Middlebury College’s New Event Guidelines Give College Power to Cancel Talks

Middlebury College, which became the center of a national firestorm after student protests of Charles Murray led to a professor being placed in a neck brace, has issued new guidelines for allowing speakers on campus that grants the school the authority to cancel talks that it deems a safety risk.

The new guidelines, which are billed as “interim procedures” in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville (and not the violent protests that besieged Middlebury’s own campus), lay out how the university will respond to talks on campus that may inspire controversy and protesters. Under the new policy, the university bureaucracy will vet events and determine whether they can be allowed to proceed:

3) Requests to schedule an event will be reviewed weekly by staff from Student Activities, Event Management, and Communications to identify any events that are a likely target of disruption, threats, violence, or other acts of intimidation, or are likely to draw unusually large crowds.

4) In the event of a credible likelihood, based on prior incidents or current evidence, that an event is likely to be the target of threats or violence, the Threat Assessment and Management Team will conduct a risk assessment of the event, consulting with local law enforcement as needed, in order to advise the administration.

5) Representatives from Public Safety/Campus Security and Risk Management will review the risk assessment and determine resources or measures that might be necessary to ensure that the event can proceed without undue risk to the speaker and/or members of the community. This review will include a consideration of Middlebury Emergency Preparedness Plan and Emergency Operations protocols.

6) In those exceptional cases where this review indicates significant risk to the community, the president and senior administration will work with event sponsors to determine measures to maximize safety and mitigate risk.   Only in cases of imminent and credible threat to the community that cannot be mitigated by revisions to the event plan would the president and senior administration consider canceling the event.

Since the college now reserves the right to cancel events that it deems a safety risk, thus incentivizing calls for violent protesters. Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer stated Middlebury’s new policy evokes what’s known as the “heckler’s veto,” in which speech is suppressed because of the likelihood of violence in response to said speech:

Brit Hume suggested the new policy could encourage more Murray-like attacks on campus:

Regardless of the actual impact of the policy, it is now written on the official “event scheduling policies” website. It is unclear whether the policy will be revised or suspended or if it will be made permanent.

Thank you for supporting MRCTV! As a tax-deductible, charitable organization, we rely on the support of our readers to keep us running! Keep MRCTV going with your gift here