Harvard's Latest Politically Correct Travesty

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Harvard-s-latest-PC-travesty-4278

We admit to experiencing a brief flash of empathy with Headmaster Tracy when a 1,095-page tome entitled A New Literary History of America plopped heavily on our desk. Edited by Greil Marcus (“notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary”) and Werner Sollors (a Professor of English and African American Studies at Harvard), this curious waste of wood pulp is published by Harvard University Press.

It is difficult to communicate the global awfulness of the book, the pretension mixed with smarmy demotic knowingness, the preposterous glorification of pop culture, the constant deflation of serious cultural achievement by means of sociological analysis. Perhaps the first thing that should be understood is that, despite its title, A New Literary History of America is only incidentally concerned with literature. A fair percentage of its approximately 200 chronologically arranged entries purports to deal with literary texts or figures. But the whole focus, the whole tone and gestalt, of the book is on extra-literary phenomena. An entry for 1982 is devoted to explaining how “Hip-hop travels the world”: “Perhaps hip-hop’s greatest contribution is the ease with which it inhabits contradiction.” It is hard to argue with that. The entry for “1956, April 16” dilates on the significance—Oh, what great significance it is said to possess!—of Chuck Berry’s pop song “Roll Over Beethoven.” An entry for 1970 is devoted to the porn star Linda Lovelace (she of Deep Throat). And so on. Nineteen-thirty-eight saw the introduction by Action Comics of Superman. In 1945, “Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie record together for the first time.” Another entry for 1945 is devoted to the atom bomb. The tagline: “Nobody apologized, nobody atoned.”

For the editors, the year 1969 was memorable partly because the Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop appeared, but mostly because “Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre.” (“American crimes” is the operative phrase in that essay.) The penultimate essay, by which time we’ve reached 2005, is devoted to—Can you guess?—Hurricane Katrina. “If, for that moment,” the editors ask, “New Orleans was the nation, did the nation still exist?” Care to answer that? But the real point of that portentous non-question comes in the next sentence: “If it did, did it deserve to?” The unexpressed answer to that question, of course, is “not really.”

Not then, anyway. Not when George W. Bush, the villain of the essay, was president. But when we come to 2008, the book’s last entry, the clouds part and redemption is at hand. “Barack Obama is elected 44th President of the United States” reads the ecstatic headline. This is the apogee, the denouement, the culmination of all that A New Literary History of America has been building toward. If a book could sing, it would now burst into song. Instead, the book’s final entry consists of that headline and a series of propaganda posters by Kara Walker, an “African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity.” And that’s what this bloated travesty is really about: the left-wing politically correct worldview in which literature, in which cultural endeavor generally, exists only as a prop in a “progressive” political agenda. Harvard University Press should be ashamed.

Out of the mouths of dickhead conservatives sometimes comes a kind of truth. And it still sounds like the truth as seen by a dickhead.

there is also an element there of being unwittingly, and more or less unintentionally, trolled

^^ I mean, I can't work out just quite how in-earnest it's being about somehow missing or being unfamiliar with the notion of reading lots of types of things as literary objects -- it's, uh, not uncommon and not exactly a super-pointed approach in this case -- but I think if one is fixing on that point it's probably better not to deploy sentences like this one:

For the editors, the year 1969 was memorable partly because the Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop appeared, but mostly because “Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre.”

... what with, I'm guessing, the relative importance of those two things running in that same direction for most Americans, even at the New Criterion

(I don't even know that I'd disagree with the review's criticisms but really, it so reads in that accidentally-trolled-by-life way)

I'm not offended by the leftiness of the book but some of those quotes are pretty damning.

Come on, I'm as much of a literary reactionary as anybody, but why is Greil Marcus famous? Because he writes about rock music in a traditional and unimpeachable and thorough and academic way, with footnotes and in context -- not in a "OMG I'm subverting the MAN by writing my dissertation on POP CULTURE" voice as the caricature of the cult-stud prof would have it. I mean, obviously there are dopey writers who do this but the Harvard English department and Harvard University Press does not consist of or contain such people, these institutions know what they're doing and have been doing it a long time, and would it be too much to give them the BENEFIT OF THE EMM - EFFING DOUBT?

