Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
On the one hand, yeah, that shit is offensive and I'm not too keen on elevating a person who makes jokes about sexual assault or violence against minorities.
On the other hand I'm terrified at the creeping surveillance society that has institutions examining all of our utterances for "wrong speech", which is much too close for comfort to "wrong think", which is much too close for comfort to "wrong person".
Revoking one's admission to Harvard is a really rough way to teach the lesson of what you're supposed to and not supposed to say. College is the time to not only learn new ideas, but also to un-learn things that you may have learned in a toxic environment. I can say that I certainly did, and it's only fair that we allow others to fail in a similar way.
I believe that actions like this only further foster the alt-right and do a great disservice to our current political atmosphere. These kids have no positive way to understand their punishment - they have been reprimanded by a power that controls their fate, without warning. The odds that they'll "learn" from their "mistake" is highly unlikely.
Comparing this to fascism is a little heavy, but not out of line.
At the same time, I have a bit of a personal story. When I was in 8th grade, I made a Facebook account, and uploaded a random picture with a random caption involving rape - at the time my friends and I used the word like when you beat someone at a video game... Yeah it was pretty bad. My mom found the picture and responded by screaming at me and basically taking my computer away for a while, and my Facebook deactivated for much longer. I didn't understand at the time why it was such a big deal (maybe more explaining could have happened) but that interaction both makes me cringe every time I think about it and might have been the best thing to happen to me. Maybe getting the acceptences revoked is just the kick in the ass that they need.
Universities used to use the term "in loco parentis": I can see a deferral of admission being a suitable equivalent of screaming and taking the computer away.
You can't tell me this is at all equivalent to calling someone "gay"
Maybe getting the acceptances revoked is just the kick in the ass that they need.
1) Get yelled at by an authority figure, or
2) Have your acceptance rescinded
I guarantee all of them will choose option 1. By the way, you're very lucky to have a parent who cares enough to teach you valuable lesson.
If we set out to send mixed signals about maturation to college students we couldn't have done a better job
> College is the time to not only learn new ideas, but also to un-learn things that you may have learned in a toxic environment.
Despite my counterpoint above, you are of course right. I knew of one very aggressive student at Harvard who went around putting posters up of dead fetuses to protest abortion and was against gay marriage - his family was extremely right wing, and that's what he was brought up to believe. Now he's out of the closet, living in SF, and is one of the most liberal people I know. That story may sound clichéd, but I promise you it's true.
But at the same time, there must be a line drawn somewhere, surely? If I write an extremely offensive admissions essay claiming immigrants are sub-human I shouldn't expect to be admitted.
But at the same time, there must be a line drawn somewhere, surely?
But posting offensive memes on the internet isn't illegal. Saying racist/sexist things isn't illegal. It's certainly something to have a conversation about, but not to totally alter their future.
If I write an extremely offensive admissions essay claiming immigrants are sub-human I shouldn't expect to be admitted.
You imply that media condoning racism, and sexual violence can be justified.
Perhaps "redeem" is a better word choice there.
You imply that sharing memes in a private group is equivalent to a KKK meeting or actual sexual assault.
As a gay person who has suffered quite a bit of discrimination and bullying from other people and who hails from a different Latin American country I advise you to stop being offended on behalf of other people. Nobody needs this patronizing attitude. It literally helps nobody.
> Comparing this to fascism is a little heavy, but not out of line.
Are these students already not submitting themselves to be judged by Harvard's exceptionally high standards? This isn't some good state school and these aren't students who have earned their place by paying taxes and getting good grades. If Harvard sees this kind of behavior, decides that they made a mistake when choosing these students (they want students who will represent them well for the rest of their life, and character is very much in play during college admissions)... I think it's more than fair to say that these students should lose their place to someone who hasn't so easily proven themselves as a risk to Harvard's brand.
Learning that your actions have consequences and that no one is responsible for facing those consequences but you is more valuable than any other single lesson they'd have learned in college. And they didn't even have to pay tuition to find that one out.
In that light, why not consider the character of the people it decides to bring into its community? And once it has decided to consider character, what justification can their be for limiting themselves to only considering manicured (and sometimes manufactured) personal statements and letters of recommendation rather than available data that might have a chance of being actually revealing?
Would you object to the Catholic Church looking into the social media histories of candidates for the priesthood?
This is an aside, but I don't entirely agree. The tax exemption Harvard receives on its massive endowment is, per undergraduate, worth much more than the direct government subsidy public universities receive per student. UC Berkeley alone enrolls more low income students than the entire Ivy League combined (this is true of several UCs). Harvard also gets a monumental amount of funding directly from the federal government, and while much of this is in the form of research grants, it is allowed to redirect a substantial portion of this to operating costs.
Harvard gets this government favored status (in many ways, far more favored by the government than a "public" university, which has many more obligations) precisely because it is ostensibly acting in the public interest.
Some context for those interested: Berkeley enrolls approximately 30k undergraduates; the Ivy League combined enrolls approximately 60k. The most commonly cited cutoff for "low income students" is recipients of federal Pell grants, which are (roughly speaking) available to US citizen or permanent resident undergraduates with a family AGI of <$50k.
According to https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive... from US News, 34% of Berkeley undergraduates receive Pell Grants. (Berkeley's own website claims 32%.) This is the second-highest of the top 25 national universities, behind only UCLA at 38%. As a result, there are approximately 10k students receiving Pell grants at Berkeley.
