Academia, Media, Military, Politics

Harvard Rescinds Manning Fellowship Under Pressure

imagesThe only thing worse than Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government appointing Chelsea Manning as fellow was the school’s withdraw of the fellowship. The school today succeeded in demonstrating to the world that its fellowships have zero intellectual content by first appointing Manning without a clear explanation of her expected academic contributions and then terminating the appointment under pressure.  As academics, we are not supposed to remove academic appointments because individuals are controversial or unpopular.  If Harvard was sticking by its academic reasons for the appointment, it should stick by its appointee.

I have long been confused by the school’s choices for fellows for many years. It seems like an academic version of Keeping Up With The Karadasians. Notoriety alone seems the driving force for many of these selections rather than any real intellectual contribution.  I felt that way about Manning’s appointment.

However, the decision to withdraw its invitation raises the countervailing concern that the school is allowing public pressure to dictate appointments.  Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf insisted that Manning was invited to talk with students and then host a forum to answer “hard questions.” about her story. He then added “I apologize to her and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard … for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation.”

Everything about that statement is curious.  The School did not recognize the controversy that would erupt over such an appointment?  Moreover, Elmendorf explains the academic value of Manning’s participation but then abandons that purpose because people are upset.

My concerns are not really focused on Manning but the danger of universities tailoring its academic programs to public opinion.  I have written extensively about the hostile environment for conservative speakers on campus.  Invitations have been withdrawn due to opposition groups and protests.  This case is even more concerning because it was a formal invitation to join the program as a fellow.

The invitation and then the withdrawal leave total confusion as to the purpose and academic content of these fellowship positions.  Harvard appears to have carefully avoided any principled ground in both the appointment and the withdrawal.

What do you think?

 

208 thoughts on “Harvard Rescinds Manning Fellowship Under Pressure”

  1. HOLD THE PRESSES! Here’s the headline:

    LIBERAL ACADEMICS ARE HYPOCRITICAL, COWARDLY, FOOLS.

    You see, this is something all us “normals” as the great VEEP character played by Julia Louis Dreyfus calls us, have known all our adult lives.

  2. Harvard Withdrew Chelsea Manning’s ‘Visiting Fellow’ Invitation. Here’s What to Know
    Melissa Chan

    10:33 AM ET

    http://time.com/4943362/chelsea-manning-harvard-fellow/

    “A Harvard graduate school dean on Friday withdrew a designation extended to Chelsea Manning, saying the offer was a “mistake,” after a backlash from several people, including the head of the CIA.”

    The “backlash” was, in all likelihood, quite significant.

  3. Since we’re on the Harvard campus, somebody run down to the Medical School and the Physics Department and ask those folks if a man who has his genitals removed actually becomes a woman.

    Is Bradley manning a real woman or an artificial, political woman whom we are ordered to refer to as such by the current cadre of “globalist” political officers?

  4. I think Harvard is wrong each and every time it extends a fellowship without a solid academic justification. I think revoking a fellowship would only be justified if there had not been the above academic foundation. If it was either offered or rescinded based on politics, then the university was utterly and entirely wrong.

    It was wrong to extend Manning the fellowship and hurtful to revoke it.

    Moving forward, I hope that Harvard formulates an academic basis for fellowships, but perhaps the school has become too politicized for this to be realistic.

  7. Since the term “fellow” has a certain gender implication, maybe there needs to be a new position called “shellow.” Just sayin’.

    1. “For he’s a jolly good shellow, for he’s a jolly good shellow
      For he’s a jolly good shellow, which nobody can deny
      Which nobody can deny, which nobody can deny
      For he’s a jolly good shellow, for he’s a jolly good shellow
      For he’s a jolly good shellow, which nobody can deny!”

    1. Jason Leopold
      @JasonLeopold

      Ex-CIA official Mike Morell says CIA didnt torture. We asked if “rectal feeding” is torture. He declined to answer news.vice.com/article/a-form…”

      6:18 PM – 25 Jun 2015

      “A Former CIA Official Apologizes to ‘Every American’ For Iraq Intelligence Failures | VICE News
      Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell admits the intelligence on Iraq’s supposed WMD was bad — but he stands by the agency’s so-called ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods.”

    1. Greenwald’s definition of ‘done horrific things’ would be subscribed to only by gruesome characters like Greenwald.

      2. I find it interesting that you apparently support government sanctioned slaughtering of innocent lives, like in Yemen, yet you staunchly oppose government sanctioned abortion.
        Selective slaughter huh?

        1. I’m not such a fool as to think Yemen would be at peace with itself if it were not for the Saudi government (or the U.S. Government). They are facing an insurrection. Not much to do about that but suppress it. You can attempt to broker a settlement, but that generally requires a degree of demoralization the Yemeni insurrection hasn’t reached yet.

          (This is actually the 4th bout of internecine warfare in Yemen in the last 60 years. The former President of Yemen likened his job to “dancing on the heads of snakes”. It’s a refractory society and likely will be for some time).

  11. I have no problem referring to Manning by whatever name he chooses for himself. But he is not a woman. You and everybody commenting here using female pronouns to describe him is engaging in a lie. I’d like to know why.

    There is no scientific or biological basis to deny that he is a man. I don’t know if he’s had his penis surgically removed or not, but even if he’s taken such an extreme measure to mutilate himself in that way it does not make him a woman. And EVERYBODY knows it.

