Michelle Jones and the Shame of Harvard

I don’t claim to know whether Harvard did the right thing or the wrong thing here, but I don’t think it is cut and dried as presented. A couple of comments:

1) Whether or not Michelle Jones has redeemed herself is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. It appears that she beat her 4-year-old son to death over a period of time because she thought his medical condition made him a “freak,” and then she secretly disposed of the body. So far as I can tell, even today she has not yet told the authorities where her son’s body is. (The facts are described in the appellate court decision, available online: Jones appealed her conviction on the ground that although she had confessed the crime to acquaintances, the state had failed to locate a body.)

2) RY writes: “The university technically had the right (I infer) to overrule [the department’s admission] decision, but it did so only out of fear of rightwing media!”

a) I agree that if the school acted on the basis of media reaction, that is wrong. But the NYT article actually states, however, that “Harvard’s top brass overturned Ms. Jones’s admission after some professors raised concerns that she played down her crime in the application process.” We can’t know how Jones presented her past to Harvard in the admissions process, because all that is confidential.

b) As a matter of procedure, it seems sensible that the university’s central administration would pay more attention to character issues (where the department has no distinctive expertise) than qualification within the discipline (in which the department is most expert).

3) Notably, Harvard recently revoked offers of college admission to 10 incoming first-year students based on their exchange of racist and sexually offensive messages on Facebook. Certainly there are many distinctions between that admissions decision and the Jones decision, but it would be hard to defend that revocation decision if the Jones admission were not also revoked. (To be clear, I’m not sure that makes either decision more or less defensible — I’m just pointing out that this is something that Harvard surely was thinking about.)

@3

We can’t know how Jones presented her past to Harvard in the admissions process, because all that is confidential.

Actually the NYT article does deal w/ this:
“In the personal statement, which was not required, she did not detail her involvement in the crime, but wrote that as a teenager she left Brandon at home alone, that he died, and that she has grieved for him deeply and daily since.”

The article goes on to note that she said, or at least implied, that she would have been more specific about the circumstances had she been asked: “Ms. Jones, in an interview, said that if anyone at Harvard wanted her to elaborate on the criminal case or her preparedness for the Ph.D. program, they should have asked.”

I’m not expressing a firm opinion on whether she should have been admitted, though on the basis of the article I’d lean in the direction that she should have been. It’s fairly clear from the article that she’s already an accomplished researcher, so, esp. given these unusual circumstances, I can’t see that it will matter much for her personally whether her PhD comes from Harvard or NYU. (Ymmv.)

@4: “Actually the NYT article does deal w/ this:: ‘In the personal statement, which was not required, she did not detail her involvement in the crime, but wrote that as a teenager she left Brandon at home alone, that he died, and that she has grieved for him deeply and daily since.'”

I missed that, thanks. Obviously you would need to see the statement itself to judge, but based on that characterization, the statement would be a lie by omission in that it omits that (i) her son died not by accident but because she beat him, (ii) she secretly disposed of her son’s body, (iii) for at least six years afterward she was denying any guilt, and (iv) she has still not told the authorities where her son’s body is.

The Stauffer quote is outrageous, but some things are wrong even if Fox News thinks they are wrong. If Harvard is going to revoke admission for making racially offensive comments, it can reasonably revoke admission for concealing the body of a murder victim and lying about it in an application.

Just chiming in to agree in large part with alkali at @6.

“In the personal statement, which was not required, she did not detail her involvement in the crime, but wrote that as a teenager she left Brandon at home alone, that he died, and that she has grieved for him deeply and daily since.”

As alkali has said this representation of the statement seems to support the contention that she was less than forthcoming. You could even get the impression from it that she was unjustly accused. It’s not as if she left her son at home and there was a gas leak or something. What was determined to have happened was that she beat her four-year-old, left him to die, and buried his body in a place unknown and is still unknown.

This is a hard case. Terrible things were done to Jones at a tender age. Yes, she’s paid her dues in the eyes of the law, but without condoning what the Harvard brass said and how they handled the matter, I’m not sure that’s the only question when considering admittance. I still tend to think she should have been admitted, but I’m also wondering where Brandon’s body is; why, if she knows, she hasn’t told the authorities where to find it; and if those remains might tell us things his mother has not. I would think giving Brandon a decent burial, if that is possible, might also help with the grieving process – if not for Jones, then for the other members of his family who sought to find out what happened to him when he disappeared.

“She has “redeemed herself” in the eyes of the law, which is why she is no longer in prison. I have no idea if she has accepted Jesus into her heart, and so presuming to gauge the appropriateness of her level of contrition might be something that reasonable people might do, but not in the context of vetoing her acceptance to Harvard.”

Serving a sentence in jail doesn’t change the fact that she beat her four year old son to death. I understand that this decision is a matter of redemption, but there is no doubt that Harvard likely faced a surplus rather than a shortage of similarly qualified applicants- why should they admit a convicted murderer who apparently tried to sidestep her past over the any other applicant? I don’t think that it’s rocket science that, redemption aside, a murder conviction is going to be a severe hindrance in high-stakes admissions.

“She has “redeemed herself” in the eyes of the law, which is why she is no longer in prison. I have no idea if she has accepted Jesus into her heart, and so presuming to gauge the appropriateness of her level of contrition might be something that reasonable people might do, but not in the context of vetoing her acceptance to Harvard.”

