5 Comments
Sep 5·edited Sep 6

At the minimum, Harvard's definition of doxxing should change "individual’s personal information" to "individual’s non-public personal information". That would fix many of the problems. But Ira Stoll is correct that more fixing is needed.

As an example, an Israeli student posted video of a pro-Gaza demonstrators that resulted in the prosecution of Harvard graduate students Elom Tettey-Tamaklo and Ibrahim I. Bharmal for physically harassing the Israeli student, as recounted in today's Harvard Crimson article "Arraignment Delayed Again for Pro-Palestine Harvard Graduate Students".

Such postings of videos should be allowed. But some situations should be protected from such recording. Some meetings are held under the "Chatham House Rule": "When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed." In meetings held under the Chatham House Rule, videos would not be allowed.

One could argue that some classes should operate under the Chatham House Rule, but demonstrations should not have that protection from publicity.

It is unfortunate that the ~30 Harvard officials who signed off on this doxxing policy did not think this through as clearly as did Ira Stoll. Maybe someone such as Seth Klarman, who generous to Harvard but too busy to follow all of the details of what is going on, should tell Harvard that he's too busy to be on the Corporation, but someone who is paying attention as much as Ira Stoll should serve in Klarman's place.

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Yes to all of this. Also, yes to your statement referring to the Crimson's outrageous decision to shut down its comments section, which in my view was the most insightful part of the paper. I suppose chalking is the best substitute, but its a poor substitute nontheless.

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One of the best commenters on Crimson articles was Nancy Morris. I'd bet that Nancy Morris will not take up in-person chalking, but would be a great person to join the discussions here.

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Agree totally. Has anyone heard from Nancy Morris since our discussions there were terminated? She was the best (Ira Stoll as well) of the group. In my view it was a great shame (and Harvard's loss even) when that group of commentors was scattered to the winds.

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"...less “weird.” .."

Do you think Trump is weird? Real question.

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