Harvard Kennedy School (discussion)

I hope that the Chelsea Manning and Michelle Jones stories appearing together will persuade anyone with illusions about Harvard to recognize what it really is and how it operates: Kissinger lives forever. Sign the petition.

I suppose my view would depend on the broader profile of fellows at the Kennedy School.

For reasons to do with her academic/professional background, Chelsea Manning wouldn’t fit my idea of a fellow of the Kennedy School. But if it is common to invite people without experience either at the highest levels of government or studying said high levels of government academically to be fellows, I’m not sure why Ms. Manning’s criminal record should matter.

(The other post mentioned Corey Lewandowski and Sean Spicer. Both would make more sense to me than Chelsea Manning, but still not much. Sean Spicer at least worked in the White House, but all Corey Lewandowski did is work on a Presidential campaign, which – as far as I know – isn’t what the Kennedy School teaches.)

I’d be more sympathetic in progressives hadn’t totally destroyed their credibility on this issue. This is no different than the case of Christine Lagarde or Ayaan Ali, and the arguments then made against those speakers apply with even greater force to manning. If progressives were really serious about returning a liberal regime to the campus perhaps there would be a starting point in the discussion, but until then this is just special pleading.

The Elmendorf statement is self-discrediting. In particular, it reveals that the “Visiting Fellow” designation is insubstantial — it simply means that a person is coming for a day to give a talk and to meet with interested faculty and students — and it is freely conveyed on people of all political stripes. Unless Elmendorf proposes to start denying this designation to CIA vets who come to campus, there is no reason to deny it to Ms. Manning.

This story bothered me more TBH:
http://nyti.ms/2x09OA3

It’s only a matter of time before the US starts branding ex-convicts.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/09/15/harvard-behaves-badly-twice/

Tell me again why Michael J. Morell isn’t in jail? Oh right. Because torture and murder are not against the law when the CIA does them. Those are not “crimes against the United States government”, they are crimes of the United States government, so it is OK to “honor” Morell.

Those are not “crimes against the United States government”, they are crimes of the United States government, so it is OK to “honor” Morell.

That’s quite impressive whataboutery, Bruce, not to mention the excellent use of scare quotes.

Whether they should hire (entirely innocent-until-proven-guilty) war criminals or goons like Spicer is a fascinating question, but irrelevant to whether it’s reasonable for HKS to not invite people who have been convicted of serious offenses against the jurisdiction in which HKS resides/flag it flies. Independent of one’s views on Wikileaks/Manning, and indeed independent of any further whataboutery about their other “distinguished” (scarequotes!) guests, they have drawn a reasonable line here.

@2:It’s a reasonable red line for Harvard but somebody should have thought of that before issuing the invitation. I’m surprised she was even considered by the HKS in the first place.

I think the Manning and the Jones cases are very different.

The decision to remove the title “visiting fellow” from Manning but maintain the invitation for her to spend a day at the Kennedy School is tacky. Once she’d been invited to be a one-day visiting fellow by the Institute of Politics (which, btw, is not mainly a scholarly ‘center’ but plays a quite different role) that should have been that, short of some truly drastic circumstance intervening (which it didn’t here) and irrespective of subsequent objections.

Unlike the Manning case, the Jones case does not involve a one-day invitation to give a talk and meet with some students but, in effect, probably roughly a six-year or seven-year (or longer) invitation to become a part of a particular academic program. It’s a completely different thing.

The Manning decision seems silly and quite indefensible; the Jones decision, by contrast, seems like a fairly close call on both sides of which serious arguments can be made. At a minimum, the Jones case doesn’t seem open and shut (though I think, as I said on the other thread, she probably should have been admitted).

In sum, apart from the fact that they both involve the same university, these are very different situations, or so I’d argue.

The discussion here is also sadly predictable. Every time a university engages in this kind of cowardly behaviour – unhiring professors, firing lecturers, univiting guests because they’ve been critical of a cause their donors or their graduates’ employers hold dear – a crowd descends and discusses …. not the actual actions of said university but some alternate universe where a functionally equivalent action was based on the most reasonable abstract considerations of respect for the law, civility, and rational discourse.

Harvard may have it’s tempests, but how about an economics adjunct using his twitter feed to “Smashfascism” and promote the killing of cops?

As in, yes, really.

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/09/15/us/15reuters-new-york-police-johnjay.html

The NYT glosses omits any actual, you know, alt-left hate speech cause, well – I don’t know why but here are a few choice examples: https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/09/15/antifa-prof-nyc-placed-administrative-leave-anti-cop-tweets/

Cost of security to prevent riots over Ben Shapiro at UC: 600 k.

“That’s quite impressive whataboutery, Bruce, not to mention the excellent use of scare quotes.”

