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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

They were allowed to speak. They did speak. "Freedom of speech" applies only and strictly to governments, not to a private institution. And that's because the only way "freedom of speech" matters is if others are free to react to you as they please; Harvard might not like you and might tell you to get the hell out of their (and my, as it happens) neighborhood.

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.

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Cutting down to the point.

* 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.

And of course they should, because free association exists (pursuant to the bounds of contracts, which don't appear to be violated here--h/t kudu), so why are you whatabouting?

Racists are not a protected class. I see no reason why Harvard should not be allowed to act the way they did.

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.

Not true that Harvard can withdraw the acceptance at any time for any reason. There is a specific set of circumstances in which it can be withdrawn (in this case, where the person's integrity/moral character is in doubt); otherwise, the unconditional offer of admission could be considered a legally binding contract between the university and the student.

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