In the past week, the hypocrites at Harvard University have denied entry to their PhD program to a world renowned candidate* in history and the Harvard Kennedy School denied has denied visiting fellow status to Chelsea Manning.
As near as I can ascertain, this is because they are worried that right wing talk show host will say nasty things about them:
Yesterday, we discussed Harvard overriding a decision to admit Michelle Jones to the History Ph.D program, based at lest in part of the well-known sacred moral principle What Would Tucker Carlson Say? Well, capitulating to criticism from vocal reactionaries (pre-emptive or otherwise) is now becoming a hot trend:
Facing harsh criticism, a Harvard dean said early Friday morning that he was revoking his invitation to Chelsea Manning, a former United States soldier convicted of leaking classified information, to be a visiting fellow at the university.
The sudden turnabout by the Harvard Kennedy School came after a day of intense backlash over the university’s announcement on Wednesday that Ms. Manning would become a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics this school year. Douglas W. Elmendorf, the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, said that while the university encourages a diversity of opinions and does not shy from controversy, naming Ms. Manning a fellow was a mistake for which he accepted responsibility.
It should be noted that the Harvard Kennedy School granted visiting fellow status to serial liar Sean Spicer and failed Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
The deal is, you give a talk, hang around for questions, and you become a “Visiting Fellow.”
Only the torturers and the torturer apologists in the US state security apparatus has major butt-hurt over this, so they folded.
The case of Michelle Jones is even more egregious, though the reason for potential outrage, a horrific crime for which she served her time, is marginally more understandable, though the two professors who went jihad against her admission to the history program were crystal clear as to their motivations, they were motivated by cowardice:
“We didn’t have some preconceived idea about crucifying Michelle,” said John Stauffer, one of the two American studies professors. “But frankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google, and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200 grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority. I mean, c’mon.”
I believe that these two professors pictures appear in the dictionary next to the definition of “Limousine Liberals.”
This is amazing. The current administration at Harvard is making me long for the days of Lawrence Summers as University President.
On the bright side, the current President of Harvard, the incredibly aptly named Dr. Faust, is leaving in about a 10 months.
*She did groundbreaking original research that found that prostitutes were not sent to prison in Indiana, but rather they were sent to forced labor laundries operated by the Catholic Church (see Magdalene Laundries) as opposed to being sent to prison around the turn of the 19th century.