Kyle Kashuv is the Parkland, Florida student who bucked the trend and took the side of the Second Amendment while his fellow students were being hailed as moral exemplars for attacking the NRA and touring the country as vocal and self-righteous anti-gun activists. While David Hogg and the rest became go-to guests on CNN and MSNBC’s talking head shows, Kashuv launched a career as a junior conservative pundit, hanging out on Fox News. Harvard College, which never found a young celebrity it didn’t want to recruit as long as he or she could spell C-A-T, accepted him for its 2023 Class.
Then some text messages using racial epithets and expressing anti-minority sentiments that he exchanged with other Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students months before the massacre “surfaced online.” That means some of his classmates who don’t like his non-conforming politics decided to sabotage his academic aspirations.
Harvard contacted Kyle and demanded that he explain himself. Kyle resorted to the old “that’s not who I am” trope so well-worn by celebrities and sports figures who have faced public relations crises created by social media posts they made when they were nobodies with a handful of followers. Kashuv’s problem is that in those cases, an adult was saying that he or she was “not the same person” as the foolish child from the misty past, while in his case, he is disavowing who he was just two years ago.
“We were 16-year-olds making idiotic comments, using callous and inflammatory language in an effort to be as extreme and shocking as possible,” Kashuv explained. “I’m embarrassed by it, but I want to be clear that the comments I made are not indicative of who I am or who I have become in the years since.” Also, “My intent was never to hurt anyone,” he wrote. “I also feel I am no longer the same person, especially in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting and all that has transpired since.”
Not good enough, apparently. Harvard revoked its acceptance, writing,
“After careful consideration the committee voted to rescind your admission to Harvard College. We are sorry about the circumstances that have led us to withdraw your admission, and we wish you success in your future academic endeavors and beyond.”
I suspect Kyle would have been miserable at Harvard, which has become so oppressively progressive and intolerant of dissenting views that he would have been a target and a pariah. That isn’t germane, however, to your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz , which is…
Was it fair for Harvard to withdraw Kyle’s acceptance?
______________________
Sources: The New Yorker,AOL
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t think that Harvard was ethical in rescinding his acceptance. The messages were texts and a fileshare document meant only for a few people. That seems private to me. Private correspondence should not be used to make any decisions, unless it helps prove criminal activity.
Jack, this case seems similar to your friend that you sometimes talk about, the Marine who was racist, but was always outwardly polite and gave everyone a fair shake. If his racism was exposed, I’m certain it would have negatively affected his life, even though he gave everybody a fair chance.
If Mr. Kashuv never acted racist in his dealings with others, these texts are a violation of trust meant to harm him. I cannot see how harming others solely because you disagree with them is ethical. It seems that Harvard is pandering to the so called woke crowd again with this; can’t have a former racist on the campus.
As for his statements explaining that he is different now, there might be truth to that. Teenagers change fairly quickly in some cases. I was certainly somewhat different at 18 as compared to when I was 16. And he went through a very traumatic event. Those can change even fully developed people. Two years may not seem like such a long time, but it’s a nineth of his life, with a traumatic event separating those texts from today. Harvard was wrong to take back his acceptance based off of those texts.
When venerated institutions such as Harvard begin accepting other’s private communications from said third parties with whom they have or expect to have no relationship it will not be long before there is no trust left in our society.
If we destroy trust in all relationships communities cannot be created for social stability. When that happens we will be ruled by dictators.
…and when this is used against the ‘Woke’ they will whine at how ‘unfair’ it all is.
We have already seen this played against select targets by unethical ‘formerly conservative’ ‘right leaning’ pundits. The low information dupes played upon by the lefties will accept the narrative from either side: if they were going to think about things they would not be low information dupes in the first place.
Hell in a handbasket, and no way for society to self correct that I can see. The asshole are out on both sides, and we are racing for the bottom (which would be, as the phrase suggests, Hell).