But has she? Jail time completion or not, she is still a felon for killing her child- that’s a permanent stain on her legal record that will last, redemption or otherwise. I find it completely absurd that your criteria for redemption is having served a sentence- as though a prior murder conviction should have no influence on the decision of the institution provided that she has served a sentence. It’s a ridiculous notion. Harvard rejects more than it accepts- it makes sense to choose the person without the murder conviction over the one with the conviction.

“The article goes on to note that she said, or at least implied, that she would have been more specific about the circumstances had she been asked: “Ms. Jones, in an interview, said that if anyone at Harvard wanted her to elaborate on the criminal case or her preparedness for the Ph.D. program, they should have asked.””

Everyone wishes that admissions committees would follow up about any questions they have. The fact of the matter is – and this is universal, not a unique injustice to Jones – is that they will decide based on what you give them and who you are, not based on what they want to know and what is missing from your context. She knew that her murder conviction was a huge strike against her- so she strategically didn’t address it in her application. This raised issues at Harvard because that’s not something that will go away if you glaze over it.

“Jones served her time. The laws of our country determined the punishment she should receive, and she received it. Harvard should not unilaterally add to that punishment. I’ll admit that I am not intimately familiar with the details of the other cases, but your description makes it sound as though there wasn’t any associated legal action. Harvard is well within its rights to reject applicants based on the expectation of behavior that, while not criminal, is unacceptable for Harvard students.”

But what if Harvard had the (completely reasonable) standard that a murder conviction under any circumstances is “unacceptable for Harvard students.” Serving the time doesn’t make her actions go away. If Harvard wants to say that her actions 20 years ago seem to make her unfit to be at their institution, they absolutely have that right. I also disagree with the notion that Harvard is adding to that punishment. Attending that school is not a right and is not automatic. If she truly wanted to go to Harvard, the best solution would have been to not kill someone. Blunt, but it’s the truth. Committing a murder significantly raises the bar one needs to clear.

The laws of our country do not always make the right decision when it comes to punishment; I think we can all agree to that. No system is perfect, and I think in this case the system failed. We are talking about a murdered child for goodness sake. Harvard, as a private institution, with the history and reputation that it has did the right thing. This is exactly the type of push back we should expect from such institutions. Being denied admission to Harvard for a horrendous crime and not being truthful about it on your application is not a protected class, so Harvard, as a private institution can make that judgement call – a call that the government cannot and did not make. Don’t we want private institutions, whether it be Harvard or a corporation etc to spearhead certain moral rhetoric; albeit, without overstepping fundamental rights? Its not like she has been denied the opportunity to earn her Ph.D (also not a fundamental right). She has been accepted to a great institution that did not find issue with her past.

I imagine there are many people in this world who do terrible things but still have something they can be respected for. That doesn’t change the fact that they still did a terrible thing! Michelle Jones may be brilliant in some area but she murdered her son – let’s not forget that!

I have mixed feelings about cases like this.

I have a strong opinion that once people are convicted of a crime, their sentence should be the sentence handed down by the court, nothing more nor less, and that private individuals and organizations should be strongly discouraged from piling on and adding their own punishments if they think the court’s punishment was insufficient. Or, as in this case, they think other people will think the court’s punishments is not sufficient.

The other side of this is not getting into a Harvard PhD program is not a punishment. This case would have gotten no attention if this applicant had been rejected during the normal application process, or even if the university rescinded her acceptance later but lied about it and gave some anodyne reason. This is because getting into the Harvard Phd program is not very remarkable.

People forget that we now live in an overpopulated and highly stratified society, which means an institution like Harvard University is going to reject perfectly or highly qualified people for all sorts of random and stupid reasons. They will probably admit someone who is highly qualified into the program in her stead. They should be less of an ass about it, but the problem is living in an overpopulated and stratified society.

And now we have round the clock surveillance and all sorts of media to ensure that someone can never get away from their past.

I don’t have solutions, but directions to move towards is to be to find a way to reduce the importance of Harvard University and its decisions, and to keep past criminal convictions embargoed once its decided that the criminal has served their sentence and is no longer a threat (by the way a conviction for causing the death of a child is fine as a basis for a lifetime ban from working in childcare, as a nurse, or an elementary school, just not from entering an academic program).

@13: Jones seems to have been 19 when she murdered Brandon and I assume would have entered prison a year or two later (?) She wasn’t a child.

It is certainly true, however, that she faces imposing challenges in adjusting to the world outside after a lengthy imprisonment at such a young age.

I’m with mcmanus at 11. Why not at least tell the police where the body is? Though I don’t hardly know what worse they could find upon examination–even this discussion glosses over the crime: she beat her son terribly and then abandoned him to die alone, wounded, over a period of days. That’s a lot different from “I left him alone and he died.” That’s even a lot worse than “I beat him to death.” I think that’s a material enough omission for Harvard to be dubious about, and also in general a question perfectly within the rights of Harvard to decide.

I never heard of Michelle Jones before reading this post, and I’ve got no particular view about the substantive question of whether she should have been admitted to Harvard or about the procedural question of whether Harvard handled this case well.

But there is a kind of argument which I have encountered in various discussions which seems to be being used by some of the commenters here. I could quote the comments I’m thinking of, but it’s possible that I’ve misunderstood those commenters and they’re not trying to make this kind of argument. It is still a kind of argument I’ve encountered often enough to make me feel that it’s worth emphasising what utter rubbish it is.

