Some of Murray’s views are indeed odious. Twenty-three years ago, he co-authored The Bell Curve, which argued that differences in intelligence account for much of the class stratification in American life, that intelligence is partly genetic, and that there may be genetic differences between races. Critics called Murray’s argument intellectually shoddy, racist and dangerous, and I agree. (Before I began working there full-time, my old magazine, The New Republic, published an excerpt of the book, along with rebuttals, and thus gave it a legitimacy it did not deserve).

But if conservative students cannot invite speakers who hold what I and many other liberals consider reprehensible views, then they cannot invite many of the most prominent conservative thinkers and Republican politicians in the United States today. Like many liberals, I consider it bigoted to oppose gay marriage. I consider it bigoted to support voting restrictions that disproportionately impact African Americans and Latinos. I consider it bigoted to deny trans students the right to use the bathrooms of their choice. I consider it bigoted to claim that Islam is inherently more violent than Judaism or Christianity. I consider it unconscionable to oppose government action against climate change.

Yet on the American right, these views are all mainstream. If conservative students can’t bring Charles Murray to Middlebury, how can they bring Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich or Clarence Thomas? (Indeed, Yiannopoulos and Murray aren’t the only right-leaning speakers who have sparked mass student protest in recent years. So have Condoleezza Rice and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde).

In fact, Middlebury students did not only object to Murray because of The Bell Curve. Some also objected to his most recent book, Coming Apart, which analyzes the struggles of the white working class. (And about which Murray was scheduled to talk). Coming Apart, declared a group called White Students for Racial Justice, “uses largely anecdotal evidence to blame poor people in America for being poor, attempting to explain economic inequality through a perceived gap in virtue” and thus proves that Murray is “classist.”

The point is this. What’s considered morally legitimate at Middlebury differs dramatically from what’s considered morally legitimate in large swaths of America. When colleges like Middlebury are considering whom to honor, they have every right to apply their own ideological standards. But if they use those standards to determine which speakers conservative student groups can invite, they will make it hard for those groups to function on liberal campuses at all. And in an era in which Americans are already ideologically cocooned, that would be a disaster.

To appreciate the ugliness of what transpired at Middlebury, however, one needs to look not merely at the principles involved, but at the specific sequence of events. In its letter to the campus explaining its invitation to Murray, the AEI club declared that it “invites you to argue.” It invited a left-leaning Middlebury professor, Allison Stanger, to engage Murray in a public conversation following his talk, thus ensuring that his views would be challenged. In his introduction to Murray’s speech, a representative from the AEI club implored his fellow students to debate Murray rather than shouting him down.