It is difficult to communicate the global awfulness of the book, the pretension mixed with smarmy demotic knowingness.

Gutted that New Criterion writers are unfamiliar with Eliot's poetry.

I just really enjoy their unmitigated fury and incredulity at what is by now a decades old approach.

I've always found Greil Marcus's writing kind of empty tbh.

so this thing

http://gawker.com/5527355/meet-stephanie-grace-the-harvard-law-student-who-started-a-racist-email-war

in a nutshell:

harvard law student says at some kind of debate that black people might be genetically predisposed to be dumb. feeling like she might have pissed some people off, she sends a 'clarifying' email that basically just clarifies that she is a racist.

above the law publishes the email but censors her name and mostly just frets in a sort of limp way about the dangers of the internet, and how stuff you send in an email will get forwarded

gawker gets their hands on the name of the student, and boom

anyway i had an unfortunate "discussion" with someone about this yesterday and have been feeling bummed abt life ever since. there is this line of thought where if you call someone out for racism youre 'stifling debate' or 'trampling on their free speech' or what have you--and i think this is prevalent amng law students who fetishize this sophistic idea of debate where the only thing that matters is the strength of yr argument--but theres no recognition that the bargain you strike with free speech is that you get to have and say whatever ideas you want, but... people are allowed to criticize yr ideas. there are a lot of people out there who seem to want a society where you can say whatever racist shit you want with no consequence in the name of "open debate."

and then there are people worried she will lose her fancy fucking clerkship!!!

fuckin harvard

netime ppl get criticized 4 saying dumb shit like this and defenders are all FREE SPEECH, i imagine "can't touch this" comes on over a loudspeaker somewhere

haha, she is clerk for the cow porn judge Kozinski

lawyer's protectin their own :|

The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair.

.........................................................................................................

irish people are also naturally less intelligent than africans

so glad that harvard law allows in ppl who write bullshit that should get them laughed out of hs freshman comp--truly equal opportunity there guys

would this really get you laughed out of hs freshman comp, especially considering it's a private email?

… I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.
I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.
I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.
In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.

yeah, it would, less because of the opinions and more because its poorly argued and utterly unselfaware

she's so articulate, though!

and clean.

you guys had dicks for high school freshman comp teachers

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/7/2010/04/340x_custom_1272558512213_stephaniegrace.jpg

might be the terminator? maybe john connor is actually black.

i had hs freshman comp teachers who would prefer my racist arguments to be sound

I had hs freshman comp teachers who would argue with me and hold my opinions up to scrutiny but not laugh me out of the class

u win

Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.

really??? everyone wants this??

would prefer to take those babies to universal studios tbh

ehhh she seems p selfaware to me, and gawker's reporting is crude/vindictive/kinda misleading. yeah, quite true "people are allowed to criticize yr ideas" but gawker misses that stage out entirely. im not that sure why this woman's opinion is considered important and worth blogging/getting upset about in the grand scheme of things. think it's just about conceivable that people in more powerful positions in the world hold more unpalatable opinions.

im not that sure why this woman's opinion is considered important and worth blogging/getting upset about in the grand scheme of things.

^^ this. it's def more than fair for the ppl she was having that discussion with to call her out for making BS arguments and glossing over her own assumptions about race but kind of a dick move to turn it into a blog mob

playing devils advocate here but if you have opinions you should probably be prepared to defend them no matter how many people know about it

i mean if she actually believes what shes writing what does it matter if 100k people know vs. a few dozen?

