Middlebury College Profs Release Statement of Principles After Mob Attack on Speaker
“Exposure to controversial points of view does not constitute violence.”
The recent mob attack on a speaker that sent one professor to the hospital clearly had an effect on the faculty.
They released a statement of principles.
From Free Inquiry on Campus:
Free Inquiry on Campus: A Statement of Principles by a Collection of Middlebury College Professors
The principles are as follows:
Genuine higher learning is possible only where free, reasoned, and civil speech and discussion are respected.
Only through the contest of clashing viewpoints do we have any hope of replacing mere opinion with knowledge.
The incivility and coarseness that characterize so much of American politics and culture cannot justify a response of incivility and coarseness on the college campus.
The impossibility of attaining a perfectly egalitarian sphere of free discourse can never justify efforts to silence speech and debate.
Exposure to controversial points of view does not constitute violence.
Students have the right to challenge and to protest non-disruptively the views of their professors and guest speakers.
A protest that prevents campus speakers from communicating with their audience is a coercive act.
No group of professors or students has the right to act as final arbiter of the opinions that students may entertain.
No group of professors or students has the right to determine for the entire community that a question is closed for discussion.
The purpose of college is not to make faculty or students comfortable in their opinions and prejudices.
The purpose of education is not the promotion of any particular political or social agenda.
The primary purpose of higher education is the cultivation of the mind, thus allowing for intelligence to do the hard work of assimilating and sorting information and drawing rational conclusions.
A good education produces modesty with respect to our own intellectual powers and opinions as well as openness to considering contrary views.
All our students possess the strength, in head and in heart, to consider and evaluate challenging opinions from every quarter.
We are steadfast in our purpose to provide all current and future students an education on this model, and we encourage our colleagues at colleges across the country to do the same.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
As a statement of the entirely obvious it’s OK. But I don’t see a mailed-fist refusal to tolerate this barbarism, or any explicit intentions to punish it.
Step One—call Brownshirts what they are. (That’s what I’m not seeing here.)
Step Two—identify and eliminate them.
Anything less is defeat.
it’s a leftist cop out (without the cops obviously)..
No Call 4 Free Speech,
No Call 2 Stop Leftist Violence..
I’ll believe they’re committed to those principles when they start expelling students who disrupt speakers and having arrested students who resort to violence.
Until that starts to happen, it’s all just blowing smoke.
The faculty is disgusting.
Right, left or indifferent, they seem to be fine with what happened, releasing a stupid document whining and crying about what happened, begging the spoiled snowflakes and their brownshirt friends to stop it with coercive acts. What hogwash!
I saw the video, didn’t they? Why aren’t the identifiable students (or paid agitators, whatever) arrested and/or expelled? Put up or shut up, Middlebury. You can’t blame this savage attack on President Trump, you’ve failed miserably in your ‘liberal arts’ jobs!