The violent mob protest that greeted Charles Murray's appearance at Middlebury College on March 2 grew out of several days of agitation.

About a week before the conservative author and political scientist was due to speak at the private college in Middlebury, Vermont, faculty members circulated an email that described him as a "white nationalist." The college newspaper published a dozen open letters, opinion columns, and editorials both for and against his appearance, including one in protest penned by professors.

"This is not an issue of freedom of speech," read a letter signed by 450 alumni. The letter cited a profile from the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center, which opponents of the lecture repeatedly referred to in the run-up to the event: "The Southern Poverty Law Center considers Dr. Murray a 'white nationalist' who 'us[es] racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by … genetic inferiority.' Why has such a person been granted a platform at Middlebury?"

Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, had been invited by student members of the AEI club to speak about his 2012 book, Coming Apart. The AEI club is a student group that meets weekly to discuss politics, philosophy, and economics and has brought conservative viewpoints to campus for debate and discussion. Murray has seen his fair share of protests over the years—particularly in response to his controversial 1994 work The Bell Curve, co-authored with the late Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein.

But the events that ensued were not routine college campus protests. A week's worth of letters, editorials, frustrated Facebook posts, and meetings culminated in an hours-long violent cacophony that left a professor in a neck brace and hundreds of students, eager to listen and debate Murray and his scholarship, disillusioned and uninformed.

Tension on campus spiked the Monday before the event, when Middlebury Resistance, a group that seeks to "restore our sense of hope and justice" after the election victory of Donald Trump, held "resistance meetings" with students and faculty.

Attendees were divided on how to respond to Murray's appearance, but a chunk of students settled on a tactic known as "simultaneous dialogue," or shouting down the speaker, multiple sources told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Some professors in attendance gave "tacit and explicit support" to the strategy, one source reported, and admitted that they had not read Murray's work.

"When asked by students and other faculty members whether they had ever read Charles Murray's work, the organizers bristled at the notion that they should be asked to read a work before condemning it," a source close to the meetings told TWS. "'You mean you want me to read The Bell Curve?'"

Professor Allison Stanger, who interviewed Murray for the talk and was assailed upon leaving the event, voiced concern about her fellow faculty members in a Facebook post Saturday.

"As the campus uproar about his visit built, I was genuinely surprised and troubled to learn that some of my faculty colleagues had rendered judgement on Dr. Murray's work and character, while openly admitting that they had not read anything he had written," Stanger wrote. "With the best of intentions, they offered their leadership to enraged students, and we all now know what the results were."

During a second student meeting Monday night, the room divided into two, president of the AEI club Phil Hoxie told TWS. Members of the AEI club were only allowed to attend a meeting that centered around potential questions for an event Q&A.

Hoxie said students had not read Murray's published work and had difficulty thinking of questions.

"When [students] tried to think of a question, crickets. They couldn't think of a single question to ask [Murray]," Hoxie said. "Until one girl, after about a minute or two of awkward silence, said, 'maybe we should identify professors to ask questions for us, because I, like most of you, haven't read the book.'"

Club members were not allowed to attend the other group meeting, which was for those who wanted to "shut down" the event and featured "people from Burlington who have done this before," according to Hoxie.

"We were only permitted to go to the Q&A group," Hoxie said. "One of our friends tried to sneak in, but she got weeded out."

Throughout the week, members of the administration reaffirmed thei r commitment to free speech and the exchange of ideas. The president of the college announced she would attend and speak at the event. The political science department did not pull its co-sponsorship.

On Thursday, hundreds of students lined up to attend the lecture. It was "the largest turnout in recent memory," according to one source at the college.

Faculty members present at the Middlebury Resistance meeting stood on marble steps outside the event space and spoke to students ahead of the lecture, according to vice president of the AEI club Alexander Khan. They did not attend the talk.

"Their leaving was, in a sense, an act of cowardice," Khan told TWS in an email. "After egging the students on and giving speeches outside, they left so that they would not have to do any of the dirty work."

The auditorium quickly filled to capacity. College president Laurie Patton opened with remarks reiterating the college's commitment to free speech.

"If there ever was a time for Americans to take on arguments that offend us it is now," Patton said. "If there ever was a time for us to challenge influential public views with better reasons, better research, better logic, and better data it is now."

"I remind you of the rules. If any person or group of people shuts down the speech of another, they're in violation of the college policy," she said. The crowd applauded.

Then Murray took the stage.

Students, backs turned, protested for almost half an hour. Many of them chanted. Some stood silently.

"It was apparent that some of the protests violated college policy," said Bill Burger, a spokesman for the college.

After about 20 minutes, event organizers transferred Murray and Stanger to a private room to video stream their conversation.

"We were determined to have the event," Burger said. "We believe that having the event was core to our values as an institution."

Protests continued. Fire alarms were pulled. Some stomped their feet, banged chairs, and jumped on bleachers.

A number of students and faculty remained in the hall and strained to hear the livestream. While protesters shouted "F— white supremacy," one student from China answered, "F— censorship!"

An attendee painted the scene to TWS:

"The students who remained to hear the lecture demonstrated both moral and intellectual courage; they should give hope to anyone who despairs entirely over the state of the American college. Most of them were liberals, including Bernie supporters; some of them were conservatives; some were apolitical science majors. But they believe in the value of free speech and rational exchange. They represented the majority of Middlebury students, who are too smart to be told by their professors what to think about books that neither they nor their learned teachers have read. Some of these students attempted to reason with the protesters. Several hailed from countries suffering under authoritarian rule, and for anyone who would listen, they poignantly drew the comparison between what they were witnessing and what they and their families knew at home."

Around this time, masked agitators—who multiple sources said were not students—attempted to enter the hall. Hoxie suggested that these were the same individuals from Burlington who attended the Monday resistance meeting.

The masked individuals assaulted Stanger as she left the event space with Murray and Burger. Someone pulled her hair and injured her neck. Stanger cancelled her class sections Friday.

"Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm both to shield him from attack and to make sure we stayed together so I could reach the car too, that's when the hatred turned on me," Stanger said in a post. "One thug grabbed me by the hair and another shoved me in a different direction. I noticed signs with expletives and my name on them."

Burger said those assailants were not Middlebury students.

"We were immediately confronted by a number of individuals wearing masks, who were intent on a confrontation. It was clear to me that these were not Middlebury students," Burger told TWS. "These were people who have been described to me as sort-of an anarchist group."

"Some people have said they were from Burlington," he said. "I don't know where they were from."

Other sources said that the violent crowd included Middlebury students.

The group began attacking the car, knocking on its windows, and jumping on it. A stop sign was thrown in front of the vehicle.

"I think we're in a different political time right now," Burger said. "It's one that we're going to all have to wrestle with and understand, and find new ways of connecting people with the institution and with one another."

Stanger linked the intensity of the protests to the state of American politics.

"To people who wish to spin this story as one about what's wrong with elite colleges and universities, you are mistaken," she wrote in her Saturday post. "Please instead consider this as a metaphor for what is wrong with our country, and on that, Charles Murray and I would agree."

After the protesters cleared and Murray left campus, a group of students and faculty gathered with Patton to discuss what happened and how to move forward.

"We will be responding in the very near future to the clear violations of Middlebury College policy that occurred inside and outside," Patton said Friday in an email to the Middlebury community. "I extend my sincerest apologies to everyone who came in good faith to participate in a serious discussion, and particularly to Mr. Murray and Prof. Stanger for the way they were treated during the event and, especially, afterward."

Jenna Lifhits is a 2015 graduate of Middlebury College, where she helped start the AEI club.