What does it matter whether 1 person catches you dancing with a pretend light sabre vs. a few million?

i think her email was meant as the defence? i've not been following it too much, but gawker doesn't rebut it, just say "that's racist."

re "shutting down the debate": imo the whole concept of IQ/testing for IQ is tarded to begin with, and i don't mean "our [racially/sexually/whatevery skewed] conception thereof", just in general tarded. i don't think making an IQ test that didn't produce james watson-y results would be any more useful as a thing.

a lot of old-timey educators (not way-out lefties either) didn't like testing of *any kind* because it imposed standardization/devalued intellectual free play blah blah and i can see that too. hard not to have tests for specific knowledge areas/skills, practically, but of "IQ"? laugh me a laugh.

xpost

What does it matter whether 1 person catches you dancing with a pretend light sabre vs. a few million?

― Daily Sport Stunna Yasmin Alibhai Brown (Noodle Vague), Saturday, May 1, 2010 3:35 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha i think you can probably tell why these are not the same thing~~

i mean if she actually believes what shes writing what does it matter if 100k people know vs. a few dozen?

it'll turn into people saying this woman shd never hold down a job/harvard shd kick her out blah blah blah

because obviously everyone else who has a choice clerkship/place at harvard/whatever doesn't have a single opinion that couldn't be blown up and made a huge deal of

xpost

No I think it's obviously fine to question and challenge the opinions as expressed but that isn't the same as taking a private conversation and turning the woman into a Wicker Man sacrifice for the Blogosphere?

I think all racists should have their jobs forcibly removed

imo the whole concept of IQ/testing for IQ is tarded to begin with

yeah, there are plenty of examples of people with self-proclaimed high IQs who really don't seem very bright at all

I think all racists should have their jobs forcibly removed

What if they work for a racist organisation?

it'll turn into people saying this woman shd never hold down a job/harvard shd kick her out blah blah blah

because obviously everyone else who has a choice clerkship/place at harvard/whatever doesn't have a single opinion that couldn't be blown up and made a huge deal of

― the subject of many paedo's thoughts (history mayne), Saturday, May 1, 2010 3:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well i kind of would rather someone who espouses this view of race and intelligence NOT hold down a job where she could have major sway over other peoples lives!

and well, yeah, everyones got dumb, racist, controversial opinions. sorry this chick got singled out but she was so dumb that she actually put it in a mass email.

No I think it's obviously fine to question and challenge the opinions as expressed but that isn't the same as taking a private conversation and turning the woman into a Wicker Man sacrifice for the Blogosphere?

― Daily Sport Stunna Yasmin Alibhai Brown (Noodle Vague), Saturday, May 1, 2010 3:39 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh, im sympathetic to this, but im also sympathetic to the notion that opinions have consequences. as for 'private'--my understanding is that this is an opinion she expressed during a debate, and then further clarified in an email to all the debates participants. its not, like, her diary.

dear diary -- black ppl...

gawker: *ganks diary*

girl: noooo i was writing racist stuff in there!

a debate at a dinner party, which is what us normal yokels call "talking shit to your friends" xpost

she still sucks tho

I'm not sure that holding an opinion that tends to racism always makes a person a racist. As far as I can tell, this woman isn't a geneticist, evolutionary biologist or whatever. Isn't it possible somebody will be able to convince her that her argument is wrong and she'll grow out of it?

Yr average race thread on ILX throws up some pretty o_O turns of phrase, sometimes from people with good intent.

sure! i agree!

yeah, there are plenty of examples of people with self-proclaimed high IQs who really don't seem very bright at all

― Daily Sport Stunna Yasmin Alibhai Brown (Noodle Vague), Saturday, May 1, 2010 8:40 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

there was a super intelligent maths dude my parents knew when i was a kid, and i just remember him really forcibly saying it was all bollocks back then

and in the end idk the number of brain-functions you have to perform as a human, and the number that i, a super-intelligent phd-doing type, fuck up... it just seems kinda meaningless/reductive to the point of meaningless to me

xpost

idk max basically the way gawker is handling it is classless and unpersuasive.

