by Maggie Gallagher
Professor Allison Stanger, injured by a mob at Middlebury College who were angry that scholar Charles Murray was allowed to speak, was one of the first to sign on to the Princeton Declaration on Free Speech co-authored by Professors Robert George and Cornel West, from the right and left.
But she was far from the last. Here’s a late-breaking update I received from Prof. George:
My wonderful staff at Princeton has been working feverishly since the statement was released, but we can’t keep up with the inflow of signatures, media inquiries, etc. We’re working on updating the list of signatories. I suspect that we’ve got a couple of thousand now, with a steady stream coming in. Notable signers include Allison Stanger (the Middlebury professor who was attacked by the mob), Sir Roger Scruton (the eminent philosopher), Sir Angus Deaton (Nobel Prize winning economist), Mary Ann Glendon (Harvard Law School), James Ceaser (University of Virginia political scientist), and Peter Singer (yes, that Peter Singer, the one who defends infanticide).
The mob, which sought to shut down the university, appears to have instead shocked the conscience of the academia, leading to a rare outpouring of support on the right and the left for core American and academic principles.
Photo credit: theilr via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
