Harvard’s ranking has deteriorated each year
Harvard and The New Diversity:
Showing more:
Dear President Gay, Since my letter to you of November 4th to which you did not reply or even acknowledge, I have received substantial feedback and input from senior members of the Harvard faculty about a number of the issues I raised in my letter concerning free speech, antisemitism, and the impact of the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (OEDIB) at Harvard. I thought to share this feedback with you now as it may inform your testimony and potential questions you may receive from the Congress on Tuesday.
Who gave Harvard permission to add “Belonging” to EDI (aka DEI)? Or does Harvard not need permission? Perhaps it’s Harvard that gives the permission. So anyway we’re now talking about a new and improved DEI that also has “belonging” on the badge. You might think that would be already covered by “inclusion” but…uh…no, I got nothin’.
On with the letter.
In several of your communications since October 7th, you have emphasized Harvard’s commitment to free speech as the reason why the university has continued to permit eliminationist and threatening language on campus – i.e., calls for Intifada (suicide bombings, knifings, etc. of Israeli civilians) and the elimination of the state of Israel “From the River to the Sea.” You explained your tolerance for these protests on October 13th: “[O]ur university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.”
Hold on.
That’s another one of these escape mechanisms the Enlightened use to avoid spelling out exactly what they’re ordering us to do and think and say. The issue is not limited to emotions about speech. The issue doesn’t stop at objection or outrage. The issue is about speech that can end up at genocide. Ironically Harvard and President Gay weakened their own explanation for limiting free speech. I wish all parties would be honest about this.
Back to why Harvard isn’t the free speech hero it claims to be.
In my letter to you, however, I noted that In The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Free Speech Rankings, Harvard has consistently finished in the bottom quartile in each of the past four years. I note that Harvard’s ranking has deteriorated each year, receiving its lowest free speech ranking ever for the 2023 academic year, last out of 254 universities with a rating of 0.00, the only university with an “abysmal” speech climate.
After sending my letter, I reached out to the faculty to reconcile your free speech absolutist commitment with Harvard having the lowest free speech ranking of any university. The faculty had a lot to say on this issue, as well as on antisemitism and the OEDIB. Notably, they were willing to share their views so long as I committed to keep their identities confidential. I have quoted their remarks below:
On Free Speech
“Years ago, Harvard stopped being a place where all perspectives were welcome.”
“Harvard is a place where loud, hate-filled protests appear to be encouraged, but where faculty and students can’t share points of view that are inconsistent with the accepted narrative on campus.”
“Harvard became a place where if you toed the party line, there was applause. If you disagree, you are drowned out. The gatekeepers of speech continue to further narrow what they deem acceptable speech.”
“The primary problem with speech at Harvard is that if you say the wrong thing, you will be cancelled, which leads to self-censorship. The result is what you actually think is not what you say.”
So Harvard is Pharyngula writ large. How bizarre.
On Antisemitism, Support for Hamas, and the Protests Against Israel
When I asked members of the faculty about the causes behind the Israeli/Gaza protests and the tolerance for antisemitism on campus, they explained: “Whiteness at Harvard is deemed fundamentally oppressive. Indigenous peoples are presented as in need of justice and reparations. Jews are presented as white people. It is therefore ok to hate Israel and Jews as they are deemed to be oppressors.”
Hang on. If Jews are white people what was all that about??? All what? You know what, but apparently The Enlightened don’t. They must think Auschwitz was a summer camp.
There’s more; later.
Since we’re doing Bill Ackman, it is notable that Ackman is one of a large number of Jews who are doing a rapid reappraisal after Oct 7. He states this in the above Tweet:
“I am embarrassed for not having been aware and previously taken the time to investigate these issues [the DEI demonisation of “white” people] until antisemitism [including labelling Jews as “white” and “oppressors”] exploded on campus.”
This was exactly the point that Musk was making in his too-brief Tweet (whose brevity meant that many misinterpreted it, whether deliberately so or not).
So it’s worth pointing out that Ackman is one of a number of Jews who have defended Musk, saying:
“On Musk and antisemitism:
“After examining the facts, it was clear to me that Musk did not have antisemitic intent when he responded with the ‘actual truth’ tweet, and further clarified thereafter.
“I thought he made what he meant extremely clear in the @andrewrsorkin
interview, namely, that Jews are drawn to support ‘oppressed’ groups and causes through various non-profits due to our history of being an oppressed minority.