According to the same source, the percent of recipients in the Ivy league ranges from 31% at Columbia to 13% at Yale. Overall across the eight schools, it appears to be approximately 18% and slightly shy of 11k students.
From a preliminary examination, it appears that the claim is indeed true for other UC campuses (of which only UCLA is a top 25 university) but not Berkeley as stated. The UC system makes the claim about five campuses other than Berkeley: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/half-new-uc-stud...
The claim may have been true five years ago, as reported here: http://news.berkeley.edu/2012/01/17/freshman-apps/
There are two ways to fix this problem--assuming one thinks it's a problem.
One would be to leverage the myriad benefits we provide to do more to ensure that these organizations are acting in the public interest. That's a pretty tall order though. We'd be looking at a ton of new laws/regulations/bureaucracies to make tens of thousands of determinations. In this particular case, it's not clear to me that Harvard isn't at least not acting against the public interest.
The other way would be to eliminate the tax advantages and let the chips fall where they may. Again, assuming one thinks there is a problem, that seems the preferable solution to me.
But that's a pretty huge penalty. High school kids do stupid shit. There are some people there who lost their admission who probably were very lucky to get into harvard, who don't have 10 other ivy league schools to go to.
And neither is schools denying access for those they deem undesirable. Fifty years ago, if information about a candidate participating in unsavory activities reached the admissions office in some manner and they were able to verify it (or not, it's really up to them whether the rumors themselves are bad enough), they could, and I'm sure did, use that to deny admission to candidates.
> But that's a pretty huge penalty.
That happens all the time. Life isn't fair, and Harvard admissions certainly aren't "fair", by whatever standard you can come up with. They specifically admit candidates on a very diverse set of criteria, which includes things such as the promotion of multiculturalism, because it's believed that exposure to different types of people provides an overall benefit to the student body. It should come as no surprise that if they are willing to admit otherwise lesser scholastically qualified candidates to promote this facet of the Harvard experience, they would be just as willing to reject people on the same grounds. Put simple, grades and SAT scores are not all that matters, and just as a college may reject you after admission has been granted if your last semester of High School has horrible grades, they may reject you if they discover evidence that they think you are not the type of student they want attending.
> There are some people there who lost their admission who probably were very lucky to get into Harvard, who don't have 10 other ivy league schools to go to.
Nobody has to go to an Ivy league school. In the same way you can screw up a big test and get a bad grade in High School, you can screw up your image and how you are perceived morally. They screwed up, and at least one avenue was closed to them. Their life may be different, but it's not like they are being jailed. They can go to some other school. I'm positive people have been rejected and even expelled for Harvard with less evidence. Their life will go on, and if they were able to get accepted to Harvard I'm sure they'll do okay going somewhere else, as long as they can curb whatever impulse caused this incident (whether it be ignorance of how it would be perceived, too much acceptance of peer pressure, or actual racism. I'm sure it was slightly different for each of them).
> "The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group."
They were being deliberate shit heads. This wasn't a private chat, this was intentionally sharing offensive content with the explicit purpose of ruffling feathers and pissing people off.
To call this a "private chat" is misleading - this was essentially a public forum for an incoming class to share content and these 10 students should have had zero expectation of privacy. If I were on the AdCom, I wouldn't have kicked them out for posting objectionable content, I would have kicked them out for being sheer, utter morons.
There are some ignorant thoughts that have almost entirely fallen out of the collective consciousness (in terms of serious belief, not abstract discussion of the past). (As a random example, there are vanishingly few ignorant people left who genuinely believe that disease is a punishment of the wicked that should not be interfered with, "ostracize the lepers", etc.) There are many more that need to.
If you think that some people are inherently "lesser" than others and can be treated as such, that's wrong. If you think that it's OK to assault people, that's wrong. Whether that turns into violent action or not, it still pervades other actions and societal structure, and it's the source of more subtle discrimination; that it has gone as far as being written and conveyed in ways that influence others makes it more than just thoughts. It's a good thing to influence society in ways that make people who think and write and talk and influence others in that way less successful, favoring people who don't, and over time find that fewer people think that way.
Because the same power that makes it possible for institutions to do that also gives us a check on those institutions. It seems entirely fine for an institution to look at the kind of person they're accepting and be selective in this way. If we start seeing institutions be selective for things we don't want to see selection on, we can push back on those institutions. There's no slippery slope here.
We're not talking about violent suppression of free speech. We're talking about non-violent exercise of the right to free association, to shun racists and sexists.
Authorities, especially institutions of higher learning, shouldn't be in the business of policing their student's speech. That's not "culture." That's oppression. Using bad actions in the service of good is still a bad idea.
If you think that some people are inherently "lesser" than others and can be treated as such, that's wrong.
I sure think it's wrong. But policing that thought by policing speech that results from it is also wrong.
If you think that it's OK to assault people, that's wrong.
Is Harvard going after the "punch a Nazi" memers and advocates with as much vigor? As a liberal, I find that much more distrubing because in that case people are dressing up bad actions and teaching young people to think of them as somehow good and socially redeeming. Is that what we want? Jingoistic ideologues who can commit guiltless violence, supposedly in the name of your values and love? (Ironically, the most used word to describe an emotion at the Nuremberg rally filmed by Leni Reifensthal: Love.)
that it has gone as far as being written and conveyed in ways that influence others makes it more than just thoughts.
Yup. That's called speech. So what you want is authoritarian control of speech. In institutions of higher learning. Like Berkeley, maybe?
Consider HN: we have down votes, comment flagging, and moderators. That is very much the policing of speech. Would you consider this oppression?
