Sen. Chris Murphy ’96, D-Conn., delivered a public talk at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance on Thursday. In conversation with Associate Professor of Political Science Matthew Tokeshi, Murphy spoke about his experience at the College, building community in the face of authoritarianism, and his hopes for the future of the Democratic party. After his talk, the senator spoke with the Record about President Donald Trump’s attacks on higher education and immigration reform.
During the talk, Murphy repeatedly urged the audience to stand up to authoritarianism, which he believes is Trump’s ultimate goal. Murphy said he sees the erosion of democracy as a slow process. “Democracy doesn’t die in a coup,” he said.
Noting that democracy in the United States has withstood challenges before, Murphy emphasized what he described as a crisis of the present moment, citing wealth inequality as a key cause of current democratic erosion. He also stressed the importance of remembering history in order to protect democracy. “If we don’t understand how we got here, we won’t get out,” he said.
In an interview with the Record, Murphy said that community building, which he views as an essential part of democracy, can start in Williamstown. “We have to find ways to stitch together communities and build neighborliness in a new way,” he said. “I think you can make a difference right here in Williamstown or North Adams by spending part of your four years trying to find ways to bring groups that aren’t talking right now together, so folks can learn that people that vote differently from them are not always an existential threat to the country, as we are led to believe if we spend all of our time on our social media feeds.”
In a March interview with The New Yorker, Murphy described the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education as part of a “pretty thoughtful plan to destroy democracy and the rule of law.” Last June, the federal government issued regulations prohibiting certain grant money from funding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming. The College temporarily stopped accepting certain federal grants in response. In November, however, the College resumed accepting these grants after removing references to DEI from the Faculty Handbook and other College materials.
Murphy called on liberal arts colleges to resist the federal government’s attacks. “Every college has a responsibility to speak up at this moment and to show solidarity with those schools that are under attack,” Murphy told the Record. “It’s not just Columbia. The president has gone after a number of bigger schools, and I think it’s really important for especially the leading liberal arts institutions to be really vocal in solidarity with the schools that ultimately are under attack.”
College President Maud S. Mandel has opposed the Trump administration’s hostile policy toward higher education. In October, the Trump administration asked nine schools — not including the College — to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” in exchange for privileged access to federal funding. Trump later extended the offer to join the compact and comply with its rules about hiring and the treatment of conservative ideas to any institution. Although the Trump administration did not name the College, Mandel addressed the compact directly in an Oct. 6 all-campus email. “The Compact threatens to undermine academic independence,” she wrote.
In addition to the threats posed by Trump, Murphy criticized the role of corporate influence on U.S. politics. He called for a breakup of tech companies like Meta and Google and for more restriction of social media, specifically for children. He also argued that campaign finance reform must be at the heart of Democratic initiatives moving forward.
Murphy, who studied political science and history at the College, spent his junior year at the Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford. Studying comparative politics abroad informed his approach to politics, Murphy told the Record. “I spent a year in England studying the differences between the U.S. and the British system,” he said. “I remember being so struck at how much of a smaller role money played in British elections and European elections than it plays in the United States, and it made me even more concerned for the role that big money and corporate money plays in the United States.”
Just two years after graduating from the College, Murphy was elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives, where he served for two terms while simultaneously earning his J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law. After an additional two terms in the State Senate, Murphy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating a 12-term incumbent Republican.
In November 2012, Murphy was elected to the U.S. Senate. The next month, a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Murphy pledged to make ending gun violence a centerpiece of his career in the Senate and has since been outspoken on the issue.
In 2022, after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Murphy helped facilitate the congressional compromise that enabled the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The act enhanced background checks, funded mental health programs, and tightened a federal ban on domestic abusers buying guns. In his talk on Thursday, Murphy credited the legislation with decreasing rates of homicide and mass shootings in the United States over the last three years.
Murphy’s legislative resume also includes negotiating the drafting of a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2024 that would have enacted the most significant change in the U.S. immigration system in decades, tightening asylum standards and enabling the president to expel more migrants. The bill, which was tied to aid for Ukraine and Taiwan, lost Republican support and failed to pass the Senate.
Today, Murphy and his Democratic colleagues are blocking funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless Republican legislators agree to certain reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency has come under fire for its recent, more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.
Murphy told the Record that his current opposition to ICE’s conduct and previous support for stricter border policy are not incompatible. “I think Americans want us to have a secure border,” he said. “They want these asylum claims to be dealt with at the border. They don’t want people to come to the United States and spend 10 years here if they don’t have a valid asylum claim, but they want domestic immigration enforcement to be humane.”
“The reason that Donald Trump is out there arresting thousands of legal migrants is because we set up a system in which we let everybody come in,” he continued. “They didn’t have full legal status, and Trump was able to take advantage of that uncertainty and terrorize communities all across the country.”
Murphy hopes that Democrats will address immigration head-on. “If Democrats get back power, we should put immigration reform and border reform back at the top of our agenda,” he said. “We don’t ever want to get in a situation again where you’ve got millions of people with uncertain status living inside of the United States, subject to the brutality of a would-be tyrant.”
As for how Democrats can regain power, Murphy sees economic populism as the key to appealing to voters. At the talk, he called on Democrats to highlight the struggle between corporations and workers, foregrounding policies like a higher minimum wage and campaign finance reform. The election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani teaches Democrats to “get over their incrementalism,” Murphy said at the talk.
Students and alums alike attended Murphy’s talk and were able to ask the senator questions at the end. Michael Gredler ’29, who attended the talk, praised Murphy’s candor. “I always had this impression of politicians and the way they speak, dodging answers and not really saying anything, and he didn’t do that,” Gredler said.
Arjun Patel ’29, who founded the Williams College Conservative Society in the fall, said he was also concerned by many of the issues Murphy raised but was disappointed in the senator’s failure to acknowledge his own party’s role in causing them. “He came here and he spewed the typical Democratic talking points while at the same time going against the establishment, while doing nothing to change the establishment he so fervently supports,” Patel said. “He’s playing to the dissatisfaction of voters and the general American public while failing to propose a concrete solution to it.”
Murphy said that he was glad to return to campus and connect with students. “Williams is very much in my blood, and so I love coming back every couple years,” he told the Record. “I also realized that I’m speaking to students who are going to run the world at some point, so imparting whatever small bit of wisdom that I’ve gleaned in this job is probably an interesting investment in a group of kids who are going to be very impactful.”