Agreed
Okay, so now when someone applies to a college, the applicant needs to attach what, a PDF of what, every communication they’ve ever made on any and every media? A second grade note to your mother saying, “I HATE SKUL.” This is certainly not an acceptable attitude for a college student to have. Acceptance revoked. And please return the Harvard decal we sent with your acceptance letter.
But seriously, wasn’t the kid subjected to an in person interview by an alumnus? I assume he was perfectly civil in that interview.
If the kid can get in, he should go to the University of Florida, if not Broward County Junior College and then maybe FAU. Save his money. Who needs the annoyance of spending time in the northeast. I wish I’d skipped it and stayed in Miami or somewhere else. I did meet Mrs. OB, so that worked out. But elite colleges are just not that good value for money any more. What’s the full sticker price on a Harvard undergrad degree? 75K per year? I sure hope Oberlin wasn’t one of his backup schools. He’ll probably get a full scholarship to some fundamentalist school.
I have heard and read, in this context and other contexts, that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
I wonder if this applies to other civil rights, like abortion. Would these same people defend Harvard is it revoked the admission of an applicant because she had an abortion?
(More possibly rescind if she had the baby because she doesn’t believe in abortion) It was chicken-livered to rescind it. They claim to want the best and don’t really believe they can convince him to be better, do they? A teen saying something stupid years ago is a non-story, that is normal.
So, first off, a google search to find a link for what he actually said (typed…) was nigh impossible. Good thing google doesn’t skew what kind information you can find by typing in his name and “comments”.
Second thing, every rap song is filled with the words “nigger, bitch, ho, etc..” which, though I don’t listen to by choice, I am fortunate enough to have had exposure to by the kind people who share their music, with the penetrating bass thumping window rattling to go along with it, usually down by the U of A. I’m curious as to whether or not Harvard allows that kind of music on campus or in the dorms….
It’s clear from what he wrote that it was in reference to the type of “culture” that is pervasive in rap, or general stupid teenager chicanery.
Show me something from a serious discussion wherein he makes serious reference to deeply held bigotry and I’ll buy that he has a problem that needs addressed.
The pathetic double standards in society are staggering, but worse still is the moral preening and self aggrandizement of those who condemn Kashuv, hop in the car, and rattle my windows with lyrics that are not far from what he wrote.
Finally, anybody who is honest will admit that though they were still a stupid teenager at 18, they were far stupider at 16.
Sorry, but Harvard is grandstanding because Mr. Kashuv is of the wrong political stripe, couldn’t believe someone there made the mistake of letting him in. Thank God someone gave them the “get out of jail free” card.
1. That New Yorker link has some of the actual comments.
2. I basically agree with your analysis.
At one point in time Harvard graduates were considered the creme de le creme.
Harvard has effectively diluted the value of its degrees by demonstrating that graduates are more likely to engage in group think than graduating men and women who challenge conventional wisdom, demonstrate individuality and otherwise add to the processes which create progress.
What is missing here is that David Hogg’s qualifications for entry to Harvard could not hold a candle to Kasuv’s yet he was accepted one year after graduating from Stoneman. Kashuv graduated with a weighted gpa of 5.3+ and an SAT score of 1550.
If thse Universities really want diversity it has an obligation to take people who don’t fit the desired conventions.
I saw Mr. Kashuv interviewed on television last night, and it was interesting to me that while he apparently made anti-Semitic comments in his texts, he is himself a Jew and apparently a “practicing” one at that. To me, this bolsters his claim of the texts being teenage foolishness sent to a select group of “friends,” probably fueled by equal parts adolescent stupidity and peer pressure.
I have seen several formerly crass and foolish teens “turned around” by traumatic experiences that forced them to take a fresh look at their lives and directions, changing their paths to the point that they were scarcely recognizable as the same persons they had been only a few short years later.
Unless Harvard begins exhaustively researching the social media history of all candidates for admission, to discover any objectionable content, it is not fair for them to rescind his admission. (Although I do agree with your statement that he would likely be miserable there.)