    That the entire intellectual elite is engaging in this farcical perversion of language is no excuse. CIA Director Pompeo used female pronouns when referring to Manning in his letter to Harvard withdrawing from the event.

    I could care less if Manning puts on lipstick and a dress. (I care what society indulging these delusions may lead to, for example 55 year old men pretending to be women who take public showers with 7 year old girls at the YWCA. But that is secondary for now.)

    I’m more concerned at this time with pressure by elites and opinion shapers who want to force us all to deny objective truth by indulging the fantasies of deluded people. When I went to NYU, I once saw a middle aged guy running around Washington Square Park clucking like a chicken. I assume he was either mentally disturbed or on some mind altering drug. Or maybe he was goofing off trying to get a reaction. I don’t know. But nobody pretended to believe he was a chicken. Are you lying about Manning being a woman out of some misguided sense of respect? Would it be disrespectful not to refer to the guy I saw in the park at NYU as a chicken? If not, why not?

    Whether I agree with you or not, I’ve always respected you as someone who tries to tell the truth. Using female pronouns to refer to Manning diminishes your reputation as a truth teller.

    2. With a photo:

      Harvard Rescinds Chelsea Manning Fellowship After CIA Director Protest

      HEADLINE SEP 15, 2017

      https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/15/headlines/harvard_rescinds_chelsea_manning_fellowship_after_cia_director_protest

      Harvard University has canceled an offer that would make Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning a visiting fellow, after CIA Director Mike Pompeo called Manning an “American traitor” and canceled a planned appearance on campus. In response, Chelsea Manning tweeted, “honored to be 1st disinvited trans woman visiting @harvard fellow … they chill marginalized voices under @cia pressure … #WeGotThis.” The Obama administration prosecuted Manning under the Espionage Act after she revealed secrets of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon—including evidence of war crimes and support for U.S. allies committing torture—to WikiLeaks.

    1. She was not pardoned. Her sentence was reduced from 35 years to time served. Manning is still legally trying to get her conviction overturned.

      1. Jonathan Pollard spent 30 years in prison for passing information to a friendly country. Manning’s half-dozen years of imprisonment for a much grosser betrayal seems a trifle lax.

          1. …U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Pollard sold documents to “Pakistan, South Africa and two other countries they declined to identify,” Bowman said.

            http://www.newsweek.com/jonathan-pollard-israel-spy-one-million-dollars-357943

            From the linked article:

            “”No other spy in the history of the United States stole so many secrets, so highly classified, in such a short period of time,” he said in a 2010 interview. He and other U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Pollard sold documents to “Pakistan, South Africa and two other countries they declined to identify,” Bowman said.

            “Charles S. Leeper, the assistant United States attorney who prosecuted Pollard, said money was a big motivation for the spy, who claimed he was only trying to help Israel, a U.S. ally, not not to betray his country, according to a 1999 account by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. In his sentencing memorandum, Leeper pointed to Pollard’s annual cash contract with the Israelis, saying he “stood to receive an additional five hundred and forty thousand dollars ($540,000) over the expected life of the conspiracy,” Hersh reported.”

  13. I hear “Veritas” has been replaced with “Stultus” on the Harvard shield. That low boring sound you hear are the old Romans spinning in their graves knowing their language is being used by a university obsessed with honoring a traitor.

  14. Harvard should have fired whomever was responsible for Manning’s fellowship offer. He/She/Ze/They should still be in Ft. Leavenworth!

  15. One thing I have noticed, having spent a considerable part of my years in and around universities in several countries, that most highly accomplished scholastics in high places, are woefully lacking in many of the other facets that the average person gets to experience, common sense being one of them. Perhaps spending a hundred hours a week attaining all those degrees in their formative years does not allow for the development of other parts of the brain. The short comment is there are a lot of nerds in high places.

  16. Bradley Manning supposedly has some skills in IT. He can enroll at one of the state technical colleges in Oklahoma (where his father lives) and study while working. He’ll have to learn to deal properly with his employers and supervisors, something he has no history whatsoever of doing.

    Did Bradley Manning actually apply for this ‘fellowship’? Who in God’s name would have suggested he do that? Or did the Kennedy School recruit him?

    It’s all another piece of evidence, in case we needed one, that higher education sets aside patronage for privileged political interests. It’s also an indication that the academic nomenklatura have about the same disposition toward Manning that BO did. BO released Manning after an absurdly brief time in prison because he did not disapprove of what Manning did.

    All of this is a great argument for drone-striking much of higher ed.

  19. However, the decision to withdraw its invitation raises the countervailing concern that the school is allowing public pressure to dictate appointments.

    If the school invites it’s fellows based on pop culture, then it should be no surprise they would dis-invite for the same reason. Watch for the former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell to rescind his resignation from Harvard’s Kennedy School.. That resignation may have been all Harvard needed to kick Manning to the curb.

    Anyway, kind of ironic to invite this person to be a fellow. 🙂

      1. JT posted an story yesterday GW requiring Gender Diversity on panels. Perhaps Harvard was attempting to do just that and are now realizing this was not the type of diversity they were looking for.

  20. First of all she shouldn’t have been made a Fellow. However, having made that decision, they should have had the intestinal fortitude to stick up for her. Universities today have the backbone of a rubber chicken.

    1. She used to be a fellow. Now she’s just a she. She made the decision to no longer be a fellow. Apparently, Havard agrees with her.

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