Middlebury College administration for being "exemplary." The students, however, he described as "seriously scary."
The college's president, Laurie L. Patton, also expressed her deep disappointment at the events. She said that members of the college community failed to live up to the institution's core values. She did admit that she believes that several of the protesters were "outside agitators" but that there were also students who were involved in the violent protests.
Charles Murray shared the events from his vantage point as well. He revealed that he and Bill Burger, Vice President for Communications at Middlebury, met to go over a contingency plan in the event that protesters did not stop.
He recounted that he only got halfway through his first sentence before the uproar began, which went on for about 20 minutes in his estimate. Burger came on stage to announce that the people who wanted to hear the lecture should be able to hear what Murray had to say.
Murray and Stanger then were led out of the lecture hall and into an improvised studio, which was part of their backup plan. He spoke to the camera as his lecture was livestreamed, which was when the fire alarm went off. However, the protests never stopped and Ms. Stanger twisted her neck as they braced the mob to go through their getaway car.