Bruce’s point is not whataboutery. It is the central issue. People who expose the war crimes of a given country’s government will be prosecuted and treated with contempt by the ruling class. Sorry for the stilted Marxist rhetoric, but substitute whatever rhetoric you want–it’s a truism that is as old as the Bible.

“I don’t think we need to get into Harvard dropping its mask, the ruling class, etc.; the Kennedy School runs a ten-month program for senior managers in national and international security which undoubtedly is a cash cow for the school. I presume the Dean didn’t want to risk pissing off a lot of those guys and killing the cow. This isn’t much of a crowd for Occam’s Razor, is it?”

This is saying essentially the same thing in two different ways while pretending that the two explanations are entirely different, so as to justify the concluding bit of snark. Yes, Harvard likely acted this way in large part because it would lose money. Is that supposed to conflict with the theory of people who might invoke a phrase like ” the ruling class”?

Every time a university engages in this kind of cowardly behaviour – unhiring professors, firing lecturers, univiting guests because they’ve been critical of a cause their donors or their graduates’ employers hold dear

And, as has been pointed out, they didn’t uninvite Manning. This may be, as JFC says, tacky, but where’s the principle that everyone is rushing to the barricades to defend?

Put me down as “shocked but not surprised.”
Universities used to be where the really smart people hung out: in reserve for the needs of society. (Universities still get a lot of reputational mileage from the Manhattan Project.) But that hasn’t been true for awhile–the fancier purlieus of Corporate and Government America have the same kind of candlepower these days.
So what justification remains? Education? Undergrad education can be done cheaper and more efficiently through other means. Graduate school is just an apprenticeship, which can take place in many contexts. Professional schools may teach something, but are generally inferior to OJT.
Universities are only worth keeping for their independence. The smart peeps in the corporate and government sectors serve other masters. Until recently, the professoriat served only itself. (The press plays a similar role, but is woefully short on technical expertise.) But nowadays, the professoriat is beginning to lose its independence and serve the institutional needs of the university, which resemble the institutional needs of most corporations: customer satisfaction.
I suppose the university will survive this. There is, after all, a demand for its remaining services. Universities legitimate the current ruling class through their scholarship, preserve the myth of meritocracy through their undergrad education, and provide minor-league football spectacles. I’d rather such a university dies, but it won’t.

Nobody would have complained, or even noticed, if Harvard hadn’t extended either offer in the first place. Though I have no problem with either initial decision, there were respectable reasons not to extend them, and I wouldn’t have had an issue if Harvard had decided otherwise. But having done what it did, this is just weak and embarrassing. I thought Harvard was full of smart people.

@2 “HKS appears to have chosen a red line of “not convicted of crimes against the United States government.” That’s a reasonable line no matter how stupid or odious people may find Spicer and Lewandowski.”

First of all, Ms Jones was convicted of a crime against a person committed as a teenager (I’d have written juvenile, but with the US system you never know, and I’m really not particularly interested in the minutiae of her prosecution), not against the US government.

Second, to draw the line at a criminal conviction means to abdicate any pretense at weight and authority in the public debate. It’s at the limits of what’s generally accepted is where an institution can most usefully veer into new waters, by carefully selecting which norm-pushing individuals or ideas are worthy giving some space to develop. (I’m not advocating for showy willy-nilly norm-breaking.) This is incompatible with practicing what in German is called pre-emptive obedience (vorauseilender Gehorsam).

(Also, let’s say that an existing Harvard scholar is doing or saying something along the lines of civil disobedience, something that gets into the craw of the current administration, and there’s successful prosecution for, whatever, criminal trespassing or criminal obstruction of something-or-other. They’ll have to now know that the institution won’t have their back. In a time where there’s even more doubt than for a long time that the executive will more-or-less uphold principles of democratic opinion-formation and liberty, that’s worrying.)

@Anarcissie, it’s reasonable to assume she accepted the gig because it offered her an opportunity to address, as the original announcement framed them, “issues of LGBTQ identity in the military” from a stage (largely on-line) different than what she has grown accustomed to since her release. She is described, in the original roster of speakers, as “a Washington D.C. based network security expert and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst” who has written about “social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence.” She is also identified as a trans woman who is involved in trans advocacy and activism.

Whether Kennedy was an appropriate (and ethical) venue for what insights she wanted to offer remains to be seen, but she obviously thought it wise and/or a good professional opportunity. (She was less than enthused when she learned about Spicer being named another fellow.) She may have been wrong, but there’s no real mystery, otherwise. She’s not directly responding to requests for interviews at the moment and may have relished a formal speech or a more controlled discussion, with a narrower subject range, than facing a potentially hostile journalist who might not be satisfied limiting their questions to her activism. Who can say?