well i kind of would rather someone who espouses this view of race and intelligence NOT hold down a job where she could have major sway over other peoples lives!

i don't think she expressed a very forceful view on race and intelligence, reading the email. maybe it's cover for deepset hatred of black people, but in itself, with all the provisos, etc, it's not that shocking on the racism-o-meter. i mean gawker (iirc) has flirted with vice-y shit and it's always using lame national stereotypes. i don't think of them as holier-than-thou.

again with the mass email: there must be thousands of multiple-recipient racist emails (a lot more nakedly and hatefully racist than this) sent and received every day in america. what is special about this one?

she's just doing some intellectual riffing on a topic but unfortunately she's not acknowledging or contextualizing her speech in the lengthy and sensitive history of that topic and instead just coming off as totally clueless imo

she was prob going to work for a judge who already holds pretty racist opinions, net harm done = 0

the number of brain-functions you have to perform as a human, and the number that i, a super-intelligent phd-doing type, fuck up

There's a kind of chestnut-y argument that points out that the skills that Robinson Crusoe uses to survive on his desert island wd be total foreign to the majority of urban Europeans today, but Crusoe is clearly not meant to be some ueber-intellectual.

k im not defending the gawker covg which is intentionally inflammatory (gotta get those pageviews!!!)

i agree 100% that the first thing they shouldve done is publish something actually refuting or engaging with her

but above the law, racialicious, even dumb ol jezebel have also been covering, mostly with a lot more subtlety. i dunno about gawkers vicey past--i think theyve actually been pretty good about avoiding that kind of stuff. but yeah im not here to defend them

as for why its special--because shes a harvard 3L with a big federal clerkship. i mean shes about as elite as you can get in this country.

the truth is im not really sure that i CARE so much--like i said the gawk covg isnt particularly subtle or kind, and yeah, she really ISNT that big a deal. really im more interested in the kind of response this story inevitably generates--the utter unwillingness to accept that opinions like this have consequences.

who doesn't accept that?

the guy i was talking with yesterday

a lot of ppl on the internet

im not rly sure if her much-proviso'd opinion will have big irl consequences... even if she is part of the elite, there are things that the business/political/military elite does every day that have much bigger and worse and more measurable consequences, and the focus on this incredibly minor incident -- a lawyer is open to the idea that there is some genetic element to intelligence -- is kind of o_O to me

i know that comes off as a lame bit of what-abouttery. the fact that the world of which harvard is a fairly important part is run to benefit a tiny elite of capitalists in the end doesn't make it ok to have an iffy, possibly racist view on race and intelligence. but i think the obsessive policing of this kind of thing, and the relative absence of focus on more consequential matters, over time, isn't very conducive to the general good

yeah to that i can only really say blame nick denton

There's clearly a good chance she is a racist, simply because treading on eggshells in the service of pseudoscientific* posturing is fairly unusual. Nonetheless on this evidence she has been scrupulous in allowing for the fact that she is only allowing for the fact that the things she describes might be true, so she likely cannot be proven a racist if employing her own recherche logico-ethical praxis (the common law).

*Are there any scientists here? The sense I'd get from fairly limited readng is that any biologized account of intelligence wrt any variable is highly speculative because 'intelligence' can't even be defined adequately wrt neurological traits, let alone understood in those terms. So it's all playing IQ score distributions.

glad we have blogs now to protect us from the stephanie graces of the world. keep smokin' 'em out!

"shes a harvard 3L with a big federal clerkship. i mean shes about as elite as you can get in this country."

Pardon me while I laugh myself to death.

rip three word username

is this a story beyond internet stuff (which is no less real), but i mean are cable news jockeys doing this on the hour every hour kinda deal?

srsly guys, I am not going to blow up my wife's job on the Internet but um let me just say Three Word Username OTM

that isn't the same as taking a private conversation and turning the woman into a Wicker Man sacrifice for the Blogosphere?

But -- but 90% of the news media serves no other other purpose these days but to dig for gaffes and engage in scandal-mongering!