The kind of argument I’m referring to is the kind where it’s suggested that somebody should not be subjected to a penalty except in accordance with the requirements of the criminal law. Sometimes it takes the form of suggesting that a person should not be penalised because that person has not been convicted in a criminal trial, but it’s the same kind of argument when it’s suggested that a person who has been convicted in a criminal trial should not be subjected to any other penalties apart from the criminal one. The rule that people should not be subjected to criminal penalties except on conviction in a criminal trial is an important one; but to confuse that rule with the idea that people should not be subjected to any penalties except on conviction in a criminal trial is a major conceptual error. I hope that I have misunderstood (some) comments here and that nobody is making that mistake; but it does seem terribly like it.

Why not at least tell the police where the body is?

Because something else is buried there that will send her back to prison.

The prosecutor sought, and got, the maximum sentence for Ms. Jones, and does not approve of Harvard’s decision.

Ms. Jones’s many supporters include Heather Ann Thompson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in history this spring, and submitted a recommendation letter on her behalf. There is also Diane Marger Moore, the prosecutor who argued that Ms. Jones receive the maximum sentence two decades ago and is now writing a book about the case.

“Look, as a mother, I thought it was just an awful crime,” said Ms. Marger Moore, now a lawyer at a large firm in Los Angeles. “But what Harvard did is highly inappropriate: I’m the prosecutor, not them. Michelle Jones served her time, and she served a long time, exactly what she deserved. A sentence is a sentence.”

I think she’s got the right of it.

Hey, he could go on to a successful career as one UofA professor did after murdering a student while AT college:
http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/98/62/01_1.html

best quote: “Maynard said it’s important for people to understand he was a victim as were the shooters involved in the Columbine High School, Colo., shootings in 1999.”

Yup.

I will merely add that according to the New York Times article, the prosecutor in this case thinks that it is not the role of Harvard to ‘punish’ Jones (if having admission revoked is a punishment) beyond the time served. The worrying about how the right wing news media will treat them sees a little odd to be honest-

“There is also Diane Marger Moore, the prosecutor who argued that Ms. Jones receive the maximum sentence two decades ago and is now writing a book about the case.

“Look, as a mother, I thought it was just an awful crime,” said Ms. Marger Moore, now a lawyer at a large firm in Los Angeles. “But what Harvard did is highly inappropriate: I’m the prosecutor, not them. Michelle Jones served her time, and she served a long time, exactly what she deserved. A sentence is a sentence.”

Perhaps (or perhaps not) relatedly, twenty years ago Harvard rescinded the admission of an undergraduate student who pleaded ‘no contest’ to killing her abusive mother. The case made the news for at least a few days at the time.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/11/us/for-student-who-killed-her-mother-acceptance.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=1

J-D @16
I am realizing that my strong feelings opposing vigilante justice (e.g. Harvard’s action here) are getting mixed up with an equally strong feeling I have that release from prison back into society should not be release from prison into a permanent pariah status. I am having trouble disentangling these positions.

I guess I am guilty of the argument you describe as “utter rubbish”? It sure doesn’t feel like a mistake though.

DD @12
What moral rhetoric do you think Harvard has espoused by their decision to rescind Jones’s acceptance?

internetperson @10
A couple points:
1) If Harvard had a position that a murder conviction is disqualifying, I would fight against that position as a matter of principle. However, I believe it is clear from the article that Harvard does not have such a position and that instead Harvard acted out of concern for media backlash.
2) Removing rights is not the only way to punish. If they were going to accept her and then, as a direct result of a reminder of her conviction, rescinded the offer, then Harvard unequivocally punished her for her crime.
3) Specifically to the point about Jones serving her time: Of course serving her time doesn’t make her actions “go away”. The point of having time for her to serve in the first place is to exact the appropriate punishment. This gets to my response to J-D (earlier in this comment). We should (and Harvard should) be very hesitant to exact additional punishment, since presumably the appropriate punishment has already been levied.

I don’t know whether not admitting Michelle Jones is shameful. Others here know more about how universities go about their business, and probably more about how they should go about their business, than I do.

But in the OP we are told Michelle Jones spent 20 years redeeming herself. I don’t see that. She went to jail and served the sentence she received, yes, but becoming a scholar has nothing to do with killing your own child. She killed her child. And she has become a scholar. Good for her. You can set those two things beside each other but being a scholar does not cancel or even outweigh the murder.

*Where is the child’s body?*

It is important convicts be readmitted to society if they are not to reoffend, and it sounds like this woman had a terrible start in life—raped at 14, beaten by her mother when she became pregnant by that rape. But the crime was awful, and while some people will enthusiastically support her, others will not be able to do anything but tolerate her.

Between this and rescinding the Manning invitation, Harvard is establishing a reputation as an institution that can be easily rolled. This isn’t a good thing for them.

Somewhere, some black kid who stole a car when he was 19 got denied a job at 7-11 because he has a record.

Somewhere, some rich white guy got denied a loan cause he has a DUI.

In some states a felon, even after time served, is denied the right to vote or to own a weapon or an assortment of other actual rights that non-felons are constitutionally guaranteed.

Of course I’d prefer to live in a world where all of this was not so, but its absolute B.S. to suggest that penalties end when a felon serves their time. Life don’t work like that and no intelligent person expects that it does. If Ms. Jones didn’t know this she wouldn’t have phrased her application as she did – it was really her only hope of getting as far as she did in the process. Indeed parollees are specifically counseled to expect this sort of discrimination.