So let me get this straight:
Black people can call each other “nigger” without any social opprobrium.
Jews, apparently, can’t do the same thing when talking about each other.
This is not a double standard. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. They can go about their business.
Move along.
Was it fair for Harvard to withdraw Kyle’s acceptance?
No, it was not fair and it was also unethical.
Harvard’s continued virtue signalling to the irrational hoard of social justice warriors, aka stupid people, is truly disturbing. Harvard’s a renowned world class University is setting an example by destroying true intellectual diversity at its own University and enabling stupidity. We are seeing the building blocks of a civil society crumble before our eyes and cult-like hoards of stupid people are the unilateral crushing force. Harvard is either part of the “tribe” that’s fearful of stupid people or the part of the “tribe” that’s apathetic towards stupid people, either way Harvard is part of the enabling that’s destroying our society.
Intelligent people in our society used to stand together and stand tall against stupid people, now they’re cowering in plain sight, apathetically keeping their mouths shut so they don’t rock the boat, hoping and praying that stupid people will loose interest and go away or won’t confront them. There’s a new breed of 21st century intelligent people that’s thinking like Mark Twain, “never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience” and in the process they are enabling stupid people to gain control of our society.
If we as a society do not face stupidity head-on we enable stupidity to grow.
Intelligent people in our society used to stand together and stand tall against stupid people, now they’re cowering in plain sight, apathetically keeping their mouths shut so they don’t rock the boat, hoping and praying that stupid people will loose interest and go away or won’t confront them.
When in your view did the intelligent people most stand tall against the stupid ones? Is there a decade that you think has the most tall standing ones? I ask this question only because you used the term ‘used to’. When and in regard to what?
I understand I think what you mean about those ‘cowering in plain sight’, yet I found myself asking what they might say and do if they were not cowards?
Yeah, I was going to ask the same question, Alizia. When was that Golden Age?
Alizia,
Most of what you wrote is fishing and tangential to my points.
It’s a slow burn Alizia, just look at how Harvard (the focus of this blog post) has been changing over the years devaluing the historical elite status of the institution with all their virtue signalling.
There should be no doubt that I am asking you to clarify the point you made. You can see it as fishing if you want. But you could also see it as being offered a chance to speak more about what you see. You made a pretty encompassing statement.
…devaluing the historical elite status of the institution with all their virtue signaling.
My question has to do with what point in time would you return to clarify when Harvard was not virtue signaling? What is, and when was, the base point, the point of normalcy?
As you may have gathered, I am interested in the notion of both virtue-signaling as it pertains to the times we live in. My ideas on the topic are anything but ‘popular’.
Lothrop Stoddard, a Harvard alumnus, wrote The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy in the 1920s. But by the mid-1930s and certainly in the 1940s his ideas were suppressed. By ‘virtue-signalers’ I assume.
So, when did the *slow burn* begin? (If I take slow burn to mean a gradual process)(?)
You want a fixed point in time that the slow burn began, fine Alizia. How does July 4,1776 work for you?
You want a fixed point in time to call a “point of normalcy”, that’s like asking me to identify which molecule of water in the Mississippi River caused it to overflow its banks; sorry Alizia, it’s relative.
You want a fixed point in time that the slow burn became a conflagration, fine Alizia. How does Tuesday, November 8, 2016 @ 24:00 work for you?
It’s my opinion that arguing about these kind of details is really quite pointless, that’s why I called your tangential inquisition fishing.
If the problem we face is that of getting clear about what is happening in our strange present is taken seriously, and if you make statements that seem to speak to this problem [“devaluing the historical elite status of the institution with all their virtue signaling”], I must say that to ask for some clarification does not seem like an ‘inquisition’ — which would imply power to punish, no? — and just a simple inquiry.
Intelligent people in our society used to stand together and stand tall against stupid people, now they’re cowering in plain sight, apathetically keeping their mouths shut so they don’t rock the boat, hoping and praying that stupid people will loose interest and go away or won’t confront them.