Absolutist argument? Where do you get that? Who's being absolutist? What evidence do you have that I don't have "a line?" Do you have any evidence that I support people yelling "fire" in a theater? Please provide your evidence, as I do take an absolute stand against people putting words and positions onto others on HN with no evidence.
It ignores any sort of context or nuance and generally shuts down discussion.
So are you basically saying it's okay to engage in partisan thought and speech policing of political viewpoints of graduating high school seniors by trolling through their social media?
Consider HN: we have down votes, comment flagging, and moderators. That is very much the policing of speech. Would you consider this oppression?
No. I don't get instantly excluded for voicing an opinion. Instead I get feedback. There's the difference. Is there a real flow of information? Is there a real marketplace of ideas? Or is it, "put up or shut up?" That's the difference.
I considered that to be an absolutist argument. I think there are contexts in which authorities (EDIT: non-governmental authorities) can police speech in a way that is not oppressive. And not just the usual "shouting fire in a crowded theater" sense. If you are using a public forum to be disruptive and is detrimental to the other students, it can be appropriate to levy some sort of disciplinary action. If you start shouting racial epithets in a crowded theater, for example, I think it is appropriate for you to be thrown out. So the line is not clear cut, there is a level of subjectivity at play.
> So are you basically saying it's okay to engage in partisan thought and speech policing of political viewpoints of graduating high school seniors by trolling through their social media?
In this case, the students posted the offensive material on a public forum moderated by Harvard staff. I wouldn't consider this "trawling through social media".
> I don't get instantly excluded for voicing an opinion. Instead I get feedback. There's the difference.
So if Harvard had put these students on academic probation or something instead, you wouldn't necessarily have a problem? That's something I can get behind. I thought you were opposed to any action being taken against these students of any kind.
Nope. Say anything you like. Learn to live with the consequences, which can and should include rejection by widespread parts of civilized society, and bask in the solitude. The crickets will surely enjoy your free speech.
You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it.
Those of us who have qualms around consequentialism find this efficacy not reason enough to regard such behavior as exemplary of virtue. Those who do not have such qualms might be well advised to consider, from a utilitarian perspective, the ultimate outcomes which recent history has shown profligate use of this tactic to produce. And those who try to disclaim the grasp their political and cultural tendency has on power would do well to remember that this is, always and only, a tactic of hegemony, without which it cannot work at all.
In any case, as I said before, I like the honesty.
Having found that much of the modern world has quite effective protections for free speech and free association, authoritarians have learned this "one weird trick" to hide their activities. Here's the dishonest trick: Just because it's not in the set of rules enforced by city, county, state, and federal officials, then it's not censorship. That's the same as saying that anything you do is OK, so long as it's not against the letter of the law somewhere.
The whole point of free speech is to prevent authority from chilling dissent and coercing fake-agreement through fear and power. How does it matter if that sort of thing is happening through non-government organizations? Our country and most of the western world has a long history of oppressing groups largely through such non-government oppression. The manner in which homosexuals were oppressed is almost the same manner in which you would like your political views enforced. Do you know what people used to say about this? "You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it."
You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it.
There were laws against homosexuality in the western world, but the societal enforcement mechanisms were operating with far more frequency in the 20th century. There were laws suppressing black people, but the instances of societal enforcement mechanisms were far more frequent than arrests. Far more people read the posted sign or subtly got the funny vibe than were arrested. In many places where there were no specific laws against being Jewish, there were many, many instances of people being excluded from the best connected clubs and social circles on this basis. What you want are these kinds of societal enforcements operating, but on the basis of your particular ideas of what's right and wrong. So long as no one is being injured or killed, and no state "monopolizers of violence" are at play, then it's okay.
It's not okay. If you are trying to force instead of convince then you are being a crappy, oppressive person. History is full of such people, most of whom thought they were doing right. In the same way, history is full of crappy violence, committed by people who thought they were fighting for justice. Thankfully, civilization has made progress, and we are now in the process of groups giving up violence as a means of enforcing their will. Similarly, we as a civilization are better understanding that groups of people using other forms of societal pressure to enforce their will short of violence are also oppressive. What you are advocating is that same kind of crappy non-consensual illusion of agreement, and justifying it because governments aren't doing it, and because in your mind, it's "might for right."
Convince, not force. Consensuality should be at the core of any 21st century intellectual's morality, and true consensuality is never begrudging.
> people read the posted sign or subtly got the funny vibe
Or the bigoted meme? It's a great argument; you might consider exactly which point it's a great argument in favor of.
I am amazingly uninterested in arguments for why it's important to support racism and sexism, or in attempts to paint racists and sexists as an oppressed group that needs protection, or in attempts to equate freedom of association as equivalent to violence, or in attempts to call it "your particular ideas of what's right and wrong". Enjoy beating up that strawman as long as you like, but it has little to do with any actual position I'm advocating.
I am amazingly uninterested in "aguments" where you put words in other people's mouths. Where do I support racism and sexism? Please provide a quote. (Big fail for you here!) As it so happens, I'm a liberal non-heterosexual brown person. Violence is wrong, no less so if it's done against vile, violent people. Coercion is wrong, even if it's done against people I dislike. The suppression of free speech is wrong, no matter who is talking.
in attempts to equate freedom of association as equivalent to violence
It's certainly not equivalent to violence. However, it's still fake and crappy if you're just interested in getting your way, and have reduced certain other human beings in your mind to some status where their consensuality doesn't matter. That's the whole reason why democracy is the best form of government we have so far: it respects consensuality the best out of every other system we've tried.