The only things that make this case exceptional relative to what happens every day somewhere is that a) its Harvard and b) Ms. Jones has some influential friends. Frankly I don’t see how Harvard could “win the P.R.” regardless of what they had done here. It was going to cause a P.R. fuss no matter what and it has.

CB @32
Spooks are notoriously thin-skinned and clannish. The resignation of former CIA deputy director Morell and the cancellation of an appearance by CIA director Pampao sent the message of future non-cooperation of the CIA and potentially broader national security community with the Kennedy School. That would have been a huge blow for the school’s security studies program. I’m sure Elmendorf is kicking himself for the appointment but found the withdrawal a very easy call. And looking to Harvard for profiles in courage is just silly. I mean really silly.

And for the record, and I don’t intend to dwell on it, but I have read Deirdre Golash, and am pretty ambivalent about the practice of punishment as retribution or revenge at all, especially in cases where a little social help would make it clear that the crime or similar crimes are unlikely to reoccur. Our laws and justice system, and societal attitudes fostered by it are barbaric.

I think it would be wise to defer to the prosecutor’s view on this: she served her time, paid her debt to society, and presumably (at least, in theory) society and its members are no longer called upon to continue to judge and punish her.

I’m disheartened by this discussion, frankly. Does anyone here imagine how she must feel about having left her son to die? The Times article quotes her: ” … a commitment to myself and to him … that I will live a redeemed life, one of service and value to others.” She is punishing herself, and will feel remorse for the rest of her life.

Harvard’s rejection was self-serving with a soupcon of class bias for good measure.

I look forward to reading Diane Marger Moore’s forthcoming book.

Chances are it’s not going to make any difference at all to Ms. Jones’s future where her PhD comes from, and especially no difference in terms of whether it comes from NYU (where she is enrolling) or Harvard or Yale (which, according to the NYT article, also declined to admit her to its grad program, for reasons not disclosed [or not hacked into etc., as the case may be]).

The name of the institution on one’s PhD can sometimes, of course, make a v. significant difference, but in her case she’s not a typical grad student, and her unusual, in this context, background means that her dissertation is likely to attract attention wherever she does it and whoever her adviser is. (Esp. if it’s good, and there’s no apparent reason to think it won’t be.) The NYT article makes clear that some faculty in the Harvard history dept are very upset about the decision not to admit her, and one of them (Walter Johnson, iirc) is quoted as saying that she will be invited to participate in a seminar on crime and punishment in the U.S. (And one of the Harvard people can sit on her diss cte if she wants, I’d think.)

Feel free to spend 1,000 comments arguing about whether Harvard’s admin made a defensible call here, but don’t be under any impression that going to NYU instead of Harvard will make any difference to her future career, because it won’t.

If Harvard made the decision, it should take responsibility for it. I can’t think of anything more childish than to say, “We wanted to admit her, but Fox News made us turn her down.” That statement accomplishes two things, both tawdry–disclaiming one’s own responsibility and demonizing another party that had nothing to do with the case.

It’s very convenient to have bêtes noires to take the blame for decisions you don’t want to own up to.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/announcements/statement-dean-elmendorf-regarding-invitation-chelsea-manning-be-visiting-fellow

The Kennedy School press release on Manning is worth a read. Jones is entering a first-class Ph.D program and Manning is still invited to speak at Harvard.

Take to the streets!

I notice that the arguably similar case of Jack Abbott was mentioned by Marc at 1 and thereafter studiously ignored. I think some of the discussions surrounding the Jack Abbott case actually are relevant because I think we need to explore what seems to be the assumption that a person who has done a terrible crime is somehow redeemed if he or she does something that demonstrates artistic or intellectual merit. I’ve never understood or accepted that premise and its weaknesses seem particularly relevant here.

I really don’t understand the supposed relationship between self improvement and expiation. What Michelle Jones has done is to improve herself intellectually during her time in prison. That’s good for her but I question whether that’s the same as having atoned for the murder of her child. There’s a difference between being a great historian or painter or writer and being remorseful about something evil that you’ve done. I think understanding that difference was a critical lesson of the Abbot case and I think being ignored here.

There’s something that doesn’t feel right about the plaudits for Jones, maybe because atonement requires acknowledgment of guilt (seriously lacking) and making amends to those whom you have wronged (apparently no effort, as she converted herself into the victim in place of the son she murdered). Essentially the people around her were happy for her having raised herself up and so they forgave her for killing a helpless child because she is a good researcher who suffered through a hard upbringing. But improving yourself by learning a skill or creating great art seems very different from devoting a part of your life to seeking forgiveness from those you’ve harmed (the boy’s family, who the article implies are not thrilled with Jones being feted as a celebrity) and to atoning for the harm you’ve done.

Like others here, I’m also very uncomfortable with how Jones described the murder. It was ridiculously passive. Reading the account in the NY Times story, it sounds as if she simply came home one day and found the child she’s loved and misses every day dead through some tragic misfortune. Yet, even by her own self serving account, she beat the the helpless boy horribly and then left him to die, terrified and alone. The fact that she’s never revealed the location of his corpse suggests that her account, horrible as it is, probably whitewashed the boy’s suffering.

