Res Ipsa Loquitur: Much Appreciation To Rep.Stefanik For Validating My Estrangement From Harvard

/ Jack Marshall

One comment only: It is astounding and damning that a woman with the erudition of Harvard’s president could do not better than repeatedly resorting to pre-memorized, non-responsive, probably lawyer-crafted boilerplate in response to Stefanik’s questions.

It immediately remind me of former slimeball Congressman Gary Condit (well, he’s still probably a slimeball) in the infamous 2001 ABC interview about intern Chandra Levy, then missing. Condit was romantically linked to his intern, and considered a suspect in what was eventually found to be Levy’s murder. Every time Connie Chung asked directly about their relationship, Condit repeated the mantra, “Well, once again, “I’ve been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life. But out of respect for my family, out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship.”

This, naturally, made him look guilty. As it turned out, he wasn’t.

But President Gay is guilty of hypocrisy and cowardice.

8 thoughts on “Res Ipsa Loquitur: Much Appreciation To Rep.Stefanik For Validating My Estrangement From Harvard”

  1. Yoikes! TKO in the 1st!

    It actually brought to mind the scene where Johnny Barnes’ Sugar Ray Robinson mercilessly pummeled Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro) in Raging Bull.

    PWS

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  2. Words fail me.

    Granted that Stefanik was badgering her, but has she no pride, has she no self-esteem? Does she not realize what a horrible look this is for her? What about that performance shows that she deserves to be president of a local PTA, let alone Harvard.

    If the president won’t stand up for Harvard, who will? What must the university trustees be thinking? Do they think she did a good job?

    At least — wasn’t his name Welsh? — had a memorable response, for the ages, “Have you no shame, sir?” Not that I am comparing Stefanik in any way to McCarthy, but this reaction is more akin to “Mommy, she’s being mean to me.”

    Ick.

    ————–

    Oh, and check the congresswoman’s name in the title.

    Reply

  3. Gay is a hypocrite, but so is Stafanik. She’s advocating for less speech, not more. Shouldn’t she advocate for the removal of speech codes, not just equal punishment for those who break them?

    A plague on both their houses.

    Reply

    • Neill, Stefanik is on solid ground regarding harassment. That’s conduct that creates a genuinely hostile environment for specific groups. These are anti-Jew demonstrations, and the question regarding hypothetical protests against blacks on campus is spot on: Harvard would have stepped in and stopped them—in fact, they are obligated to.

      Reply

  4. Harvard does not guarantee free speech.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/harvard-revokes-admission-several-students-posting-offensive-memes-n768361

    Harvard University revoked admission offers to at least 10 incoming students after the school discovered the individuals were posting explicit and obscene memes in a Facebook chat group that advocated sexual assault and mocked the death of children.

    The potential students began sharing posts in a private chat group that splintered off from a larger one of about 100 students who contacted each other through the school’s official Class of 2021 Facebook page that was meant for new students to meet each other, the Harvard Crimson first reported on Sunday.

    The online group was originally meant to share memes on popular culture, and started off as “lighthearted” but then a few members began getting inappropriate, an incoming student who was a part of the larger group told the Harvard Crimson.

    Harvard Rescinds 10 Admissions Over Offensive Memes
    JUNE 5, 201701:32
    The students who began posting the explicit memes started their own subsect and demanded that members of the larger group post provocative memes in order to gain admission in their chat room, Cassandra Luca, an incoming student who joined the first group but not the second, told the Harvard Crimson.

    “They were like, ‘Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one,’” she said. “This was a just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing,” she said.

    The “dark” group called themselves “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens” at one point and mocked “sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children,” according to screenshots obtained The Crimson.

    Image: Rowers paddle along the Charles River past the Harvard College campus in Cambridge
    Harvard University has rescinded offers to at least 10 incoming students over “obscene” memes.Charles Krupa / AP
    “Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups,” according to the paper.

    When Harvard got wind of the group, school officials pulled the acceptance offers of about 10 incoming students who were a part of the online chat group.

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    The Crimson reported that the school’s investigation into the matter involved university officials asking members of the group to send them every meme they posted.

    “We do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants,” said University spokesperson Rachael Dane in a statement to NBC News.

    “The Admissions Committee was disappointed to learn that several students in a private group chat for the Class of 2021 were sending messages that contained offensive messages and graphics,” reads a copy of the Admissions Office’s email to the revoked students obtained by The Crimson.

    Watch Mark Zuckerberg’s Full Commencement Speech to Harvard Class of 2017
    MAY 25, 201731:38
    The official Facebook group for the Class of 2021 did give a warning to students saying the page was managed by the school’s College Admissions & Financial Aid Office and was meant to “meet your classmates, share where you’re coming from, ask questions, keep in touch.”

    “We are not responsible for any unofficial groups, chats, or the content within. As a reminder, Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character,” the description on the Facebook page reads.

    The ultra-competitive school had a record number of applications this year hitting nearly 40,000 — with only 2,056 students gaining acceptance.

    Harvard has said before that a decision to rescind a student’s offer is final.

    Legal experts say the issue is cut-and-dry and the students do not have First Amendment recourse.

    “The Constitution really doesn’t apply here,” said Susan Bloch, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “The Constitution limits how much government can suppress speech, not a private university,” she said.

    “These students have absolutely no free speech rights that were violated in this context,” said Katherine Franke, a professor at Columbia University Law School.

    “The First Amendment’s Free Speech protections apply only to violations by public entities, and since Harvard is a private university the First Amendment does not apply,” she said. “These students have no right or entitlement to admission to Harvard, and as such it is Harvard’s prerogative to decide that it will not welcome into its community these individuals who have demonstrated a willingness to violate Harvard’s code of ethics and policies against hate speech,” she said.

    Amy Adler, a professor at New York University School of Law, said Harvard appeared to have been clear in their policy and the students were on notice as to what was acceptable.

    “This seems to be a case where students exercised bad judgment and arguably Harvard may have rescinded their admission not on the content but on the students’ poor judgment,” she said.

    This is yet another case where students have to be mindful of what they post online, she said.

    “Very little you say online is private,” she said. “The footprint you leave online lasts a very long time so it requires you to consistently exercise judgment,” she said.

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  5. I concur with David Bernstein.

    https://reason.com/volokh/2023/12/06/should-universities-ban-advocacy-of-genocide/?comments=true#comment-10345842

    I agree with all this, *but*: If a private university wouldn’t in fact tolerate masked KKK demonstrators calling for genocide against black people, it also cannot tolerate masked SJP demonstrators calling for genocide against Jewish people without running afoul of Title VI. So as a general matter, univesities shouldn’t ban calls for genocide, but they also shouldn’t selectively allow calls for genocide depending on whether in current left-wing discourse the group whose murder is being called for is considered an “oppressor” or not.

    Reply

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