It seems to me fair to say that the time when ‘intelligent people stood together’ in the country generally is when the Majority held and wielded power. When I say ‘majority’ I do mean this in a racial/cultural sense, i.e. the Anglo-Saxon majority which is more or less the ‘WASP’ cultural majority. It seems to me fair and accurate to say that when this majority was overshadowed in social power — that is, through the rise of minority-interest groupings — that we must face the fact that this is when a democratic and national crisis began in earnest.
Some effort must be made, it seems to me, to clarify what ‘intelligent people’ should believe and understand about our present; about what has happened, and why. But this is not easy, is it? To make statements is highly problematic, as you seem to recognize. It can get you in hot water!
You make a general reference to ‘intelligent people’ without identifying who you mean. Who are these ‘intelligent people’ is a good question. And when do you see them taking a solid stand against the ‘stupid people’? Also a good question.
I think it has been reasonably made clear that Harvard really had no other option available to it but to back out of the invitation because of the naughty words of inappropriate designation that came out of his mouth. But Harvard would make that decision because we all are living in a specific zeitgeist in which a) we all agree that this is wrong and intolerable and *must be condemned* or b) pretend that we do.
For example I watched the video snippet of some girl using that forbidden ethnic slur and reacted to it with some revulsion (it came up around the same issue of the boy being refused admission to Harvard). Yet I would argue that the black nation in America must separate itself from the white nation because these are two incompatible nations and peoples that cannot share common government nor institutions. It is destructive and therefore not a *good* that this continue. I would make and I can make a very well-reasoned argument against ‘multiculturalism’. It bodes very badly. But then what if I said in relation to this what you have said:
Intelligent people in our society used to stand together and stand tall against stupid people, now they’re cowering in plain sight, apathetically keeping their mouths shut so they don’t rock the boat, hoping and praying that stupid people will loose interest and go away or won’t confront them.
Now, what I have just said is one tiny portion of many many different issues that are unresolved and festering. It seems that everything is up in the air. Everything is confused. No one knows what view to take and no one has the authority to make definitive statements. It is one of those social and cultural situations that is the stuff of ‘crises’. Therefore, it seems to me that ‘intelligent people’, if anything, are profoundly confused and do not know what to stand together for, nor why to stand together. It is in this sense a more sensible choice to ‘cower’ than to be bold and put yourself in danger. Don’t you think?
Finally, I hope that you have just a bit of a sense of humor . . . 🙂
I think it’s fair to revoke the admission. And I think a lot of Republicans are fart-huffing over this. In one of the few times I’ll break with Ben Shapiro, he has said that Harvard’s standards are utterly unattainable. To which I respond: Bullshit. There are plenty of young people, even young conservatives, who happen to make it through their high school years without calling people, and I quote, “niggers” and saying that minorities are genetically inferior. It’s unfortunate, especially because I don’t think Kyle actually holds these beliefs, that they are currently biting him in the ass, but what is Harvard supposed to do? Pretend it all never happened? That there isn’t a line of people about a million miles long that is gagging for the opportunity Kyle had without the moral failing?
That said, I have no sympathy for all the progressives who are gleefully celebrating the ruination of a life they disapprove of. This is the same crowd that put an absolutely insane amount of infrastructure to try to get Colin Kaepernick a job, and David Hogg into school. Progressives are more than comfortable with elevating mediocrity so long as the mediocrats demonstrate the appropriate amount of woke moral purity. The problem is that it’s a fake woke moral purity, they don’t actually care what someone currently think, or if they’ve grown, or… really anything of substance, they want absolute conformity and the occasional utterance of “Fuck Trump”. It’s shallow and stupid and doomed to fail in the long term.
In short, everyone is stupid. Hate me.
Bingo, and Bravo. I think this is exactly right, and you flushed me out.