Another thing I don’t understand is why the parole board, evidently influenced by her newfound celebrity, allowed Jones to be paroled without taking responsibility for the wrong she did. And especially why she was paroled without first disclosing where she hid the dead body of the little boy she’d murdered.

Surely any decent liberal society should believe in rehabilitation of offenders. Michelle Jones has served her sentence and should be free to be a full member of society, full stop. Once universities start moralising about their staff and students its a slippery slope to exercising censorship and placing limits on free thought and expression.

In the UK about a quarter of the population has a criminal record, so at the lower end of casual employment ex-criminals are essential to many employers.

Those who live in the UK are surely familiar with Timpson’s, a chain of small shoe-repair and key-cutting shops. They have a policy of employing ex-offenders as explained in the video embedded here. Personally I’m a fan of the principle and the chain.

We are being offered a bunch of recent college actions that should probably be analyzed under the same umbrella.

1. Harvard rescinds a number of invitations to attend for undergraduates for posting private dark humor memes which included racist memes.

2. Harvard rescinds something unclear re Manning (I say that because she apparently is still invited to speak) for unclear reasons. .

3. Harvard rescinds Jones’ invitation to attend over the murder of her child (with odd side notes about her never revealing the location of the body).

It seems to me there are a bunch of distinctions between the cases though I’m not sure they make a difference. They sort of have the feel of tribalism (we forgive those of out tribe but not those of an outside tribe) and I’m not particularly comfortable with that.

I would tend to think the Manning case is the stupidest. She is arguably a whistleblower who shouldn’t have been prosecuted in the first place. So there isn’t anything to forgive or to have paid for. And if there is something to be paid for she certainly has done so.

The racist memes case is the intermediate case. It is a wrong but not illegal. It hasn’t been ‘paid for’ by the legal system but it isn’t illegal. It raises questions about morality policing of legal acts. It seems to try to punish future acts (we think they might be racist to classmates).

The Jones case is the hardest case. You can take a pretty strong “no outside acts should be considered” stance, but murder is a huge test case.

I would tend to think that if you are ok with Jones being admitted it is difficult to defend the racist memes are bad enough to rescind case but it seems that many want to go opposite directions hence the tribalism suspicion.

Another thing I don’t understand is why the parole board, evidently influenced by her newfound celebrity, allowed Jones to be paroled without taking responsibility for the wrong she did. And especially why she was paroled without first disclosing where she hid the dead body of the little boy she’d murdered.

It appears she was granted a Commutation of Sentence rather than parole. Although the same questions arise about commutation.

J-D @32
DCA @42 provides a reasonably compelling case that I need a better phrase than vigilante justice to try to describe what I’m objecting to. I’m still working on that.

I believe that our justice system exists in order to rehabilitate people who have done terrible things, so that they may re-enter society as full members. In practice, our system seems to attempt to serve that goal while at the same time serving the goal of appropriately punishing people for their crimes. Either way, a sentence levied under law should be a complete sentence. It should be sufficient punishment, and it should be sufficient for rehabilitation. If we fail these goals in practice, then the appropriate remedy is for us to fix the system.

Criminals who go through the system, when they emerge, should be once again full members of society. Any extent to which this is not the case should be codified in their sentence (e.g. our acknowledgement that we do not have full ability to rehabilitate pedophiles, and so even after release they may not be permitted contact with children). In my view, it is inappropriate for individuals or private institutions to levy additional penalties once a criminal sentence is complete.

This may be balanced against other responsibilities that an individual or institution may have. (alkali @40 mentioned not hiring a CFO with a history of financial fraud. That feels iffy to me, but I can see it being acceptable.) Harvard’s action does not seem to be a result of this sort of balancing, but rather relating to judgment of her crime.

mpowell @46
The NFL and board member cases deal with responses to present action. If we fixed the analogy and asked whether the NFL should reject a player who had been convicted of spousal abuse, I would say the NFL should not reject that player. (I assume, of course, that the player would have been accepted absent the crime.) Same deal with the board member. In both cases, the organization would be well within their rights to verify that the individual’s conduct has improved, but I would expect them to not reject the individual out of hand.

DD: “The laws of our country do not always make the right decision when it comes to punishment; I think we can all agree to that. No system is perfect, and I think in this case the system failed. We are talking about a murdered child for goodness sake.”

The US system is far from perfect, and notoriously broken. Particularly when it comes to the prosecutions of poor blacks. So the assumption that the conviction was safe, or appropriate, is a big assumption.

She’s also a 40 year old woman being punished for the crimes of an abused teenager.

@engels
Harvard’s craven kow-towing to power is and always has been a disgrace to them and to the USA

Harvard has done its share of “kow-towing to power,” but this particular case (M. Jones) does not seem to be an instance of that or, to put it more cautiously, that characterization does not fully encompass what’s going on here.

It’s interesting that Yale, according to the NYT article, also rejected M. Jones’s graduate application and yet apparently it was only the details of the Harvard process and decision that were leaked or otherwise made available to the Marshall Project, which produced the resulting NYT article.

I’m not aware that the Yale history dept and American studies program are less prestigious than the equivalents at Harvard, but we don’t know exactly what went on at Yale b/c the Marshall Project apparently did not have access to the relevant material, and Yale, unsurprisingly, declined to comment for the article.

Finally, and again w/r/t engels’ remark, Harvard’s “kow-towing to power” may well be a disgrace to Harvard, but to say it’s a “disgrace to the USA” is more than a bit ridiculous. If Harvard’s kow-towing to power is a disgrace to the U.S., so is that of every other well-known university in the country.

