HARLEM, April 1—Progressive Labor Party salutes the brave students and staff across U.S. college campuses who protested the presence of racist Charles Murray. From Middlebury, Duke, Columbia, New York University, to Notre Dame and Villanova University, they have upheld that there should be no free speech for racists!
Charles Murray, best known for the pseudoscientist racist book The Bell Curve, is touring college campuses on the premise of promoting his new equally racist book Coming Apart. The book has gained increased attention since Donald Trumps’ election. The revival of Murray is no surprise; when overt racist politics are unapologetic fought for in the highest spheres of government, that legitimacy trickles out to colleges and all other institutions. Legitimatizing  “scientific” racist ideas set the groundwork for intensifying racist actions. When they’re allowed to speak, they become emboldened. When they are emboldened, they grow. And when they grow, they put their words into actions—terrorizing and killing Black, Latin, Muslim, immigrant workers and youth.
Middlebury students by chasing Murray off campus carried out on a small scale what the brave soldiers of the Soviet Union proved in defeating Nazism: for the working class, the only response to fascism, and fascist ideas, is force. PLP fights for a society where racists like Charles Murray either scurry down into the darkness of the sewer where they belong, or they face the wrath of the multiracial working class.
At Duke University, Charles gave a talk the “cognitive elite”: those with “higher intelligence levels” have better chance at economic prosperity. This is a classic racist blame-the-victim ideology that Murray first developed in 1994, along with his fellow racist Richard J. Herrnstein, in The Bell Curve. That book is a Nazi-like racist garbage disguised as social science, arguing that Black people are genetically inferior in intelligence to white people. PLP had led a modest struggle against the racist The Bell Curve then, and we continue to fight pseudo-scientific racism.
Protest at Columbia and NYU
A modest group of students, faculty, and community residents and Progressive Labor Party protested both at Columbia and NYU. PLP’s flyer was titled, “No Free Speech for Racists!”
At NYU, students organized through the Torch Club to disrupt and chant down Murray. One held a sign, “No Eugenics on Campus — Fight Fascism.”  The university’s Faculty of Color Caucus submitted a letter indicting Murray’s talk as “hate and fear under the guise of scholarship and free speech.” It is inspiring to see working-class people not let racist academics off the hook. Colleges can be a site of struggle for antiracist pro-communist ideas among the students and workers.
It makes sense that a system based on racist exploitation and inequality creates institutions that perpetuate and legitimatize that racism. Despite typically having liberal bona fides, colleges happily host racists and fascists of all types. Columbia—when it’s not too busy disenfranchising Black, Latin families out of Harlem—hosted Jim Gilchrist, founder of the racist Minuteman Project; and Tommy Robinson (via Skype) the co-founder of the English Defence League, a fascist, anti-Muslim organization in the UK.
Colleges extend a welcoming hand to these and other racists because they are part of a capitalist system that is soaked in the blood of racism. Students and workers have no need for these institutions and their racism! Even when they’re not actively promoting racists, capitalist colleges are busy indoctrinating students in the ways of capitalism. Racism, individualism, nationalism, competition, isolation, elitism, and greed—these are the lessons at every college worldwide. Students at these colleges, on the other hand, like those in Vermont, Quebec, and South Africa, have protested these lessons. Their militancy and bravery should be emulated.
But we need more than militancy! We need a guiding political strategy that overthrows capitalism and the racism and sexism upon which it rests. Let’s unite workers around the world of all “races” and nationalities, men and women, gay and straight, young and old. We invite anyone interested in learning about communism to join us to celebrate May Day, the international workers holiday.