Toni Airaksinen

Barnard College in NYC

Charles Murray, the conservative thinker whose appearance at Middlebury College earlier this month sparked both a student demonstration on campus and widespread national debate over free speech on campus, spoke at Columbia University tonight -- with wide faculty support.

Nearly 150 faculty members from Columbia University signed onto an open letter supporting the right of Charles Murray to speak on campus.

Murray's Columbia lecture, entitled “Are Elites To Blame for the Rise of Donald Trump?,” gives his take on President Trump’s election and expands upon arguments he made in one of his previous books, Coming Apart.

The letter supporting Murray’s right to speak, which was published in the Columbia Spectator, begins by condemning the impact professors feel Murray’s work has had on marginalized communities.

“The corpus of Murray’s work has amounted to an ideological polemic that justifies the ongoing disenfranchisement of African Americans and other people of color, and more recently, poor and working class white people,” they wrote.

Further, they condemned Murray’s views surrounding race, genetics and college aptitude. What Murray believes about African American’s potential for college is “an outrageous insult” to some of the Columbia community, the letter says.

But while the bulk of the letter condemns Murray, it concludes with a reaffirmation of his right to speak, noting that attempts to curb speech could “radically undermine” the campus educational environment.

“We believe strongly in the right of student groups to invite speakers of their choice to campus,” they wrote.

Related: 6 conservatives sparking free speech debates on campuses

Professors who signed the letter reached by USA TODAY College expressed differing motivations for supporting Murray's appearance on campus.

Constance Nathanson, a professor of sociomedical sciences at the Columbia Medical Center, told USA TODAY College she signed the letter as a firm supporter of free speech.

“I’m almost a lifelong member of the ACLU and a very strong believer in the First Amendment to the Constitution,” she said, noting that the ACLU has a history of supporting free speech, even speech that has been deemed “unpopular among liberals.”

“All speech should be protected — speech that we like as well as speech that we don’t like,” said Professor Nathanson.

Robert Shapiro, a professor of public and international affairs, concurred. “I signed because free speech is essential to open inquiry and debate that is fundamental to democracy in general and higher education in particular,” he told USA TODAY College.

Other professors expressed different reasons for signing the letter, not related to their support of free speech. Rosalind Morris, a professor of anthropology at Columbia, was one of those professors. She said she added her name to help fight against the claims Murray makes.

“The primary purpose of the petition I signed is to provide a reasoned, scientifically based refutation of Charles Murray's bogus and racist claims,” she told USA TODAY College. Refuting his arguments, she said, “cannot be done by repressing his speech.”

Murray is best known as the co-author of the book The Bell Curve, which argues that there is a correlation between race and intelligence.

David Rosner, another professor of sociomedical sciences, expressed that while he did sign the letter, he didn’t do so in the spirit of supporting Murray’s right to speak.

Instead, he said he signed it to inform students of the “destructive, racist role” that Murray’s work has played in the past. “Please do not mistake my signature for an endorsement of any of his corruptive views,” Professor Rosner told USA TODAY College.

According to Jonathan Schatz-Mizrahi, the Columbia student organizing Murray’s lecture, over 100 students, faculty and community members were expected to attend Murray’s lecture.

Approximately 60 people attended.

Columbia College student Aristotle Boosalis told USA TODAY College that he was glad Murray was coming to campus because he believes it’s important for people to hear from speakers who hold different opinions from them, noting that it can give students “perspective.”

Boosalis commended the letter professors wrote, noting that he’s glad professors “respect Murray and are willing to allow his voice to be heard.”

Dovie Eisner, a student from Brooklyn College who planned to attend the event, also praised the faculty letter.

“I believe strongly in the lessons taught me by my mentors Robert George of Princeton and KC Johnson of Brooklyn College: namely, that the object of the university ought to be to seek the truth, and to educate students in how to discover truth, and in order to do that, all viewpoints must be heard,” said Eisner.

Murray spoke at Duke University on Tuesday and is slated to appear at NYU tomorrow, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Toni Airaksinen is a student at Barnard College and a USA TODAY College correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.