Indeed, there is no reason for engels to single out one institution, when he could just as easily have made the more comprehensive statement that the political system, foreign policy, and higher-education system of the U.S. are, collectively, a disgrace. That would be a more even-handed way to articulate what seems to be engels’s general view.

Mitch Guthman:

Given how easy you find to judge her, I assume that you must come from a similar background and dealt with similar challenges. I would love to hear about them

In general I love the easy way in which the comfortable bourgeoise judge and condemn the underclass for their moral failings. Because obviously all of us know exactly how we’d behave as a damaged and abused teenager, with a handicapped child born through rape and no money (and presumably little to no support from the state).

She spent 20 years in prison. The 40 year old woman is not the 19 year old who committed the crime.

@56: You may wish to read the appellate decision, to which Mitch Guthman has already helpfully provided a link. As he says, it’s disturbing. Jones’ defense tried to discredit a crucial witness in just the way you describe. The court didn’t buy it.

I have no idea if your explanation is correct, but “she just can’t face it” is not justification for refusing to tell authorities where to find the body.

@ 55 et al.: A more apposite NFL case might be that of Michael Vick, who was convicted and served time for operating a dogfighting ring. For the curious, an article describing the trauma experienced by Vick’s dogs, and the path to recovery for a few:

https://www.si.com/more-sports/2008/12/23/vick-dogs

Vick did return briefly to the NFL, but there was a brisk debate at the time as to whether that was right and whether Vick was really sorry for what he had done to his animals. No one denied his right to gainful employment, but many questioned if he was entitled to return to his old high-profile, high-paying celebrity status employment.

I would have preferred that the NFL ban him, but in the end it was all right, because he didn’t do so well and for once I could cheer when a player took a nasty hit, and I’m pleased to report that Vick took quite a few after his comeback.

@51 & @57
I took your comments under advisement and read the appellate court decision. It is indeed disturbing for many reasons, including but extending far beyond Jones’s own state of mind.

I return to my original proposal @41 – that we defer to the prosecutor’s view, and that we await her book on the case.

This is true also re black barbershops in the US aswell, iirc(though I cant find the reference) who disproportionately hire ex cons post release.

This is interesting, and something I didn’t know, but which makes the rules in at least a fewstates, which both require barbers and hairdressers to have professional licenses and prohibit anyone convicted of a felony to hold them, even more awful and crazy.

On the larger topic of free speech Manning, etc.

Here’s Amy Wax talking about the risks of speaking in favor of bourgeois values in modern academia. Two interviews with Glenn Loury

https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/47536

Since we are simultaneously mourning the American 2nd Wave feminists with the death of Kate Millett (Firestone, Willis, Ware)…well some (Jacobin, Robin) of us who have not allied with the billionaire class… I thought I might just add a quote from Setsu Shigamatsu – Scream from the Shadows – Womens Liberation in Japan, 2012

“This chapter not only elaborates how ribu refused the identity and prescriptive telos of wife-to-mother but demonstrates how many ribu activists instead formed communes with other women to raise their children and simultaneously declared their solidarity with mothers who killed their children (kogoroshi no onna). In purposely organizing to support and declare solidarity with such violent and criminalized women, ribu’s praxis as a radical feminist movement offered a complex and counterhegemonic response to how womanhood and motherhood in Japan were bound by the ideology of Japan’s nationalist family system. Ribu’s identification with criminalized and abjected women/onna— such as sex workers, unmarried mothers (mikon no haha), mothers who killed their children, and women fugitives— was part of its radical feminist politics and arguably marked the radical potential and revolutionary impulse of its feminist politics.”

@68: I’m sure the prosecutor will have more light to shed on the case in her book. Not all prosecutors write them, however, so in most cases we have only to go by the facts at hand. (If the prosecutor can produce an explanation for why Jones was freed without revealing the whereabouts of her son’s remains, it would be helpful – I’m rather curious about that.) The prosecutor’s personal view of the Harvard fuss is worth taking into account from one very close to the case but I don’t find it dispositive.

As kidneystones says, she already has skills as a historian. In her own words, she’s “graduated from the toughest school there is.” Hard to argue with this. If she can handle life on the outside, she has the potential to become a brilliant historian, and this potential might be unique among this year’s PhD applicants not just at Harvard. Mike Riggs has a few sensible things to say about it all at Reason.

As for her conviction, there are several reasons why it should not be a major factor in her eligibility for a PhD program. First, she is almost literally a different person from the one that entered prison twenty years earlier. (By the way, the idea that 20 years is “light” is strictly American. In the EU as well as in Russia and Ukraine, women seldom serve even that much for a similar crime, let alone the original 50 years.) Second, she appears to believe that, whatever her crime might have been (if any at all), it was not murder. Verbal remorse is cheap: she could have easily recited the standard mantra. Third, the appellate court’s ruling – the only case-related document I have seen online – shows that the claim that Jones beat the boy to death is only corroborated by one witness, and not the most reliable sort. However, appeals courts in the American system tend to defer to juries in matters of fact-finding, so if the jury found the witness reliable, appellate judges won’t second-guess it (“reweigh the evidence”). The court’s ruling merely addresses issues of law raised by Jones’ lawyers and only provides a small window into the underlying case. To understand it, we have at least to see the transcripts of the original trial.