It feels like that in the UK, yeah. Still, there's something itself unedifying about a pile-on, whatever the story.

But -- but 90% of the news media serves no other other purpose these days but to dig for gaffes and engage in scandal-mongering!

― Cunga, Saturday, May 1, 2010 11:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

sure: but among people of consequence, and even then they frequently go overboard/have a weird set of priorities

i mean, if this were, idk, david axelrod, it'd be a gaffe

wonder what the CEO of BP thinks about race and intelligence

(i know i've done mostly joeky posts, but i agree that making this a Story of the Week is petty even if she is the terminator)

i would probably trust the terminator's opinion on this particular subject

This is only of interest insofar as it suggests she is one among many. The hysterical personalization might be worthwhile if she does eventually become some doughy hierarch of the justice system. She might just as easily become an alcoholic or convert to Wahabbism or I dunno, become a housewife.

The terminator finds every race of humanity equally stupid and worthy of enslavement iirc. xposr

At least in the first movie. Second movie he understands why we humans cry.

would smash

this is a dumb story. people are allowed to be racists. she sucks and is dumb, but whatever

fuck of a day in boston. this, plus the fact i can't shower/shave/wash my stinky post-gym ass without boiling water has made for a hell of a night.

Proof that knowing how to write big words, lacking a logical discussion to back them up, only means you know how to write them down. I wanted to pick at her argument but there's no real argument here, it's just bigoted BS dressed up with generalized scientific jargon to make it sound legit.

She talks about some kind of genetic evidence that is stubbornly hard to disprove but fails to explain where this evidence is and how she can isolate it from other factors, both those she acknowledges and those she conveniently ignores.

her argument is basically "i'm not saying, i'm just saying"

looking forward to our new future justice of the supreme court, the terminator

just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria.

tbh this was the most abhorrent part of the e-mail to me. RUN AWAY

yeah run away, but smash first right

only if she's a viking in the sack

I'm looking into the possibility that viking women are, on average, genetically predisposed to be great in the sack. It's getting its own thread though. Stay tuned...

I know you guys really aren't defending her per se, but saying this isn't a big deal is on some o_O shit. Fuck this girl, for real.

Nordic women are fucking hot, man.

instead of raping and pillaging, i would have been at home shagging the missus

I know you guys really aren't defending her per se, but saying this isn't a big deal is on some o_O shit. Fuck this girl, for real.

― he's always been a bit of an anti-climb Max (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Sunday, May 2, 2010 6:41 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

srsly? someone somewhere thinks that there may be a genetic aspect to intelligence, less important than cultural factors, and that's a really big deal? there are probably public officials who believe that life begins at conception, but this girl deserves to be fucked for her heinous mind-crime? kind of easy to get you going.

you're understating the case - it's not that she thinks that there is a genetic aspect to intelligence, it's that she thinks this genetic aspect is linked to race, which is just fuck off already imo

I'm not defending her ideas, just laughing at the idea that a HLS student's opinion has any more cultural importance than that of an equally moronic gas station attendant.

so it appears that the pseudo-racist harvard law chick was outed by............... another pseudo-racist harvard law chick!! harvard, everybody!!

http://gawker.com/5529322/racist-harvard-law-email-the-cat-fight-that-turned-into-a-national-scandal

By "big deal" I don't mean that this should be on the front page of every newspaper and all over the 24 hour news cycle, but I don't think it should just be ignored either. She should rightfully be called out for her racist bullshit.

If "intelligence" had not been elevated to a matter of national security during the cold war, or if standardized testing had never become the preferred instrument for inventing a meritocracy, then maybe we would all be better off for seeing it as the relatively trivial circumstance it seems to be when all these contrived social benefits are removed.

Read "Harvard tipster" as "hipster."

"it's that she thinks this genetic aspect is linked to race, which is just fuck off already imo"

I would rather there be a climate where she and phil jackson etc... feel comfortable spouting off on whatever, then getting schooled and maybe learning something other than how to appear apologetic and not to speak their private theories in public.