"your particular ideas of what's right and wrong". Enjoy beating up that strawman as long as you like, but it has little to do with any actual position I'm advocating.
So your ideas of "social justice" are better than everyone else's? You claim to have some sort of line to "the truth?" A close friend of mine received some sort of award and several hundred dollars for her work in social justice, and she agrees with much of what I have said.
You said yourself in this very discussion that you want "your side" to infiltrate all of the organizations and force the certain people you think are "bad" because they disagree with you. You want society to run in this way, and even if it just succeeds in creating pockets of people who think like you, that's great. Well, that's exactly what you said, and my position is precisely this: Thinking this way is crappy and it's emotionally dishonest. It creates an oppressive fake "consensus," and it convinces absolutely no one. The kind of society it would create would be just as truly about "justice" as the Christian religion dominated society of the 19th century was truly about "Christian values" -- only on the surface! This is my position, and exactly this. The only "straw-manning" that's been done has been yours. You are the one philosophically advocating coercion. Honestly, does the thought of coercing all of those horrible people to leave groups not strike you as righteous vengeance? Are you honestly free of hate of people in your heart?
I agree with many of your political aims, but be honest with yourself: Your position is weak someplace, and thus you have turned away from convincing and towards coercion.
In the era where they saw disease as a divine punishment, most people no doubt held this belief as well.
In reality, moral standards will shift around as they always do, some parts will lose their luster and others will be strengthened. New standards will emerge and make our current progressive ideals seem distant and alien, the same way we look at medieval ostracism.
After decades of denazification and tabooisation of national socialism and anything related, we still have a shocking proportion of Nazis in Germany. Openly self-identified Nazis, only a fraction of a percent, but people who agree with statements like "A strong leader (Führer) would be better than democracy" or "Jews are foreign bodies in the German people" - 15-20% according to some studies. And it's not talked about much, but in my opinion we have a bigger problem with right wing terrorism than with islamic terrorism here.
In the US, it is similar. Decades after the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, rampant racism again, people flying the confederate flag, white people killing black people.
What do I want to say with that? People often wish back the past few decades, before social media, which seemed more "civilized". I honestly think now, no, people were not more civilized, we just kept a tighter lid on what people thought.
I don't want to hear the racists, bigots, sexists either... but just silencing them does not seem to actually change peoples minds.
And also (I say this as a left-wing/liberal), I myself want to have a space where I can just say what the fuck I want, without consequences. "It is not my revolution" if I can't say idiotic things in private.
(Edit: And of course, you are right, and I agree with your comment. Please don't view this as a refutation, but as a second-order correction :-))
This wasn't particularly private. There had to be some sort of invitation, but it wasn't like the participants all knew each other. The offline analogy isn't a few friends over your house for dinner, it's speaking at a birds of a feather session at a conference.
Do you think Harvard would have rescinded the acceptance of an admitted student, if one of his high school friends forwarded a one-to-one email the admitted student had sent him which contained one of these memes? I tend to think not.
I didn't read past this. Were you under the impression that thought policing is only a matter of fiction? You don't read world news, do you? I wouldn't be surprised since only an echo chamber would spouse this kind of view but you should read a little more about places like North Korea.
Thought policing is not a good thing, it will never be a good thing.
I found your argument unconvincing and your conclusion not adequately supported. I have read history and I do not believe your interpretation is correct.
In general, it's important to note that the separate between speech and action isn't as clear cut as you assert, especially speech made in a public forum. Speech affects others, and words can be used to cause others pain or discomfort. Speech has direct consequences on others just like any action, and this must be considered. Which isn't to say that speech doesn't deserve broad protections, of course.
This was a university-moderated and maintained facebook group. There was absolutely no expectation on the part of the posters that Harvard could not read their words. You can get expelled for public speech on campus too.
Again, Harvard did no "surveillance" here. They found these kids because they were posting garbage on Harvard's own forum.
> "The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group."
Probably depends how offensive you were. But yeah, sure you could. I am absolutely positive there are some prospective freshmen at Harvard who have had their admission rescinded based on their behavior during the pre-frosh weekend. Such incidents tend to be less publicized because they involve a single student, and there's normally an embarrassment factor involved.
Once you are on campus and admitted it would be more difficult...it would depend on the context. Certainly people have been kicked out (or rather, "asked to leave") based on sharing offensive material and memes, but in the cases I know of it was because that material was targeting specific individuals / people.
Not to mention that filth like this serves as a kind of canary in the coalmine - if one can make jokes about violence against minorities without fear of repercussions, then that bodes well for ideas actually intended to be taken seriously.
Racist shit is "wrong speech". If I have friends who start uttering racist shit, and I can't talk them out of it, they are no longer my friends. (This has happened precisely once, no regrets. Thanks, Fox News, for poisoning an old man's mind.)
Posting racist memes is wrong, saying racist things is wrong, thinking racist thoughts is wrong. How did we get here, that racism falls under the scare-quotes version of "wrong speech" and not actually wrong speech??
Or have absolute free speech. You can't be cherry picking stuffs.
Also, "Free speech" refers to the fact that the government cannot bust in to your house with a SWAT team and arrest you for speaking something that they don't like. Private companies can enforce whatever speech rules they like, and that doesn't interfere with the free speech of the individual. They can walk outside and state those things. There are already numerous hate speech laws covering the fact that the first amendment does not mean that you have a right to say whatever you want in a private space.