By the way, has anyone noticed the word “gynatictropin” in this ruling? It’s the only document on the Web where it occurs: the correct term is “gonadotropin.” I would guess the court of appeals copied the monstrosity from the trial transcript without double-checking.

@Leo Casey: She admits to leaving her child alone, which means she does take responsibility for abandoning a child with a serious health defect. This is consistent with what she told the child’s father, a female friend, a crisis counselor and a cop (according to them). I cannot know why Jones did not mention beating the child, but a possible reason is that she either didn’t do it or sincerely believes she didn’t do it. The evidence for this comes from a single witness, who claimed that Jones had answered “I guess so” when asked if she had beaten the boy to death. I wonder if the prosecutor who spoke in defense of Jones would agree that the beating charge was spurious.

Lynne @73 “Not easy” and Stephen @75 “This is not an easy question”

I disagree. The question is not whether Michelle Jones should have been accepted to Harvard PhD. program, otherwise the OP would be entitled Michelle Jones and the shame of Harvard and Yale. I think there are dozens of conceivably good reasons to refuse Michelle Jones to a PhD program. The question is whether the decision to admit her should have been overturned after having been made by the relevant committee. As Rich Yeselson says, once the relevant committee has rendered its decision (presumably taking into accounts all pertinent facts), the decision should be overturned only if it can be demonstrated that something inappropriate took place during the process or if the appointment is impossible for administrative reasons. To be more precise, once the selecting committee has ranked candidates, I believe higher echelons should treat candidates as interchangeable tokens barring exceptional and clearly defined circumstances. Proceeding otherwise makes the evaluation of candidates subject to the whims of administrators and, apparently in this case, the media, a bad idea for a place of intellectual inquiry.

I would like to raise three hypothetical cases that might be relevant.

In view of the above, I find these three hypothetical cases very easy to judge. Has the relevant selecting committee selected the candidate? Yes? Then I believe it is a bad idea to overturn the decision in the absence of a clear and clearly defined administrative or procedural reason. I find these cases especially easy as I read the OP (and agreed with it) without having ever heard of Michelle Jones, so I had no idea what was the atrocious thing she had done 20 years ago, and insofar as I formulated a hypothesis, the reference to the rightwing media made me think she might have been a violent far-left activist (to which I subconsciously assigned the color white).

3) Look at this from the point of view of the Harvard academics who would have to supervise or examine Michaela [sic] Jones’ PhD thesis. Suppose it were to turn out that her work was not, after all, adequate. Would refusing her a doctorate be a career-enhancing move?

Oh come on! First of all, in my experience, it is just not that frequent that a PhD candidate, in any institution, both 1) fails to produce work adequate for a doctorate and 2) nevertheless stubbornly refuses to admit it and insists that the defense process should go forward so that there is no choice but to fail the student. In an élite program like Harvard, with first-class working conditions and stringent screening, I am ready to bet it almost never happens. For a candidate who already has supervised research projects and who already published a scholarly book, the probability that this will happen is virtually nil.

But OK, let us imagine. Will it be a career-enhancing move? No, it won’t. Likewise, if my own PhD student eventually fails to produce a suitable PhD and if I have to fail him, that won’t be a career-enhancing move, because part of my career is to successfully mentor PhD students. But let us continue this train of thinking. Do you think someone would be cowered to give her an unwarranted PhD? And then what? Cowered to accept her publications in élite journals? Cowered to give her a prestigious post-doc? Cowered to grant her tenure? Is Michelle Jones – the published author and research project award winner who, let us recall, was refused at Yale’s Phd program – such an almighty being that we should fear that academic independence itself will be threatened if she ever enters academia? Is that it? And if academic independence is something you hold dear, how about addressing the case of a candidate that was selected by the relevant committee and then barred by the hierarchy with not an inkling towards academic reasons?

This is another shocking example of the criminalization of private life in the USA . She did her time, her crime should be irrelevant in selection . Similarly, people shouldn’t be punished in work for crimes that have no relationship to their work (someone raised the example of spouse-abusing NFL stars above). All employees have rights and this is an obvious and egregious abuse of those rights.

Still, at least she can get a job at a real university now!

Z@82: I think you are dodging the questions. What I asked was, first, whether a hypothetical white Michael Jones, who had hideously murdered his girlfriend, would have been allowed the same degree of charity as the actual black Michelle [sorry about the misnaming] Jones who hideously murdered her child.

That is, as I said, a difficult question. I don’t think that he would have been. Maybe he should. Could you address that?

Second, what difference would it have made if his hypothetical murdered girlfriend had been black. I think it should have made no difference, but I very much doubt it wouldn’t. Could you address that?

Third, I know from personal experience that in a very reputable university the official line has been “give him a presentable PhD thesis, even if you have to write it yourself, and a one-way ticket to New Delhi”. Not my student, fortunately.

Z
http://wikidiff.com/cow/cower

Cow vs Cower – What’s the difference?

would have been allowed the same degree of charity as the actual black Michelle [sorry about the misnaming] Jones who hideously murdered her child.

The evidence that Jones hideously murdered her child isn’t really there. It rests on an alleged confession to an unreliable witness many years after the event.

@Z
In the real world, it seems probable to me that the Harvard admission process is fraught with spurious considerations of “moral qualities”, “dedication to the common good” and “outstanding human qualities” used to justify the influence of donors, legacies etc…. on the social selection of their pool of undergraduates that relevant people might have feared that letting this [i.e. the remarks/’jokes’ on Facebook] pass would expose the hypocrisy of the selection process.

