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Harvard Dean Rescinds Chelsea Manning's Visiting Fellow Invitation, Calling It a 'Mistake'
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government rescinded a visiting fellowship offered to Chelsea Manning, the former military intelligence analyst who spent seven years in prison for leaking classified government secrets, after the university faced forceful backlash from CIA Director Mike Pompeo among others.
"I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a Visiting Fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility," Douglas W. Elmendorf, the school's dean, wrote in a 700-word statement released shortly after midnight Friday.
Manning was one of four visiting fellows announced two days earlier by the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. As part of the program, visiting fellows appear on Harvard's campus for speaking engagements and events, interacting with undergraduate students on "topical issues of today," the school's initial announcement explained.
Elmendorf decided to withdraw the invitation after realizing that "many people view a Visiting Fellow title as an honorific," though the school had not intended to "honor [Manning] in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds."
The Establishment called.
Harvard withdraws Chelsea Manning fellowship after CIA response
Harvard University invited Chelsea Manning to be a visiting fellow, but withdrew the invitation after CIA Director Mike Pompeo wrote:
The students there are now owed an institution that acts responsibility; an institution that does not sanction or legitimize the criminal path Ms. Manning took to undermine our national security.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:27PM (10 children)
The parent comment obvious isn't "trolling", and thus it shouldn't be at -1, Troll.
The modding has been really shitty around here lately. I always have to toggle to -1 now, because the only comments worth reading have been modded down.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:34PM
That is how partisan moderation works. They are working hard to censor certain points of view.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:34PM (4 children)
Pookie.
I suspect the down-mod was due to deliberate mis-gendering.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:39PM (3 children)
The Runsaway, she don't like the Chelsea. That's how the Runsaway rolls. She likes to call people by the wrong pronouns. Even if she gets modded down for that. Such a pity.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:37PM (2 children)
He/him/his are the correct pronouns to use when describing somebody who was born a male.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:46PM
But here's the thing: assholes don't have gender! So what pronoun to use for someone who was born an asshole, and insists on calling people by their birth-gender?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:51PM
Way too many people are far too concerned with other peoples' physical gender. I blame the mass-delusion commonly called "religion."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:39PM
When most articles have ~20 replies, reading at -1 is not so bad. I want to make my own decision on what the merits of the comments are.
Now if moderation could get the GNAA types banned, that would be useful.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:34PM (2 children)
はいはい~. Fixed.
Though I'm still mystified by the compulsion to misgender people. However, as demonstrated by actual experience with bathroom laws, transphobia hurts cisgendered women more, so hey! Can't quite figure out the implications, though.
- Is using the pronoun “she” like an honorific, say like Japanese's -sama? Is using “he” the same as using -san?
- Speaking of Japanese, would people freak out if Manning referred to herself as watashi and demand that she use ore instead, despite how fucking weird that would be?
- If you're at a drive-through, and the person on the speaker sounds female, you'll gender them female. If you get to the window, and that person appears to be a man, is it now correct to insist that he's female??? When I worked fast food and and a co-worker this happened to, this was 15+ years ago mind you when things were different, the correct thing at that time was to give a quick apology and begin gendering the person as male.
- What do we do with lesbians who have short hair and may appear to be male if we're now privileging the observers determination of gender over the subject's? 15 years ago it was more common to privilege the subject's determination of gender over the observer. But! This is why I say transphobia harms more cisgendered woman that it could possible harm transgendered women. Trans is 0.01% of the population, homosexual may be 10%, several orders of magnitude more likely. And that's not even considering hair style popularity!
- This brings us to the view that the male gender is the authentic gender. The female gender is inauthentic, so being gendered female must needs be some kind of privilege, I suppose. This can wrap us around to the top of this list where I pondered honorifics.
Oh, protip for advanced infiltrators: many people use the voice as a proxy for “true” gender, privileging vocal resonance over facial features. Therefore, if one wants to really infiltrate somewhere, work on the voice! The masculinized voicebox is full capable of producing non-masculine resonance with practice.
Ugh, $current_waste_of_time is down, so I find myself here, pondering the vehemence of persistent misgendering and what it really means, sociologically speaking.
Can somebody else's gender become a part of another person's identity to the point that person $A must have gender $X, otherwise person $B's identity is threatened? That sounds absurd to me, but I'm at such a loss that I'm willing to entertain the possibility. Thoughts?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 17 2017, @05:27AM
Regarding your last question, yes, it absolutely can. This usually happens to people who are homophobic and/or deeply religious. The way the human brain is wired, anything that strikes at a deeply-seated, emotionally-held belief feels exactly like a personal attack.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:06PM
Oddly, my experience as a naturally-born female ("cis-" being a misnomer**) is that bathroom laws requiring people to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex favors us, as it makes it far harder for non-trans biological males with malicious intent to enter our bathroom unchallenged. Also, instilling powerful behavioral prohibitions in people at a very young age (i.e. "don't ever go into the bathroom of the opposite sex") does make a significant impact in their behavior later on, even if they're enraged or have criminal intent.
**Latin "cis-" refers to remaining entirely on one side (i.e. male-masculine or female-feminine), which isn't accurate: most non-trans people have a broad mix of traits from both gender stereotypes within their culture.
The trans-friendly alternative to the "everything goes" scenario would be to eliminate stalls in favor of separate single-occupant hallway-entrance bathrooms with locking doors. The trouble is that it would dramatically reduce the number of available toilets by perhaps four-fifths, which would have a negative impact on everyone.
I think that I've only had one drive-through employee ever make reference to my gender either way — most just say "hi, how can I help you?", "okay, that will be $[amount] at the first window" and "enjoy your [time period]!" The one that did *did* guess my gender wrong (trachea surgery gave me an almost androgynous voice) didn't make a big deal about it; I'm easygoing & friendly enough IRL that we both laughed it off.
You lost me there somewhere. I'm primarily asexual: even if I'm wearing unisex clothing, no makeup/jewelry, and a wispy androgynous ponytail like I usually do, I've still got a female body — nobody is "determining" my gender, it's just...there.
I think that I'm coming at this from a very different angle because of my birth defects. I regard my body much the way I do my car: it's factually designed a certain way, and how I feel things should be simply doesn't factor into it. That my personality traits make me tend to assume that my body can do certain things or should be designed a certain way doesn't change reality, regardless of whether it's "I shouldn't have boobs" or "I should be able to gain muscle easily like men" or "my colon should work on its own without medical intervention."
Actually, from what I've seen, there's an inverse correlation between transphobia and strong belief in stereotyped gender norms. Nobody aside from me ever seemed to suggest or question my gender based on my appearance or behavior until fairly recently, when I started encountering people who seem to believe that the only reason I'd refrain from making an effort to look/act feminine was because I didn't "identify" as a female—as if a person can't be female and not stereotypically feminine, or male and not stereotypically masculine.