Harvard would not punish a student for past indiscretions on social media or in private texts. But I think it’s undeniable that any elite school that learned that an applicant had made racist statements under any circumstances would say, “You know, we have many equally qualified applicant’s who haven’t said or written “nigger” (as far as we know.). Why take a chance? DING!” And that’s just rational policy. What was unusual here is that they already accepted the kid, and that his texts were maliciously made available. Nevertheless, Harvard is waking into a PR buzzsaw when it knowingly accepts an applicant who has a history of bigoted statements. Harvard has no obligation to accept anybody; its obligation is to protect its reputation and standards.
I don’t think they had any choice, and I’m sure the same thing would have happened if the racist statements had come from David Hogg.
“I’m sure the same thing would have happened if the racist statements had come from David Hogg.”
Do you still call the NYT the ‘paper of record’ after all of the proof they are simply progressive shills, partisan cheerleaders willing to do anything, anything at all, in the name of virtue signalling and ‘woke’ politics?
Harvard is the same. My opinion is that Hogg would be given an excuse and this would never come up.
The reputation these institutions has be forsworn, recanted, and thrown upon the ash heap of history.
I completely agree with this as part of the original application process, this is taking place after the qualified applicant has already been accepted. I think they went too far with their virtue signalling.
Jack,
Your stance seems to have shifted a bit since this very similar incident two years ago:
https://ethicsalarms.com/2017/06/05/ethics-quiz-harvards-anti-meme-vendetta
“My position here is no different than it is when high school students are punished in school for Facebook posts and social media chats they have from their bedrooms. This is Big Brotherism, and totalitarian in style and substance. Harvard has an interest in a student’s public behavior, or any embarrassing conduct that comes to light and reflects poorly on Harvard. Seeking out private conversations and punishing the participants for their content, however, is draconian and even cruel. Call the students, express concern, explain why what they are doing is wrong, warn them, make them wear a scarlet J for jerk at orientation, but kick them out of the class? This is wildly disproportionate for the offense. Of course the students lack maturity: they are 17 or 18 years old! As for “moral character,” that’s part of what Harvard is supposed to teach.”
Not trying to play “gotcha”, I’m just curious if your opinion has changed, or if you see some material difference between these two cases?
Nope. First, I made them both ethics quizzes for a reason—I think they are close calls. But I thught then and think now that social media politically incorrect joking around in classic “locker room talk’ isn’t any of a college’s business. Using “Nigger” crosses a big red line, and signals a strong possibility of genuine bigotry. I don’t think Harvard had any choice with the current situation. dinging the other applicants for making sexist jokes wasn’t necessary or reasonable: normal teens make crude, sexist jokes. Normal teens do not use “nigger.” In my seven years as a teem, in which I interacted with hundreds of other teens from all backgrounds and classes, in an area, Boston, hardly known for racial comity, I never heard anyone use that word, in jest, to shock, or any other time, and it was far less of a taboo then than now.
Fair enough. I wonder if Harvard is especially sensitive to not wanting to appear racist, since they’re embroiled in a lawsuit right now about their admissions policies being, well, racist.
Oh, I think you’re spot on.
I am looking at a much bigger picture. Like the jury found in the Oberlin case, Oberlin was seen as an opinion leader so too will Harvard.
However the lesson taught is if you want gain and exercise power you need only to harm another by betraying a trust.
We are well on our way to a leftist police state in which if you disagree with someone dredge up some private comment and weaponize it. Harvard may have a list a of those wanting to enroll a mile long but that does not make accepting damning information from a third party and then using it to rescind an offer the right thing to do.
They created the PR nightmare by rescinding the offer. No one would have ever known what this kid wrote two years ago had they not taken this action or even accepted the offending comments. The repetition of the comments drives the offensiveness.
So the conclusion that I draw from this fiasco is that one group wants to promote the offending comments so they can intimidate others into submission for the purpose of accumulating power. I submit it causes reasonable people like myself to look with suspicion at minorities who may seek to economically destroy them at some opportune time. If minorities are so easily triggered which can result in negative consequences to unprotected classes why should the unprotected class risk engaging with minorities. It is only rational to avoid situations that can destroy you or your family. This will drive anti-minority sentiment underground. The unprotected classes will only associate with other unprotected classes simply for self preservation. This defacto segregatiom will not reduce bigotry it will reinforce bigoted attitudes on both sides.
