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Harvard's Kennedy School of Government rescinded a visiting fellowship offered to Chelsea Manning, the former military intelligence analyst who spent seven years in prison for leaking classified government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.
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Chelsea Manning eyes U.S. Senate seat for Maryland
Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified data, is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Maryland, according to Federal election filings seen on Saturday.
[...] Democratic Senator Ben Cardin was elected in 2006 to that seat and is expected to run for re-election this year. He is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cardin was easily re-elected in 2012, beating his Republican challenger by 30 points in the heavily-Democratic state.
Previously: Chelsea Manning Released from Prison, Remains on Active Duty Pending Appeal
Harvard Dean Rescinds Chelsea Manning's Visiting Fellow Invitation, Calling It a 'Mistake'
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday September 16 2017, @08:02AM (7 children)
So this is news, how? How often do we get a trifecta of national security, trans-sexuality, and libtard uppity snobbish liberal IvY League Universities all in one dog-whistle, flamebait Fine Article to Post On the SoylentNews? HUH? I believe this was submitted by a bot, just to rile up fustakrakich. Carry on, all. I will not mod on this topic. Probably will not comment. Surely Runaway will have some rather nasty things to say, however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @09:12AM
Will the mighty defender of free speech let us know his views on the matter? Place you bets, but who's gonna keep 'the books?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:43AM
> Probably will not comment.
... am I missing something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:18PM (2 children)
Oh look. The "bot" narrative. When leftists can't blame something they dislike on "Nazis" or "the Russians", they blame it on "bots".
And why the fuck would you write "Probably will not comment." in the very comment where you are commenting on this submission?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:40PM (1 child)
Because he's a confused individual, of course. That tends to happen to zealot partisans, both left and right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:45AM
https://soylentnews.org/~fustakrakich/journal/2623f [soylentnews.org]
Can't say more than this. They come at night, mostly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @09:09PM (1 child)
Hey, can you cut this out?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:35PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:26AM
Professor Thomas S. Harrington writes via CounterPunch [counterpunch.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by SixGunMojo on Saturday September 16 2017, @11:16AM
I've been shocked, shocked I tell you, that there hasn't been a shitstorm on social media by the Butthurt Brigade for designation of Manning as a "Visiting Fellow"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:27PM (1 child)
If one removed the fact that this was Manning it still remains a problem. All these visiting fellows and other honorary titles that they, various universities, seem to hand out like candy. Mostly to people that have very little actual knowledge or formal education. Clearly the public seems to draw other conclusions then the institutions do. They mostly seem to act as feelgood rewards to people that doesn't, or rarely, deserve or need them. If the public see them as honorific and the university doesn't it quite frankly falls on the university for not explaining it better.
From the schools description of Manning it seems somewhat unclear what Manning is actually supposed to speak about. Network security? Probably not since it's a political and policy school and not for engineers. Is it the AI thing? Does Manning have any kind of expertise or knowledge in the area beyond opinions?
So unless Manning was to speak about being trans in the military, the only field Manning would be a self appointed expert in I don't really see what the point would be other then that this is some pat on the back or endorsement of previous actions from Harvard. Still one is then left to wonder if LGBTQ-issues in the Military is a strong enough speaking point for a fellowship at Harvard. It doesn't really seem to be a very important power issue in todays politics. It's a fringe topic at best.
The overall point from Harvard on this fellowship program is to "Broadening the range and depth of opportunity for students to hear from and engage with experts, leaders and policy-shapers". Which one is it Manning is again? Expert? Leader? Policy-shaper? Any of them? It might be quite interesting to find out whom did propose Manning as a fellow and for what reasons. There must have been a proposal, a list of candidates and a committee where this was discussed and people apparently thought that Manning was a great choice, which all casts shadow on them if they thought Manning was appropriate and they didn't see this problem appearing.
The list of new fellows would have been one Mayor, Manning, a CNN commentator (... a nationally recognized campaign manager and strategist who ran the 2016 presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton) and Trumps former press secretary. The only one of them that makes sense to me would be Mayor Sylvester James Jr. Manning is out and the other two are failed political operators, unless they want to share talking points on their failures for not how to do things in the future they are beyond useless.