I don't disagree with Harvard's decision, or any decision made by a private institution or person.
I disagree with the notion that certain types of speech or thought are universally wrong. Personally - I believe racism is wrong - but I disagree with the notion that it's "wrong think". It's simply a different world view.
To re-iterate: I don't agree with what the students said or did. I agree with Harvard's decision. I don't agree that protecting someone's right to speak freely and openly supports their agenda.
One that states that people with more melatonin are fundamentally inferior and should be subservient to people with less melatonin. It is a point of view that is objectively and morally wrong.
I wonder whether you would support the right of people to state that PoC should be sterilized, or the rights of people to call people to attack PoCs. Because that is what more and more people have been calling for in America. That is what Richard Spencer, one of the leaders of the alt-right, advocates.
The problem with these 'different world views' is that even without directly stating that people should attack minorities, these statements lead to people beating up black people on the streets. The more these ideas and 'world views' are accepted, the more acceptable it will become to think and state such things, leading to a resurgence of people who think that PoCs should be murdered. That will then directly impact the probability of someone acting upon those beliefs.
The reason why the rest of the world does have as bad a racism problem as America, is because they took steps to alienate people who had such views.
To answer you question - Yes, I would support the rights of people to state whatever they wish. I also support the rights of individuals such as you or myself to call those people morons, and to not associate with them.
Suppressing speech, and demonizing people for their views (no matter how "objectively wrong") does not solve any problem. It only breeds hate and contempt and radicalizes people more.
Everyone knows that. Nobody (except the most ill-informed) dispute it. But the First Amendment is not and was never intended to be the end-all and be-all of free speech. Freedom of speech is a value held by society. The First Amendment is a legal protection afforded that value in law.
When people and organizations start clamping down on speech, yes, that is a violation of the principle of freedom of speech, even if it has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Yes, there has to be a reasonable balance between your freedom to associate with people who say obnoxious things and their freedom to say obnoxious things. Nobody disputes that either.
But there's been an increasingly clear trend of people being banished from workplaces, universities, and other spaces because of their speech, people who would not have been so punished in the past. Part of it is the Internet puts our words in a public space, accessible to everyone. Part of it is the Internet foments mobs of offended people who come after you. Part of it is that people seem to be becoming more and more intolerant of dissenting views.
This is an extremely dangerous long-term trend. It points to a more factious, divided populace. It points to eventual government restrictions on speech. Authoritarian governments rarely start out by banning speech everyone supports. They start banning speech everyone finds dangerous and offensive. Having Brownshirts beating up Communists for their speech ends with Nazis rounding up Communists.
> There are already numerous hate speech laws covering the fact that the first amendment does not mean that you have a right to say whatever you want in a private space.
Care to point these laws out?
Also worth pointing out that Harvard receives a lot of public dollars, so it's not the canonical private institution. Remember when everyone freaked out that the salvation army wouldn't employ openly gay preachers (but would employ homosexually in any other role) because though they were a private entity, they received NYC tax dollars, and then everyone freaked out when the SA announced that they would decline those tax dollars and reduce the scope of their work in the city accordingly?
Such as?
The government can't arrest you but people can shun you.
Relevant xkcd, as always!
This is no different than students posting offensive material on a physical message board on some main through fare on campus.
Edit: Actually, it's somewhat unclear to what degree and what material was required to be posted on the main chat, and what portion was in a separate private chat (still likely associated with Harvard in some way?). The article is unclear on these points. Harvard still has the right to gate admissions how they like (and they state that includes "moral character"), so if they are able to determine you are participating in actions they don't approve of, then they have grounds to reject you or revoke your prior acceptance. Just as if they Google'd you on your initial application and found verifiable and unsettling information.
There has never been, there never should be, and most likely there never will be (no matter how your crowd fights for it) such a thing as wrong speech. At least not outside of totalitarian states.
As long as anyone accepts the concept of wrong speech, anything can be labelled that, and wars can explode over the littlest thing.
At the same time it's somewhat hypocritical of the school to do this as their attitude towards sexual assault on campus is pretty lenient.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/6/9/harvard-clery-sta...
If I held a party at my house and didn't want to invite you because you called my dog a 'mutt', you'd get laughed out of court if you tried to sue me over it.
People should be allowed to organize under whatever principles they want to organize under. Disallowing Harvard to use whatever criteria they want to use to admit students, unless of course they breach civil rights laws, is ultimately decreasing the amount of intellectual diversity in the world.
People that don't like Harvard can apply to any other college. There's no shortage of them to choose from. But if you tell Harvard what they can and can't do, you run the risk of destroying the individuality of Harvard.
Also, there's some mumbling about the fact that it was private speech that was supposedly surveilled on. Obviously it wasn't that private if school administrators caught wind of it. If you really want a private group, keep it truly private and don't tell anyone about it.
The lesson kids should be taking away from this is, don't let your friends drag you into dangerous situations. Harvard is a nationally recognized school, any screw-ups earn national attention. It's very much a "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" sort of situation.
"People worried about reproductive rights should realize that Hobby Lobby is a private corporation."
"People worried about gay rights should realize that Chick-fil-A is a private corporation."
The choices of private organizations and individuals have huge effects, and it's reasonable to criticize them if we disagree with their actions. But on the other hand, I agree that it's important to give private organizations freedom. This is a difficult trade-off; we need to consider both sides of it, and whatever principle we decide on, we should apply consistently. So unless you'd also defend historical gender segregation at private universities, or defend Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, you should find a different defense of Harvard's actions.