“Musk points out correctly that a number of these organizations and their members support Hamas. And he is correct in saying that Jews should rethink support for organizations that seek their elimination.
Many Jews are doing that right now. ”
He then goes on to say:
“To use a Muskism, Earth is fortunate that @X is owned by an individual that is largely insulated from financial and other influence. That said, perhaps some form of very carefully governed trust would be a better forever owner than any individual. […] with a charter which permanently vests the free speech principles by which it operates. Until then, we all should be grateful that X is owned by Musk.”
PS Must buy some shares in Ackman’s “Pershing” trust, he seems sound.
PPS Musk — for all his eccentricities — is one of the good guys, with instincts in the right place.
PPPS I thought that the Sorkin interview would have been good for multiple outraged posts, but nothing?!
Oh good Coel, I was worried I’d have to take anything this Ackman fellow said seriously.
My response to Harvard would be more akin to “Well fine Harvard, you’ve got a commitment to free speech… If you’re going to make that your policy going forward I fully support you. Now if you’re just being opportunistically dishonest, enjoy the consequences…”
Oddly enough this post isn’t about Musk. Derail is noted and not much appreciated.
It must be a very limited life indeed, to spend so much energy and time on Musk, when there are so many truly interesting things to do in the world. Talk about Harvard, not Elon.
I imagine that even Harvard, with all its manifest faults, does not teach, even its linguistics department, the curious and blatantly self-exculpatory mathematics whereby ‘Jewish communities’ & ”western Jewish populations’ may be added together to produce ‘some Jewish organisations’.
@iknklast:
It is about Harvard, and it’s about culture more generally. It’s about having Twitter as an open forum where one can discuss and promote ideas that others dislike. It’s about not having DEI apparatus that tries to shut down any conversation it doesn’t like. It’s about not using “racist”, “antisemite” or “transphobe” to try to shut people down.
Ackman can write his open letter because he heads his own company and can’t be sacked. And he’s a rich Harvard-alumnus donor.
What would happen if he were a mere Harvard faculty member writing that very same open letter? The DEI apparatus would instantly swing into action to end his career. He’d be ostracised by all his colleagues (many would not want to ostracise him, indeed many would agree with him, but they would ostracise him and keep silent because anyone who fails to denounce a witch is a witch**).
[**Quite literally in the case of the Georgetown professor who was sacked for remaining silent in a zoom call where an unwitting witch spoke.]
“Belonging” as in identity politics, or tribalism? Doesn’t sound very inclusive to me…
PS Ackman’s open letter was on Twitter …
In the old days, one of a horde of woke moderators, fresh out of a masters degree in “gender studies” and full of Judith Butler, would now be thinking: “deboost … shadowban, … nothing too obvious, though, make it subtle enough that we can deny it” (and all the other tricks that they claimed they didn’t do but we know they did).
After all, they’d regard themselves as on the right side of history with a mission to promote that end, and they’d be thinking “Ackman? White, male, Jewish, rich … are these really the voices we should be centering at this point? Nope … deboost”.
[NB I’m not claiming that moderation at Twitter is perfect now, it’s likely not, it’s pretty hard to know.]
It’s a bad scene at colleges these days. My son, who is at college now, tells me that he was unpleasantly surprised to learn how many of his friends buy into the antisemitic myths on the far left. He already knew that the only student group at his college that needs to hire private security in order to meet on campus is the Jewish student group. He already knew that he sometimes gets yelled at in the street in front of his college for just looking Jewish. But to have people he’s invited over to dinner tell him that Jews should be exterminated from the Middle East because they’re invaders… certain corners of our modern society have full-on reverted to medieval barbarism.
I’ll drop here an eye-opening read about one of the people funding the current wave of antisemitism:
https://www.thefp.com/p/hes-got-250-million-to-spend-on-communist
A quarter-billion dollars to spend on a communist revolution, and he’s going to start by terrorizing Jews.
God damn, Papito, that’s horrific.
Also, if we’re talking about Harvard, we can’t forget about Harvard professor Steven Pinker. I can’t imagine he’s on board with any of this. There’s quite a good recent interview here >>
https://quillette.com/2023/12/01/theres-nothing-mystical-about-the-idea-that-ideas-change-history/