I may be missing something that everybody else assumes or has already been explained, but does the fellowship as opposed to a mere invitation to speak involve an emolument or something, a check? I presumed it did, and so there is an important difference between the two.

I presume Manning is in need of money right now, so if the fellowship does include money, then she has been materially damaged and should sue Harvard for material and reputational damages.

kidneystones@4, 16:

Pointing out that Harvard is well within its rights to disinvite or avoid honoring people of its choosing is frankly beside the point. I agree they are within their rights to do so, and I don’t doubt most here do as well. The issue is the process by which they arrived at the decision to do so. I would have no problem if Harvard expelled every student on campus who was not a white Protestant cisgender male of European decent and from an old money family if they did so after demonstrating by impartial means that all those students were guilty of gross academic misconduct. I would most certainly have a problem if they did so because the Harvard Corporation publicly announced that starting tomorrow they would no longer waste university resources teaching inferior beings and would henceforth only cater to proper, decent folk. Process matters, and no amount of gesticulating at the ends will make the means go away.

Orange Watch @38

I would have no problem if Harvard expelled every student on campus who was not a white Protestant cisgender male of European de[s]cent and from an old money family if they did so after demonstrating by impartial means that all those students were guilty of gross academic misconduct.

If Harvard were to expel “every student on campus who was not a white Protestant cisgender male of European de[s]cent and from an old money family,” they’d be expelling, I’d guess, around 85 percent of their undergraduates, if not perhaps more. (That’s a guess, as I said, but I’d be surprised if it weren’t in the ballpark. I suppose the exact number might depend a bit on how one defined “old money family,” but whatever.)

I’m still having a hard time getting exercised about Manning. Some people may have trouble thinking of military officers as legitimate students, but the Kennedy School clearly does think of them that way, and I can’t see any principled reason not to.

Evidently, some of those students are really personally pissed off about Manning, enough perhaps that it might harm the whole program, and, yes, cost the school money. The school’s response was to take away an “honor” it never intended to award, while retaining the invitation to speak. So the students are, presunably, somewhat appeased, and speech is not impaired, though now Manning is understandably pissed off. This doesn’t strike me as a “to the barricades!” moment. But undoubtedly I’m missing something.

I’m surprised by the number of people who are willing to say something like, Harvard is an autonomous business, controversy about Manning and Jones threatened its business, and it’s naive to expect them to make any other decision. In the same way that Harvard has a right to choose recipients of its “honours”, on the basis of its private agenda, we have a right to withhold our honour of the institution for our own reasons. No one is suggesting that Chelsea Manning lead an army of the dispossessed in to occupy the Kennedy School and drive Douglas Elmendorff from office.

And to the extent that Harvard’s business model actually depends on the respect that it gets from academics and intellectuals, our criticism will have to be weighed in its crass institutional decision-making against the more obvious power of money and government power. I don’t want to exaggerate our influence, but I can’t see any influence in giving up the influence we have, to say “elite universities are just cynical instruments of the establishment” when a foundation of their power is their claim — and our acceptance of their claim — to be something else.

Before reconciliation, there must be truth. Right?

Ms. Jones is a woman who tortured and neglected a child to death and who, to this day, will not reveal where his little body was disposed of. There was a lot of reason-giving on her part: the child was a product of violence. She was a young, badly-abused and traumatized person herself. The details she supplies in these regards were fulsome and we are right to take them seriously. What she did to kill her son and dispose of his corpse is a serious thing, too, and it has been glossed over in a way that few narrative historians I know would abide by in the telling of a story, especially when the person who has told the first and third part of the story has the knowledge and ability to tell the second part.

I agree that she has fulfilled her punitive requirements to the government, and therefore to society in some large and general sense. I am glad she received a shortened sentence because her scholarship was evidence of her rehabilitation. We can bracket all that off. The question then becomes to what extent the governors of a private institution have the right to deny her something rare and extraordinary in their own realm: a fully-funded opportunity to take one’s place among the best scholars in the world in a community where this good is coveted and fiercely sought after.

There is this thought, and we don’t say it too loudly but we still think it, that the history department admitted Michelle from among other qualified applicants like her *because* she killed a person and went to jail for it, and *because* she is black and was incarcerated. There were rejected applicants to the program whose scholarship was surely as good, and whose contributions to history would be as valuable. This, the Jones case, was meant to be the department’s contribution not to only to history but to our present-day society.

Her admission was a statement about what it might mean to be a redeemed killer and an incarcerated person of color by their (progressive) view in the United States. Let’s not be naive: it wasn’t like the department fell in love with her scholarship and then was surprised and intrigued to learn, after they had admitted her, that she had killed a child many years ago. She was their unicorn: a convicted felon of color who is brilliant and holds great promise in the field. We’ve seen law schools admit felons to make a point about our society, and now it was a history department’s turn. The imprimatur they were using to make their point wasn’t only their department’s, however, it was that of Harvard itself.

