After Protest, ‘The Bell Curve’ Author Sails Through Lecture

BLACKSBURG, VA — Even though political scientist Charles Murray didn’t visit Virginia Tech on Friday to discuss “The Bell Curve”—his controversial 1994 treatise about the extent to which human intelligence is based on one’s heredity versus the environment and that touches on the role of race—he still agreed to discuss his views with a vocal group of faculty and students who protested his talk.

“You’re welcome to ask me anything you want about anything I’ve ever written, just as long as I’ve actually written it,” Murray said at the outset of his speech, which was on a different topic and part of a lecture series on capitalism.

“No restrictions,” Murray added.

The protesters—a diverse group of about 100 individuals, some of them donning black T-shirts emblazoned with the words “I AM NOT INFERIOR”—had plenty to say about Murray in the hour before he gave his speech.

Assembled on the brick walkway outside The Inn at Virginia Tech—the facility where the lecture took place—the protesters wielded signs that called Murray “racist scum” and an “inferior scholar” and likened him to Adolf Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan.

Murray actually took a photograph of some of the protesters who greeted him with their signs and Tweeted it upon his arrival.

“Welcome to Virginia Tech!” Murray stated in his Tweet.