Murray: Middlebury was repudiation of university spirit — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:06Well, last March, one of the great
3. 0:07living sociologists in America, Charles
4. 0:10Murray, went to Mbury College in Vermont
5. 0:12to deliver a lecture on America's
6. 0:14growing class divide and the decline of
7. 0:16the American working class. It's an
8. 0:18important topic. He's covered it in a
9. 0:20couple of books. And of course, the
10. 0:22phenomenon has turned out to explain a
11. 0:24lot about the rise of Donald Trump and
12. 0:26many other political tremors shaping
13. 0:28this country over the last decade.
14. 0:31Murray's an important figure. That's not
15. 0:32an overstatement. But instead of
16. 0:33listening to any of this, the students
17. 0:35rioted, attempted to block Murray's car,
18. 0:38even hospitalize a professor who was
19. 0:40escorting him out. Charles Murray has
20. 0:42not appeared on television since that
21. 0:43incident. He is here now. The man at the
22. 0:45center of it all, Charles Murray, joins
23. 0:46us tonight. Um, Charles Murray, thanks a
24. 0:48lot for coming on.
25. 0:49My pleasure. So, I guess what I was
26. 0:51struck by was you've written a couple of
27. 0:53books that one book in particular that
28. 0:54was controversial 20 years ago, 28 years
29. 0:57ago. And when you wrote it, people the
30. 0:58left freaked out, but they read the book
31. 1:00and they responded to what was in it.
32. 1:02They didn't like it. Some of them did.
33. 1:03At least they pretended to. When you
34. 1:05went to Mbury, I didn't get the sense
35. 1:06that anybody in the crowd had read
36. 1:08anything you'd ever written.
37. 1:09No. And some of them bragged about it.
38. 1:11And by some of them, I mean faculty
39. 1:13members. the the faculty member who was
40. 1:15leading the charge against me appearing
41. 1:17there said no he'd never read a word I
42. 1:19uh I'd written but he still knew I was a
43. 1:22bad guy.
44. 1:23How did it unfold? We've played this
45. 1:25video a number of times. This this
46. 1:27incident kind of sums up a lot that's
47. 1:29wrong with the country right now, I
48. 1:30think. But you were there. What was that
49. 1:32like?
50. 1:33Well, I expected uh because I've been
51. 1:35briefed by the people at Middbury that
52. 1:37the protests would occur. What what we
53. 1:40didn't know was whether they were going
54. 1:42to keep it up forever.
55. 1:43Yes. And my initial thought was, hell,
56. 1:44I'll stand up here all night if I have
57. 1:46to to wait him out. Bill Burgerer, who
58. 1:49was the uh Melbury's coordinator for all
59. 1:52of this, rightly stopped it at about 20
60. 1:54minutes so that we went downstairs and
61. 1:56and presented the presentation on video.
62. 1:59Um because they weren't going to stop.
63. 2:02They they were going to go on all night.
64. 2:03And what were they saying? What was
65. 2:05their claim against?
66. 2:05They had lots of different chants. Uh
67. 2:07and and none of them were very
68. 2:10memorable. They involved white
69. 2:12supremacist and eugenicist and white
70. 2:15nationalist
71. 2:17and that kind of stuff.
72. 2:20And what I heard one of them call you
73. 2:22anti-gay.
74. 2:24Yeah.
75. 2:25And you know, first place, should I go
76. 2:29on record and say I'm not a white
77. 2:31supremacist? I'm not aware.
78. 2:32Okay. Okay. It it's it's unreal. It's
79. 2:37it's been unreal actually for the last
80. 2:39six months where it's not that people
81. 2:42are twisting things you have said. They
82. 2:45are making assertions about what you've
83. 2:47said that bear no relationship to
84. 2:49anything that you have said.
