Middlebury College disciplines students over protest of conservative writer Charles Murray

Vermont's Middlebury College has disciplined 67 of 100 or so students who disrupted a March lecture by Charles Murray, a conservative author and American Enterprise Institute scholar, but none of the students were suspended or expelled. The punishments range "from probation to official college discipline," Middlebury said in a statement on Tuesday, with the last action — meted out to 10 or fewer students — leaving a mark on the students' permanent academic records. The Middlebury Police also said it won't bring any charges in the incident, which left faculty member Allison Stanger injured.

"The sanctions are a farce," Murray said Wednesday. "They will not deter anyone. They're a statement to students that if you shut down a lecture, nothing will happen to you." Middlebury spokesman Bill Burger disagreed, saying 20 of the students are appealing the punishments. "What I can tell you is that the students who received them don't think they're meaningless," he said.

In the March incident, a group of 100 to 150 protesters shouted that Murray was racist and sexist, referring to his 1994 book The Bell Curve. When he left the stage and moved to another room for a live-streamed Q&A session, students pulled the fire alarm. A group of protesters, some wearing masks and maybe not all students, accosted Murray and Stanger when they left the building for a car, and Stanger was treated for a concussion after someone pulled her hair. Police said they did not have enough evidence to press charges, in part because they couldn't identify the assailants.

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