Amid the rush and furor over free speech controversies at college and university campuses across the nation it’s easy to lose track of the good stories, the bright spots in the landscape where there is cause for celebration.
One such event occurred last week at Middlebury College.
Over the past several years, Middlebury has been at the center of a number of incidents in which speakers have been disrupted, disinvited, or attacked. Perhaps the most famous case in recent memory is that of Charles Murray, whose visit led to an attack by protestors in which one professor was assaulted and sent to the hospital.
Middlebury hit the news again recently when student protestors and campus administrators jointly vetoed a planned campus lecture by Ryszard Legutko, a Polish politician and member of the European Parliament.
There have been countless tellings and re-tellings of Legutko’s story, so I will not do so again here. The interesting part is not that Middlebury again offered its students palliatives over intellectual rigor. Rather, what stands out is that students at Middlebury are standing up.