Free speech has historically been considered an extremely important right. In fact, free speech is a civil right--one of the originals. Why shouldn't it be included under your civil rights exception?
It's a false analogy. A restaurant turning away a would be customer because he's black isn't the same thing as a restaurant turning someone away because he's wearing KKK regalia.
The words 'free speech' aren't a magical talisman. You have to explain how they actually apply, and in this case they don't.
(Or did I misunderstand what you were saying?)
What happens when you don't restrict along protected grounds is that entire industries collude to exclude those classes of people. Mass hatred drowns out the whole marketplace.
Silencing those you disagree with will only enrage and mobilize those people, and those people vote. Hence, Trump.
What kind of absurd, nihilist nonsense is this? Sounds like yet another example of Trump's opponents being unable to think critically and assuming their attempt at forcing terrible policy down the throats of common people is a "good argument" against the threat of facism.
Trump is winning precisely because there's no "good alternative", 99% of all "alternatives" are just less shitty, and even then only less shitty for certain segments of the population. People never resort to facism with good alternatives, yet strangely it's the default whenever they're stuck with a shit sandwich.
But I mean only all of history repeats this lesson, not like we'd expect anyone to understand that or anything.
I'd argue that Trump is what happens when the media and major parties stop making good arguments.
Unfortunately, We don't live in an ideal world where everyone is rational and can't be easily manipulated.For example, in my country Myanmar,we just got free speech. But now we are dealing with hate speech which actually lead to hate crimes. The spread of religious hate speech causes one community of people to set fire/ kill another community of people. Hate speech and false facts travels fast and they come back again and again. Sometimes , well , most of the times, the only way you can win is to have zero tolerance for it.Harvard is pretty far from a purely private organization. I understand we live in a complicated world, and almost nothing is "purely" private, but there are still degrees of public and private, it exists on a continuum. Harvard, as far as "private" institutions go, is heavily supported by government money and favored status. It's nothing close to your analogy of a privately owned house.
Yes, they get research grants. So do a lot of institutions. Who else is going to do research? Maybe Harvard gets more than most. So what?
Receiving government money doesn't transform an entity into a state actor for the purposes of the First Amendment.
While it may be something that many people make a lot of noise about 'respecting', freedom of speech, tolerance of discourse, and a willingness to listen to others are not deeply held social or cultural norms I have witnessed in the US.
The fact that you're saying "if someone found out about the private contents of the private group means it wasn't private enough" is kind of disturbing tbh.
The owners of the private group encouraged people to post offensive jokes to the main group to gain access to the private group.
> The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.
It's this that is, I think, the problem.
1) using the non-private group
2) Encouraging people to break the rules of the public group
3) Being so fucking easily led that you do so.
Now this is quite the 180° turn from how things really work. Setting in place "rules" because they might or might not "offend" someone isn't putting principles before reality how, exactly? It is, of course that's exactly what it is, but I'm curious to how you'd rationalize the opposite.
You use the term "hate speech" as if it is a definite thing, but the phrase is nebulous and can very easily be used to target expressions of an undesired ideology in the case that the authorities have an agenda to push (e.g. certain religious authorities may target another religion's evangelization efforts as hate speech; communists might target people trying to spread Western values of free enterprise; etc.).
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
And the consequence for not supporting freedom of thought should be that the government takes away its billions of dollars from you.
If the government wants to run Harvard, then it can tell Harvard who it can and can't admit.
Yes, it does actually.
For example: http://www.bairdholm.com/publications-feed/entry/president-o...
Doesn't it? "Who pays the piper..."
Ok, now I can see why we disagree.
Private/public is, to me, not binary. There are degrees. A homeowner, for instance, does get a favored tax status where it comes to income taxes (though the home owner also pays heavy property taxes that largely offset this). Yet we wouldn't regulate what people are allowed to talk about in their own home.
But on this continuum, Harvard is pretty far toward the "public" side of private. Massive amounts of government funding and tax exemptions.
And anyway, the government wouldn't need to get in the business of running Harvard, it could just say "here are the criteria for receiving federal grants and the tax exemptions". Harvard would be free to choose.
The thing is, is that these memes are supposed to be self-aware of how offensive they are. That's the joke. They're meant to be so offensive and ridiculous that reactions can be drawn from outside spectators so they can get offended and you can laugh at them for being a "normie".
I have no issue with these jokes unless they've been made in a sincere attempt at racism or sexism, and knowing my experience with the internet, I don't believe this is the case.
I used to really like black humor. I frequently told dead baby jokes and similar stuff. Thank god that wasn't recorded.
I'm alarmed to see many of the comments here outraged over the stuff the students said. I guarantee most of them have probably told a similarly offensive joke at some point in time, or at the very least have friends who have. Especially when they were younger.
Except that the premise of Cards Against Humanity is that you are all opting in to the situation where you expect that, and usually an a somewhat private setting.
The equivalent to the CAH suggestion would be where some private group of people indicated that to become members, you had to go to a public cafe and play CAH loudly in public. Were that Cafe to get mad at you and ban you from their premises, getting upset at that outcome is rather silly. You either knew that was a possibly outcome, or you should have known. In any case, that Cafe is well within their rights to decide they want nothing to do with you anymore.
Some of the group’s members decided to form an offshoot group in which students could share obscene, “R-rated” memes, a student told the Crimson. The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.
But from wording later, the examples given seem to be from the private group? I'm also unclear if the private group some some offshoot of the main group within Facebook (that is, whether it's some Facebook sub-group feature, obviously they are members of the main group).
