Citing safety, college cancels Polish conservative’s speech

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury College has cancelled a lecture by a conservative Polish speaker out of safety concerns two years after the school was the site of a rowdy protest.

Middlebury made the announcement Wednesday, hours before member of the European Parliament and philosopher Ryszard Legutko was to appear. The Vermont college cited an assessment of the school’s ability to respond to potential security and safety risks around both the lecture and the protest students had planned in response.

The student-run newspaper had described Legutko as a critic of LGBTQ activists, multiculturalism and liberal democracy.

A 2017 speech by conservative author Charles Murray was disrupted by demonstrations and a subsequent confrontation in which a Middlebury professor was injured. Murray is a social scientist who critics say uses pseudoscience to link intelligence and race.