I disagree;
“Harvard may have a list a of those wanting to enroll a mile long but that does not make accepting damning information from a third party and then using it to rescind an offer the right thing to do.”
I don’t blame Harvard for this. This is related to the naked teacher principle, or perhaps the Donald Sterling fiasco. The people sharing records of these private conversations or pictures, especially for the sole purpose of doing harm, are human garbage… But once that information is public, it’s not private anymore, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle and pretend that nothing has changed because the source of that information was unethical. The market has to react to the best information it has, people with readily accessible nudes cannot be teachers, and people that have published record of saying disparaging things about minorities fail Harvard’s morality clauses.
That’s the correct analogy, HT. Exactly.
I think the resistance to this is “These people are garbage, and we can’t let them win”, and I empathize with that, but to take this theory to a logical natural conclusion; If a hidden camera catches footage of a kindergarten professing to be a pedophile, I’m not going to suggest that person remains employed to own the libs.
It may be the correct analogy but it cause me and others to avoid situations in which a reasonable criticism will be labeled racist. For those reasons I no longer feel safe giving my opinions on FB and have erased my presence on all social media. Even what I say here is tempered because I have always provided my full name. I have done that my entire life but over the last few years I have learned that even family will publically declare you a Nazi. I now have only 2 brothers because I will never trust him ever again. Destroy trust you destroy relationships, families, and societies. This is crap. People will stop trying to destroy others when the demand for inflammatory information is used only for understanding not personal destruction. Outcomes matter.
The naked teacher principle is unwarranted and should not be applied to 16 year olds unless we are also willing to unseal juvenile records, repeal educational privacy laws and all other protections for kids. Otherwise we have no equal protection, we only know that which vengeful people want to provide.
How did this information come to Harvard’s attention? If they scour the Net for disqualifying info on prospects why did this not turn up then? If it cannot be seen without a third party giving the public access then the NTP is incorrect. My understanding of the NTP is that you publish the damning info of yourself that anyone could happen upon. Otherwise you are saying it’s permissible to share private conversations, pictured, or other unflattering info you receive in confidence.
Harvard can do as it chooses but I will forever see Harvard as a school that focuses maintaining behaviors rather than changing them. The first is indoctrination and the latter is education.
Remember Chris, these were text messages, not social media. Unfortunately, any kid applying for college and any job applicant should delete social media history if there is anything there that might be used to undermine him or her. Texts are different. But still, a college is judging character, maturity, and virtue. It can’t ignore texts with racist rhetoric, no matter how it becomes aware of them.
Given that anything written if preserved by a party of the communication is forever one should never leave a paper or digital trail. Once uttered digitally the young man was at the mercy of the other person involved in the communique.
When I was a boy of seven I stated I hated girls does that mean I am a misogynist or a homosexual. I am confused if juvenile immature statements are signs if good character then what I say at age 7, 10, 12,14 or 16 must be taken as proof of adult character. Where exactly did Judge Kavanaugh attend college?
If good character is a requirement for being at Harvard how do we explain some of the beliefs of their faculty?
Again, my focus is on the positive reinforcement given to the slimeball who made these private messages available in hopes of causing the young man harm. It worked. Harvard taught the lesson on how you gain power over others rather than teaching lessons on forebearance and how to be a better adult.
I someone yells an epithet in remote forest and no one hears it no one is offended unless someone is told of it in confidence and then betrays such confidence. Does Harvard routinely share admissions info on prospective students to its student body?
I believe Harvard owes us the name of the person providing the damning info so we know the character of that person.
This would be an easier tipic for me if I hadn’t lost all respect and trust in my alma mater.
I understand your reasoning. I just believe acadamia has a higher duty to not take the easy path especially when the easy path effectively grants power to characters of ill repute who share information they recieve but was never expected to be made public.