In any case, Harvard says they reserve the right to reject admission based on "honesty, maturity, or moral character" so if this information is brought to their attention, then it falls under what they consider valid acceptance criteria. It's no different than if they Google searched the applicant initially and found verifiable information that put the student in the same light.
For one thing, cultures like this do provide safe havens to people who actually hold bigoted views 'sincerely'. I've been in IRL conversations that ran along these norms, and it was a really uncomfortable experience, especially as a member of a favorite 4Chan target group. It became fairly obvious over the course of the evening that one of the guys there really had drunk a fair bit of the 4Chan kool-aid, but how can you call him out when everyone is cracking the same jokes? Few things shut down open exchange of ideas faster than than the thought that the person you're talking to fundamentally doesn't respect you, because of who you are.
But that's not even the real problem I have with this kind of in-group offense culture - the real problem is that no one is ever as self-aware as they think they are. What you say shapes how you think, and then how you act, in ways we may never be consciously aware of. The students Harvard produces are going to end up in board rooms, courtrooms, and halls of power of all kinds all over the country; I expect them to be disciplined thinkers both academically and socially, who take these kinds of issues with the seriousness they deserve, not trollface memesters hiding their intellectual laziness behind image macros.
As to your second point, I don't know why you think people who enjoy memes are somehow intellectually lazy. I don't really see how your logic works here as memes are simply jokes transmitted via the internet. Are you implying that anyone who makes jokes or enjoys dark comedy has to be intellectually lazy?
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good meme as much as the next millenial. But there are memes and there are memes. You seem to be implying that "beep beep lettuce" and Pepe wearing a Nazi uniform are equivalent to one another. And yes, by the definition of "dark comedy" we're using here, it is lazy. Everyone knows where the boundaries of generally accepted good taste are. There's no skill or wit involved in breaching them. You mention Dave Chappelle elsewhere in this thread; if you look at him, or Mel Brooks, or other 'great' dark comedians, all of the shock there is in the service of making some larger point about society. And sure it doesn't always work, but by your own argument there's not even a semblance of that kind of intent in 'dark meme comedy'. If all a joke is trying to do is give its audience a fleeting thrill of transgression, that's a pretty low form of humor.
However, where we disagree is how to do it. I see the current climate of "preventing the spread of bigoted ideas" as creating what we know as the alt-right. If you check 4chan's /pol/, you will see an incredible amount of people admit to becoming alt-right because "so many snowflakes are always so offended and call me names". If, however, we as a society can more tolerate dark humor and bigoted comments, the bigots either stop talking or evolve to accept more tolerant views. This article as whole is perfect fuel for the alt-right to say "liberals are trying to control everything, even jokes".
To your second point: Pepe wearing a Nazi uniform is not dark comedy. It's racism. They're using memes to further their own ideology, as opposed to the Harvard students who were simply making fun of the offensive nature of the jokes.
Thirdly, I truly don't care for whether or not it's high or low humor. All I'm looking at is intent and whether or not an individual is actively desiring to inflict damage on another group of people. Alt-right memes do this, while the Harvard kids would be the first to admit they were simply making jokes who were not hurting anyone other than the people who decided to be offended by them.
No, the bigots then just push the line further, and further, and further, to normalize their bigotry because "yeah they're jokes but they make a good point, you know?"--and if you say "no, that's wrong," you get "it's just a joke, brah, why are you so offended?"
That's what /pol/ is. That's what it's been since its inception. It has been a bunch of useful idiots with a hard core of literal fascists being edged further and further right by pushing that line through rhetoric and through those "harmless" memes.
I used to be there. I spent a lot of time watching this. They turned people to actual hard-core bad shit through that "humor".
Personally, I couldn't care less what people believe, I care what people do. And in this case what they did was clearly racist.
Racism is defined as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
What these kids did was not racist.
Second, this was clearly antagonism directed against someone of a different race, and is therefore racist.
a satirist is emphatically NOT in concordance or agreement with that which they are satirizing. I find it unreasonable that you are arguing against this basic premise. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. I hope I am because If I am really understanding you correctly it seems to me like you are making something far worse than a fallacious argument, but really something that rises to the level of destructive of the meaning of words.
I, and I expect the person to whom you reply, don't adhere to that assumption. I think that "just a joke", in this context, is the exhibition of profound naivete. And even if the speaker realizes it's a joke--the listeners often don't. See the /pol/ commentary elsewhere in this thread; /pol/ was "just joking" until those jokes were taken as articles of faith and became the core of a literally fascist movement.
So no, if you define a joke as 'black humor', the taboo IS the joke. If the intent of the joke is sincere racism, it's not black humor.
Long story short, these young people are getting their first dose of 'what happens in Vegas, is likely to cause long-term relationship issues'
As a private institution, Harvard can choose to deny acceptance to anyone for any reason. I don't agree with their reasoning, but I agree with their right to decide.
Next time don't use Facebook. This is what 4chan is for.
only the part that is messed up with this is after you get enrolled you usually send out a letter to other colleges/university to decline their offers... in my past experience after a decline their isn't a second chance. this puts all of them on a 1 year stand by. Really this is fair? - and they still have another 4 years to grow up and grow before joining a professional 'salary' job 18-23 year old? generally they would be between 17-18 years old and for such an petty issue will now have a hell of a time rebounding.
