Excellent statement, and also your New York Sun column on "Harvard's Capitulation."
One thing I feel needs to be a focus for those who want to bring real change to Harvard is to take full advantage of the sudden, new-found touting by the administration of respect for free speech and open debate principles. A significant effort needs to be mounted and sustained to force Harvard to live up to this sudden embrace of the First Amendment -- in specific instances that are sure to arise over all sorts of other fashionable DEI-inspired concepts, and violations of those, by unsuspecting students and faculty. A relentless testing of these limits is needed. I hope this will happen.
Wear a MAGA hat to lunch in the Kennedy School cafeteria or while ordering a coffee in the Smith Center and see how it goes. Bring IDF veterans of recent Gaza operations to speak on campus, to well-publicized, open-access events, and see how smoothly it goes. Bring defense industry executives, again to well-publicized, open-access events on campus. See how that goes.
Yes! And do it with the openly avowed intention of taking the administration at its word regarding free expression.
Here's a thought - hope I am not wearing out my welcome. But how unrealistic is it to imagine a Yippie style squad in every university to do the sorts of things you list. Rather than waiting for the administrators to go after some poor pronoun-deficient student who then has to go to FIRE or lawyers for help, could the current generation mount an upbeat, irritating and disruptive bunch of fun-lovers to push the Puritanical enforcers by defying the mental straightjackets they justify as "harm" reduction. I know MIT has some sort of satire publication. Harvard has the Salient, and several alumni groups critical of what has happened to the place, but I mean something more proactive. Without taking over the Yard or any of the stupid and arrogant disruptions the pro-Hamas crowd loves, but something equivalent in the way of a direct challenge to the DEI system?
Excellent statement, and also your New York Sun column on "Harvard's Capitulation."
One thing I feel needs to be a focus for those who want to bring real change to Harvard is to take full advantage of the sudden, new-found touting by the administration of respect for free speech and open debate principles. A significant effort needs to be mounted and sustained to force Harvard to live up to this sudden embrace of the First Amendment -- in specific instances that are sure to arise over all sorts of other fashionable DEI-inspired concepts, and violations of those, by unsuspecting students and faculty. A relentless testing of these limits is needed. I hope this will happen.
Wear a MAGA hat to lunch in the Kennedy School cafeteria or while ordering a coffee in the Smith Center and see how it goes. Bring IDF veterans of recent Gaza operations to speak on campus, to well-publicized, open-access events, and see how smoothly it goes. Bring defense industry executives, again to well-publicized, open-access events on campus. See how that goes.
Yes! And do it with the openly avowed intention of taking the administration at its word regarding free expression.
Here's a thought - hope I am not wearing out my welcome. But how unrealistic is it to imagine a Yippie style squad in every university to do the sorts of things you list. Rather than waiting for the administrators to go after some poor pronoun-deficient student who then has to go to FIRE or lawyers for help, could the current generation mount an upbeat, irritating and disruptive bunch of fun-lovers to push the Puritanical enforcers by defying the mental straightjackets they justify as "harm" reduction. I know MIT has some sort of satire publication. Harvard has the Salient, and several alumni groups critical of what has happened to the place, but I mean something more proactive. Without taking over the Yard or any of the stupid and arrogant disruptions the pro-Hamas crowd loves, but something equivalent in the way of a direct challenge to the DEI system?