For example, I think as a culture we lost a teachable moment re: magnets amidst all the ICP ridicule.

I'm not defending her ideas, just laughing at the idea that a HLS student's opinion has any more cultural importance than that of an equally moronic gas station attendant.

otm

If "intelligence" had not been elevated to a matter of national security during the cold war, or if standardized testing had never become the preferred instrument for inventing a meritocracy, then maybe we would all be better off for seeing it as the relatively trivial circumstance it seems to be when all these contrived social benefits are removed.

― Aimless, Monday, May 3, 2010 7:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

oh sure, intelligence only became "a thing" in the last 65 fuckin years

Yup. It is only in the past 65 years or so that intelligence has become a "thing" treated as separable from specific skills, accomplishments, experiences, or knowledge. Used to be that intelligence was demonstrated in fields of accomplishment. A child could be considered bright and promising, but most children seem rather bright and promising. If you wanted to measure them against their peers, you had to wait until there was something more to measure.

The "aptitude" test was developed to better identify which among the ruck of unformed and immature minds, that were still attached to youths who had no accomplishments, minimal knowledge or experience, and few if any skills, held the most promise, so the educational establishment could sort them into advanced programs and cram them with curriculum in the hopes they would blossom into geniuses and leaders.

Now it seems accepted that intelligence is largely a quality you are born with. I'm not sure this idea has much to recommend it in terms of insight into human nature or blessings for society.

:-/

i've already posted saying i thought IQ is a bullshit concept, and i don't think intelligence in the abstract is a helpful idea, but no, intelligence did not become a thing in the last 65 years; it was bound up in "specific skills, accomplishments, experiences, or knowledge."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/harvards-dishonorable-treatment-of-chelsea-manning-and-michelle-jones

i think most of us can agree that their handling of the chelsea manning situation was gutless and disgraceful

the case of michelle jones, a black woman who was convicted at age 18 for murdering her 4 year old son, is genuinely challenging for me. on the one hand, i feel very strongly that the american prison system is brutal and doesn't do enough to rehabilitate its criminals. i feel that the country mistreats ex-felons and people with criminal records by making it very difficult for people to lead productive lives and find meaningful work. obviously, this not only relates to, but is the desired result of, this country's longstanding institutional discrimination against people of color. this story of a convicted felon who has turned her life around should be what our country envisions its criminal justice system as being all about.

but...i really can't fault harvard for not accepting her into its program. they are a private institution and should be given considerable latitude to enroll students they feel are fit to bear their diploma. i agree with josh marshall (who doesn't seem to take a side on the question of whether she should be admitted at all, which is probably smart) who notes that the reasons given by the faculty who took issue with her admission were unacceptable. (although they also note that they were not sufficiently moved by her discussion of her son's death in her application, a reason that if true is very acceptable imo.)

i feel strongly that (public) society should go to great lengths to ensure that former prisoners are treated fairly and are afforded all the rights that any other citizen would expect. some sort of federal program that helps (or ensures that) convicted felons find jobs seems like it should exist, if it doesn't already (i'm not sure). the particulars of this case (she was impregnated when she was 14, possibly non-consensually, was abused by at least her mother) also offer plenty of grist for the mitigation mill. i'm glad she got out early, and i'm glad she's finding meaningful opportunities to further her scholarship at NYU. but i think schools should be able to decide which candidates are fit to be enrolled. and if you think this is unfair, talk to the countless people who are blackballed from medical school applications because they got written up a few times for drinking alcohol in their dorms

then again, harvard certainly has enrolled or hired people with pasts just as ghastly or worse. handling the rescinding of her admission in this way is ugly, not to mention -- if one assumes that the reasons given by professor stauffer were the primary driver of this decision -- cowardly and probably unjust. so idk

here is the NYT/marshall project story on jones: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/us/harvard-nyu-prison-michelle-jones.html