So from this I would assume it's a paid position? Compared to say a Honorary degree or doctorate title. A position where you are supposed to live on campus and interact with students on a daily basis? So it's either a job offer and isn't getting a job offer at Harvard supposed to be a form of honor? Even if not an actual honorific title. I can easily see how the public would find this all somewhat confusing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:38PM
Likely a publicity stunt to capitalize on Manning's recent NYT article while still finding a way to bring attention to the fact that one of their most prestigious alum, Mike Pompeo, was going to be a guest speaker anyway.
Nobody has heard or cared about this event until yesterday. Pompeo was scheduled to speak for months. Manning was a late addition (and removal).
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:50PM (20 children)
Why, and how, is this politics? A dirtbag who could have been executed, was pardoned, and he has become a "political" figure???? Sorry, it's not politics at all - it's some kind of morbid mass hysteria.
http://www.viralnova.com/mass-hysteria/ [viralnova.com]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:06PM (2 children)
Typically this disease is referred to as "Leftism".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:43PM (1 child)
You and the person that modded you Insightful (assuming you're two different people) both really need to lay off the Faux News. It's starting to rot your brains. It's tragic watching otherwise intelligent people get reduced to drooling morons after watching too much of that trash.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 17 2017, @02:04AM
It's any less tragic, watching the masses suck up the MSM Kool-Aid?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:29PM (1 child)
Nobody called it politics. However, one definition of "political" is "of, relating to, or involving the state or its government" which does apply here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:47PM
You must have clicked the link, to get here.
Politics: Harvard Dean Rescinds Chelsea Manning’s Visiting Fellow Invitation, Calling It a ‘Mistake’
(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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:50PM (3 children)
Sorry, but Manning is a true hero and patriot. I know you don't like hearing that, but when our leaders are acting in a dishonorable fashion we NEED whistle blowers like Manning to come forward.
If Manning had not come forward, we would not have known about those helicopter pilots murdering those people, including two journalists. War crimes and atrocities like that should not be covered up, and when they are, patriots like Manning are doing our country's honor a favor by bringing light to the ugliness some would rather cover up.
The only tragedy here is that there wasn't a big enough backlash against government. Object to whistle blowers all you want, but there a good number of Americans that understand the value in not letting the cockroaches hide.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @08:22PM (2 children)
You're so old-fashioned.
Truth-tellers have been deprecated for decades.
Didn't you notice how O'Bummer came in claiming he would have an administration that would be all about transparency--then had his guys persecute more whistlebloweres than any previous administration?
Clearly, "patriotism" is shooting 30mm rounds[1] at unarmed civilians--including children. [google.com]
...and continuing the shooting at the unarmed civilians who come to render aid to the wounded.[2]
Oh, and "patriotism" is also, apparently, not being able/willing to distinguish between a camera and a weapon.
...and, obviously, revealing those "glorious", "patriotic" acts makes you a "traitor".
[1] For the metric-impaired, that's 1.18 caliber.
[2] That would be a direct violation of the Geneva Accords, of which USA is a signatory.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
Let me tell you, there's nothing political about treason. There's nothing political about mishandling classified information. There's nothing political about a soldier trying to change his gender. Chelsea Manning is an ungrateful TRAITOR who should never have been released from prison! 🇺🇸
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @12:57AM
...says The Draft-Dodger-in-Chief.
After your 4 student deferments and 1 phony medical deferment, one would think you'd keep your head down.
Odd how those "bone spurs" don't seem to have slowed you down any as a civilian.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:41PM
what a lying weasel piece of shit! of course the "Visiting Fellow" is honorary. why else would they be honorarily associated with the university. it's supposed to be an honor and that's always been the case and everyone in the country with half a brain knows that. this stupid fucker doesn't even evaluate his lies for reasonableness. that's how much shit this fucking rat gets away with every day. No, you're just a fucking whore who figured you could wheeze off manning's publicity while at the same time showing how tolerant you were of "transsexuals", but you're so dumb you didn't know how much shit you would catch and since you have no backbone that's a big problem for you. fuck you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:14PM (1 child)
Harvard welcomed MKultra experiments that gave us the unabomber. It would go against their character to invite manning to speak. This is like microsoft hosting an apple convention.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:19PM
The other way around has already happened a few times, Bill Gates appearing at various MacWorld expo type things together with Jobs. As I recall it it looked quite big brother:ish with Gates looming over Jobs from a giant TV-screen. Almost as good as their 1984 commercial.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:28PM
That's really rich coming from the CIA.