Most of the conservatives writing about how Kyle Kashuv’s admission to Harvard was rescinded have focused on the “injustice” of the decision. Liberals, meanwhile, say he got what he deserved because as a youthful teenager, Kashuv engaged in juvenile behavior.
Kashuv is a survivor of the Parkland high school shooting and became a conservative pro-gun activist in the wake of the tragedy. That certainly brought him a lot of attention, and he has behaved well in public since them, possibly because he saw life in a new light after the tragedy.
But it turns out that someone sent Harvard evidence that Kashuv had written vile, obscene, racist comments in group chats online several years before the shooting. The university decided to disinvite Kashuv because he had engaged in “behavior that brings into question [his] honesty, maturity, or moral character.”
Honestly, I can’t find fault with that decision, having read portions of what Kashuv wrote. Being a teenager may make it more common that people will be jerks, but it doesn’t excuse it. I do feel sorry for Kashuv having missed out on numerous other scholarship opportunities as a result of having committed to Harvard, but the situation he is in is of his own making.
I won’t judge him for his past mistakes. We all make them, but we also have to pay the price for them.
But my main concern with the story is quite different. What I don’t understand is why someone who is a conservative activist and a person who respects diversity of opinion would want to attend a university like Harvard, where dissent against the liberal orthodoxy is not tolerated and where conservatives are themselves treated as second- or third-class citizens.
Yes, I know it could be seen as noble to refuse to cede attendance at the Ivy League college to left-wing elites, but really is there any legitimate purpose for a conservative to sanction the wicked ideology exemplified by Harvard? I think not.
Here’s hoping that, first, conservatives not ever take the low road of name calling and bigotry either as teens or adults, and second, that they support institutions that value them and their ideas, not institutions that consider them freaks and deplorables.
That might be too much to ask, but I think it is more important than fighting to get a conservative into Harvard.
Frank Miele writes from Kalispell, Montana, at www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com and is a columnist at Real Clear Politics. To support my work, please consider buying my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy, which documents the downward spiral of the USA before Trump arrived on the scene. The books are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions. Thanks! Also visit Heartland Diary on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1FmrOF2TF-njRznqoU4yjA
” Someone ” sent Harvard evidence…?? Was that “Someone ” , Ima Nonymous”??
“Someone did Something” on 9/11
Hopefully ,despite the young mans own possible potential failure, he will learn a cheap,but valuable lesson from the failure of Harvard??
Ima Nonymous should always be challenged ……..
BenjScout
Mont. Terr.