You expand this, and it’s a COTD. It’s a little like the ethics of accepting accurate information about an adversary Presidential candidate, isn’t it? We can say that the only way to stop foreign provocateurs from reveling dirt and affecting votes is to set a standard where nobody will take the information whatever it is. But is that realistic? The creeps that revealed the texts sent it to online sources, not Harvard. How can Harbard ignore it?
Btw
You know Harvard requested an explanation and the boy groveled the its not who I am apology as demanded and they still told him no.
Lesson. Never apologize. It gets you nowhere and signals to the demander you are weak and effectively marginalized from now on.
I thought that was a strange facet as well… I can’t tell what the motivation is here…. Sometimes in HR land, you let people you’re perspectively disciplining dig themselves a hole to make your job easier, but when you owe literally no explanation, asking for someone to provide extra credit when there’s literally no chance of affecting the outcome becomes… really cruel. I think as a best case scenario, the admissions board vote was a close split.
“Given that anything written if preserved by a party of the communication is forever one should never leave a paper or digital trail.
Given that these were text messages, the boy would have done well to deny they were his texts. Text trails can be fabricated by a bright 12 year old: this is not rocket science.
Give Harvard the difficulty of trying to determine WHO is lying, at least.
My kids have no social media, and they thank me today for that fact.
“The unprotected classes will only associate with other unprotected classes simply for self preservation. ”
Gee, sounds a lot like how women are being hurt by the #metoo movement… opportunities lost because of the risk involved to men in charge.
The question of *fairness* is beside the point. From the perspective of Harvard, and of the generality of Americans in American culture, and European culture, it was necessary to rescind his admission. Therefore it is fitting that they do so. They could hardly have done otherwise. The point is very very simple: there are certain things that you will not be allowed to think nor to say within the present régime.
However, those things are being thought and they are being said. Let me put it in stark terms: if it were actually possible to have an open conversation about all of the hot topics of the day, it would come to pass that this would lead to political decisiveness, and that is not allowed and cannot be allowed. The ideas therefore have to be suppressed. And where those ideas are presented (be it YouTube or any other public platform) must be put in quarantine status or shut down (recently six YouTube channels that I subscribed to are now ‘disappeared’).
The Harvard letter was a necessary *enactment* in order to show itself in support of the ideological régime. I could say ‘current’ or ‘trend’ but régime is a good term because it implies regimentation and imposed discipline and punishment.
But on another level the Harvard letter and perhaps the whole event is a ‘spectacle’ among many spectacles. I would suggest that spectacle is more and more commonplace, more part of the landscape of the present, as a way to veer people away from both seeing, thinking about and dealing rationally with things that are really of importance.
For example, some on the political Left note that this figure Donald Trump is ‘spectacle’ while behind the scenes his lieutenants dismantle the pro-population legislation and reestablish the proper pro-business environment of the *controlling elites*. If this is so — I expect it is likely largely so — then DT has a ‘function’ within spectacularism.
So, there is the spectacle of the communistic-lesbo-progressive Parkland Kids as they make the rounds and rehearse their social skits for their national audience. And there are perks associated with these performances. And naturally the Right needs its Kyle Kashuvs, if it can find them! But it is more or less absurdiste. A diversion.
However, in Britain: “A teenager who described Prince Harry as a “race traitor” in an online post has been sentenced to four years and three months in a young offender institution: Michal Szewczuk detained for encouraging terrorism on far-right website.”
The last paragraph may be why the left wants the US to be more like Europe.
There is no ‘may’ about it: the left believes that their opponents (and anyone they desire) should be subject to imprisonment and death upon their whim.
They have said so, and I believe them.
No, but then again, Harvard’s admissions would have no particular interest in being fair to a student with a perspective that almost everyone at the school not only disagrees with, but finds disagreeable in the extreme.
From the standpoint of an “elite” school like Harvard, why be fair to a deplorable, even a young one? Let him be someone else’s problem.