No so fast, said the people whose job it is to make more acute judgments about Harvard’s imprimatur. Welcome, said NYU. I guarantee that in the sweep of things, where Ms. Jones learns to do history and what history she actually does will be inconsequential, in the way that nearly all of our papers, books and research are inconsequential except as a small part of a wider web of knowledge. What is of greater consequence in this case is who she is and how she got there. Once that is the case, Harvard is entitled to consider the details of her crime, and these details apparently gave them pause.

If this is true, it’s not unreasonable or crazy for a university to take the circumstances of her killing and its aftermath into consideration when they review the history department’s decision. Child murder is close to pedophilia as a crime that many reasonable people find hardest to forgive, and, as you can tell by what I write, I think that withholding information about how you killed your 4-year-old son and what you did with his body should bring some scrutiny upon you as a person people would want to associate with in the semi-private settings in which a wide range of reasons suffice for drawing a conclusion.

I feel she has been quiet about what she did because it would be an assault on our dignity. I’m sure it still terrifies her to recall it. People who kill the children who are never found throw their bodies into dumpsters, haul them deep into the woods for consumption by animals, or fold them into coolers or garbage bags and leave them by the side of the road. They cut them up and scatter the pieces. Whatever she did took an act of consciousness and will because we never found him and that’s quite rare. We can talk about personal identity and whether Ms. Jones today is the same person who did something like this years ago, but there will always be a thread inside her from that day that runs to this one and we deserve to know what it is. There is no right to privacy in murder.

So I’m not at all upset that NYU took her, and not because of any dim view about NYU. It’s because, as someone said above, this is an issue about which reasonable people may disagree. I’m more worried about the people who see the history department as the final voice in this matter and see the disagreement that followed, albeit one that had a hierarchy of power that produced the outcome we see, as some criminal usurpation of the divine right of an academic department to do as it pleases with the resources a larger university accords it.

His name was Brandon, by the way. His bones are still somewhere in this world. If Michelle wants not only liberty but reconciliation, she should tell us where they are. We should find them and bury them properly. His history deserves to be written as a basic condition of humanity. Then, we can review the story in full and private institutions can set their terms of reconciliation. Somebody said above ref: Manning that it’s lazy and wrong to accord moralizing and accountability to the government alone. I agree, so it’s odd that this would work for Manning but not for Jones. I’ll buy Ms. Jones’ books when she writes them, but I’d like to read this other story, too.

@29 “So what justification remains? Education? Undergrad education can be done cheaper and more efficiently through other means. ”

What are these cheaper and more efficient means? – books on tape? Video disks? The great lectures of great professors on VHS? tell me more.

The causes of the skewed class/income composition of the student bodies at those schools go much deeper than the legacy preference

Agreed, but from an international perspective the legacy system seems far out of step with 21st century norms (also weird that the same people who think affirmative action is an outrage against meritocracy don’t seem to mind about it…)

Thank you for correcting my use of the word fulsome, J-D. You learn something new every day.

@54 You normally present more coherent comments.

In the first paragraph, you insist that because nobody (here) it seems has deployed the word ‘deserve’ that this isn’t the case.

In the second, you imply that Manning has been disinvited, when the opposite is plainly the case.

I’m pleased Manning is invited to speak at HKS, her/his decision to deny the students the opportunity of discussion confirms something. For my money the entire argument over an honorific reeks and reminds me how trivial silly ‘academic’ priorities often are. Manning belongs in prison if the laws are applied equally and fairly. She/he is only free to choose not to speak at HKS, because an exception to a general rule was made.

I’m sure nobody was too upset, but I’m sorry for being absent from this thread for the last few days :-)

My claim was that it is reasonable for the KSG, as a professional school, to defer authority to the courts/institutions of the United States. KSG flies the US flag and is named after a US President fergodsake. It surely has an international development role, and trains many future diplomats from other countries, but is very much a Bostonian institution that supports the US Constitution, its court system, and what not. In that context, drawing a line of not hiring/honouring anyone that has admitted treason (or war crimes, or “assisting the enemy”, etc) against the United States seems like a thoroughly reasonable line even if I personally disagree with the decision.

Ms Manning is not an academic. This is a policy school/”School of Government”, and Manning committed a crime that was not a DUI or burglary, but active release of confidential information to the detriment of the US.

Should Harvard stand up and say “Screw these illegitimate courts, we’ll decide who should be honoured”? Maybe, yeah. But they’ve opted to instead let the courts decide, and I don’t think there is any great scandal in that.