And it's not a year, it's half a year; spring admissions are commonplace. That still super sucks for the people who got caught being racist turds; hopefully they learn from the seriousness of what they did (and they did it, and it was serious) and choose not to be racist turds going forward.
Facebook is a public forum that happens to be visible to harvard staff. Students should know this.
But the article says it was a private group chat, not public.
I mean, c'mon. Just because something says "private" doesn't mean it is.
That there is none?
Society is more open than it probably was ever before but at the same time, if close minded leaders of fascist political or religious color came into power they'd have their tools handed to them to create an oppressive apparatus never seen before.
You know, if that's your personality, I'm OK with you feeling ashamed enough that you feel the need to keep it private.
If you don't like that, then you have options. One, don't be cretinous. Two, hide it better. Three, accept that being cretinous will cost you opportunities and own it.
Actions have consequences. You don't get to hide behind "my free speech". Own what you do.
* What these students did or didn't do does not matter in this case.
* Harvard can withdraw the acceptance for anyone at any time for any reason.
We don't need to argue about privacy or free speech here. All we can argue about as a first point is if Harvard should have the ability to withdraw their acceptance or not.
It is unfortunate that they chose to share those memes on a Facebook group chat though, I think the debate is about how not "private" a lot of our "private" chats have become and how sometimes people are just not thinking about where there communications are stored enough. If they had printed pamphlets with the material and shared them with classmates I think the same consequences would have happened, but they would have had more time to stop themselves and think about what could go wrong. Now sending offensive jokes is easy and "private" channels are deceptively public.
Maybe you spit out chewing gum somewhere one night and violated the rule of not spitting for one example.
I'm not saying that these students are good people or that I endorse anything they said. I'm defending the right of privacy and free speech for anyone at any time.
Almost like it isn't about "free speech" at all.
Likewise, privacy isn't really a concern here, since it isn't like the organization broke into their accounts to check up on their privately held conversations or beliefs. It was posted into a group with many other loosely associated members, and was brought to the organization's attention.
In your gum spitting example, it's like spitting out gum in your back yard behind a privacy fence versus spitting out gum in your employer's parking lot and having your boss step in it moments later. It's not private, and it may have consequences.
There you go-- freedom of speech.
I thought this was always the case.
> “As a reminder, Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character,” the group description states.
Whether you think that this was ok for Harvard to do or not, doing this kind of stuff in the official Harvard student Facebook group (managed by Harvard employees) given that description is just downright stupid.
Not to mention bad taste, it seems.
Political correctness really has gotten out of hand, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner they'll begin to understand how we ended up with Trump as president.
The pendulum swings both ways. Be careful how hard you push it.
Don't be fooled into thinking Trump is not a politician.
Ideas like "let's get Donald Trump elected for the lulz" have real-world effects. "It was just for laughs, mate" isn't really a good excuse. At a certain point, it approaches "watching the world burn" territory.
Do you have statistics to back that claim?
Maybe "repeat it often enough and it will be true" applies to you, but you don't get to project your thought processes onto others.
But, that aside, your claim of "normalization" remains baseless.
This kind of filtering probably goes on all the time, but it's hard to connect the admission decision to particular conduct by the student. Here, it's not difficult, because Harvard isn't bound by the First Amendment like a state school.
ed: Here's a case that seems wrongly decided, but shows that the case is merely decent, not a slam dunk: How much free-speech protection does a college applicant have? This federal court says: Zero.[1]
[0](http://www.splc.org/blog/splc/2015/03/maryland-court-removes...)
I think that people are mistaken when they believe that they can have private electronic conversations. Even in-person conversations are mildly suspect. If you're a part of a social media group where you don't know every single person in the group, or you are not certain whether newly invited members of the group can see old messages, you should assume this content will get published by a news agency. "How would it look to my boss, my parents and all my friends and family if they were to read what I'm about to write?"
We can mull about technical solutions to this problem and social solutions too. But as frustrating as it is, I believe that this is a net benefit to society. We've rooted out a lot of corrupt individuals with this same sea of audio/video sensors. We must now adjust to the reality that our electronic conversations have a very high likelihood of being leaked.
Both the main and offshoot were technically private chats, but the people in the main chat didn't sign up for that kind of behavior.
It's the difference between playing Cards Against Humanity with a few people and walking around school telling other students your most obscene card combos as jokes.
FB issue aside, I think people should be allowed to joke about whatever they want in private. However some people bring jokes from 4chan and b/ into the workplace. High school and college students probably have a harder time drawing the line between facebook and the classroom.
They were allowed to post it, nothing stopped them. Its just that after they did Harvard made the (IMO reasonable) decision to revoke their acceptance.
> The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.
Putting hate speech in the internet doesn't make it magically more private.
In this case I think it might very well be a case of "The Aristocrats" humor like they mentioned in the article (CAH). I disagree with withdrawing the invitation based upon private communication here, but if it was publically visible and said "hey we're Harvard Students" I can understand Harvard's position and cautiously agree with them.
> The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.
1. Were the students given a warning before having their admissions withdrawn?
2. I'm curious why Harvard chose the nuclear option, rather than to use this as an opportunity to teach why the memes were considered offensive, and more appropriate ways to express themselves.
Presumably they don't want nasty, highly offensive people in their institution. Which is perfectly reasonable. I wouldn't want anything to do with people like that either.
[1] See also Poe’s Law.
There's just /b/ or whatever, there is no /Harvard/ board to insult the image of a multibillion dollar organization.
Regardless what the kids were posting, I'm not sure what they were thinking, using a name like that can't possibly end well.