In the 1920s (according to Karabel, referenced above), Harvard and certain other elite schools moved away from an exclusive focus on academic criteria for admission of undergrads to incorporate other considerations, because the men who ran these institutions were worried that an exclusive focus on grades and test scores was leading and would lead to the admission of too many social ‘undesirables’, which, in the context of the 1920s, mainly meant Jews of E. European descent. As Karabel points out in the intro to his book, the Protestant elite that ran these places was not of one mind on this: e.g., Charles William Eliot, at the age of 90, opposed (unsuccessfully) the move by A. Lawrence Lowell, Eliot’s successor as Harvard president, to institute a Jewish quota in admissions.

Almost a century later, non-academic considerations continue to play a role in undergraduate admissions at these places. These considerations are no doubt sometimes used to make it easier to admit favored kinds of applicants (e.g. star athletes, children of big donors, legacies, etc.), but not always. In other words, a reference to “outstanding human qualities” may indeed sometimes or often be “spurious,” to use your word, i.e., simply a cover for something else, but such a criterion might also be used to justify the admission of people who really have, in one way or another, displayed such qualities but who, if they were judged strictly on the basis of grades and test scores, wouldn’t get in. Cases in which the appeal to outstanding non-academic qualities is not spurious but genuine certainly exist (consider, e.g., the hypothetical but not far-fetched case of a young person who grew up in a depressed small town or rural area and started a social-service, or tutoring, or drug-education program in high school and whose academic accomplishments, while impressive, might not quite match the pool’s average).

Given that these institutions will likely always do much more to reproduce the society’s class structure than to transform it, and given that getting into a Harvard, which takes about 5 percent of its tens of thousands of applicants, is in many respects a roll-of-the-dice (or crap shoot) anyway, would things be better if admissions were based only on grades and test scores? Maybe, but I’m not convinced that the answer to that question is yes. (I am in favor of getting rid of legacy preferences, but that’s a different question.)

@90: “The evidence that Jones hideously murdered her child isn’t really there. It rests on an alleged confession to an unreliable witness many years after the event.”

And on circumstantial evidence that points to Jones. Of course, as Jones’ defense argued in her appeal, there’s no body, so it is true that an important piece of evidence “isn’t really there.” Of course, there’s no body because Jones not only wouldn’t tell the authorities where Brandon lies but misled them as to where he might be found.

Clarification: my previous reference to Karabel’s (not esp. well-titled) book The Chosen was in the other thread (on Manning and HKS), not this thread. (In case anyone was confused.)

Circumstantial evidence is still evidence. A reasonable person could certainly lend weight to the idea that she refused to show police where the body was because it would show direct evidence of the murder she confessed. In fact I would go so far as to say that is the one of the top most likely answers.

Do you think anything in this discussion ought to turn on that fact though? She served the sentence for murder. Do you think the university should let her in to the program if she neglected her child to death but not if she actively killed him? Why get side tracked into the question if it doesn’t matter?

Stephen @86 What I asked was, first, whether a hypothetical white Michael Jones, who had hideously murdered his girlfriend, would have been allowed the same degree of charity as the actual black Michelle […]I don’t think that he would have been. Maybe he should. Could you address that?

OK, I think I misunderstood the first time. The thing is, I’m often puzzled by the love the English language has with the passive form. Allowed the same degree of charity by whom? The justice system? The academic system? The general public? And what about “Could you address that?” What exactly? Whether Micheal Jones would have been treated the same (and by whom)? or maybe whether Michael Jones should have been treated the same (and, again, by whom)? On the narrow topic of the OP – that is to say, the treatment by Harvard’s graduate school – I think a hypothetical Michael Jones should have been treated better than Michelle Jones actually was in that I think the decision of the academic committee should have been respected. Whether this would have happened is indeed a difficult question, as are all hypotheticals by definition. The most salient difference between the real case and your hypothetical seems to be in the segment of the media which is potentially incensed by a graduate school admitting the candidate; in the real world, it was the right-wing media, in your hypothetical situation, I’m not sure. Whatever would have happened, I have no problem saying I believe that Harvard’s graduate program selection committee should be able to accept the white murderer of a black woman and that it would be wrong to rescind the acceptance based on the perceived likely reaction of Black Lives Matter or The Nation or whatever functional equivalent of Fox and Breitbart you think would react. What do you think?

@92: Legacies aren’t what they used to be in some respects. Michelle Obama was one – her brother was a star student-athlete already at Princeton ( a genuine student-athlete, not a jock in on a pass, perhaps I should note).

Z @101
Thanks for the reference to Bourdieu’s The State Nobility (adding it to my reading list).

J-D How is use of the passive in English a point of distinction from use of the passive in other languages?

Implicit agent passive construction are more frequently attested and are grammatical or felt to be quite natural in a wider set of contexts than in my native language (syntactic pun intended). That’s usually fine but in argumentative texts, I sometimes find it problematic as I feel the precise meaning of the sentence may depend, even crucially, on the precise agent. If you skim back recent threads, you’ll find me querying Chris Bertram, John Holbo and now Stephen precisely on that point.

Sebastian H Do you think anything in this discussion ought to turn on that fact though? She served the sentence for murder.

My thoughts exactly on the precise details of Ms. Jones’s case.