85. 2:50Well, and and in fact distorting what
86. 2:53you're saying almost inverting it. I
87. 2:56mean, you made I thought a really
88. 2:57powerful case against the American
89. 3:00elites, the ruling class people who run
90. 3:01the country. I I I'm standing up there
91. 3:03at Middbury with this very elite student
92. 3:05body and I'm thinking to myself, you
93. 3:08want to give a lecture dumping on the
94. 3:10elite and they're upset about that. This
95. 3:13was not going to be a lecture uh
96. 3:15demonizing welfare mothers or things
97. 3:17like that. I was going to say you as
98. 3:19members of the the new elite have to be
99. 3:22aware of all the the ways in which the
100. 3:24elite is screwing the working class in
101. 3:27this country.
102. 3:28How interesting. So 50 years ago that
103. 3:31that would have been a message delivered
104. 3:33most likely by someone on the left.
105. 3:35Now you're a fairly famous
106. 3:36libertarianish person trying to deliver
107. 3:38this and you get shouted down. What does
108. 3:40that tell you about the current? A
109. 3:42couple of points, Tucker. One of them is
110. 3:43they didn't know what I was going to
111. 3:44say. Yeah.
112. 3:45So it wasn't they were protesting that
113. 3:47message. Second thing is remember this
114. 3:49was 100 to 200 kids out of 2500.
115. 3:53And so I think with all of these
116. 3:55protests on campus, there is a large I
117. 3:58suspect silent majority.
118. 4:01What scares me is that they are cowed.
119. 4:03Yes. And and when I talk to students,
120. 4:06and I think it's especially a problem at
121. 4:08in the humanities and the social
122. 4:10sciences, in elite universities, they
123. 4:13tailor what they write in their term
124. 4:15papers and what they say in class to
125. 4:17what is in reality a lot of penalties
126. 4:20that professors are prepared to impose
127. 4:22on them if they say the wrong thing.
128. 4:24What's so striking though is that this
129. 4:25isn't happening in trade schools and
130. 4:27it's not happening in lower tier
131. 4:29schools. It's happening in schools that
132. 4:31are the most expensive and the hardest
133. 4:32to get into where the children of
134. 4:35America's elite go. What does that tell
135. 4:36you?
136. 4:37Well, first place, you've got the, you
137. 4:39know, the science and technology majors
138. 4:41versus the social science/h humanities,
139. 4:44and that's way different. And for that
140. 4:46matter, Tucker, my daughter went to
141. 4:49Mbury, graduated in 2007. She got a
142. 4:52great education. She just had to pick
143. 4:54her classes very carefully and and it
144. 4:57worked. Uh, so
145. 4:59There's a danger in this. What happened
146. 5:02in Mbury is not necessarily
147. 5:05a a you know nationwide problem but it
148. 5:09is toxic in this sense that the whole
149. 5:11notion of a university is that it is a
150. 5:15safe space if I may use that phrase for
151. 5:17intellectual discourse. That is the
152. 5:20thing it's supposed to do.
153. 5:21Yes. and and you know thinking about
154. 5:23Mbury
155. 5:25a lot of the attention came to the mob
156. 5:27that was outside where Professor Stanger
157. 5:30got seriously hurt and and that was very
158. 5:32scary but that wasn't the most important
159. 5:34event the most important event was what
160. 5:37went on in that lecture hall the thing
161. 5:38that went on outside that was a thuggery
162. 5:41you know a felony a criminal felony and
163. 5:43somebody should do do jail time for it
164. 5:45but what went on inside that lecture
165. 5:46hall was a repudiation of what the
166. 5:49university is all about
167. 5:50it's terrifying and and The overarching
168. 5:52irony is that your book, Coming Apart,
169. 5:54provides the single clearest blueprint
170. 5:57explaining why Trump got elected. It
171. 5:59wasn't because of Vladimir Putin. It was
172. 6:00because of the forces you describe in
173. 6:01that book. And I wish their minds were
174. 6:03open to hearing it because they'd be a
175. 6:06lot better.
176. 6:06Well, if they want to invite me back,
177. 6:07I'd be glad to.
178. 6:08They ought to. Charles Murray, thank you
179. 6:09for that. Great to see you. My pleasure.