Outrage and Protest at Harvard

CIA Director Mike Pompeo didn't show up

I stumbled into something.

There were about four hundred of us packed into the JFK Forum space.   We had gone through a TSA type screening.  We were expected to hear from Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA, talking about Russian interference in the election and whatever else he wanted to talk about.

The Dean of the JFK school, strode up upon the stage and told us he wouldn't be speaking.    This morning Fox News and the Huffington Post and every other news site was abuzz with the story.   Harvard had named Chelsea Manning a "Visiting Fellow."  In response, a current Fellow, the former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morrell, resigned from his position.   He said as a matter of conscience he refused to be a fellow if a traitor to the country, someone who released tens of thousands of secrets that damaged American interests, was also equal honored.   He announced this on Thursday.

Thursday evening Mike Pompeo didn't show up.    

Harvard's response was to backtrack.  Harvard critics on left and right call it "caving".   Members of a group of my college classmates immediately saw it as a "sellout."  Several said it excused their not going money to Harvard, which neither needs it nor deserves it, since they didn't stand up for principle.

Critics from the Left: "Caving"

I have two observations to share.   One is that Chelsea Manning is famous for two things.  One is irrelevant to this, being transgendered.   The other is relevant: she revealed tens of thousands of secret files to Wikileaks, which intelligence people say endangered hundreds of lives and the overall security of the USA.  Therefore, Harvard did serious destruction to its own branding of "Visiting Fellows".   Visiting Fellows tend to be people who have--or recently had--interesting and important jobs in campaigns, in government, in the military, in media.   It is an honorable thing to put on ones resume while one is writing a book or licking ones wounds or waiting out a non-compete clause in a contract.   It is recognition for having done important work, not simply for being famous.

Moreover, at a time when southern statues to Confederate generals are being taken down by some. and defended by others, it is no surprise that a CIA director would not want to be "honored" alongside a convicted traitor.  I would not expect a Democratic politician to want to share space with a statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the KKK.  

Harvard hurt the brand of Visiting Fellow by including Chelsea Manning.

Worse, Harvard hurt a bigger, deeper brand of its own.   The JFK classes I attend are salted with mid-career people from the military, from the intelligence services, and from the diplomatic corps.  They are at Harvard getting Ph.D.s in some form of international studies, or getting Masters Degrees in Public Policy or Organizational Behavior or some other advanced perspectives that will enhance their careers.   I like seeing them.   Harvard has a reputation for being pro-nuance, pro-diplomacy.  It is the opposite of an approach that is bombastic "bomb them to the stone age" in its thinking.  Harvard's JFK School has a connection to the security services of the country that is worth preserving.    

I suspect it is all in all a good thing that people on the way up the military and diplomatic ladder spend two years at Harvard.   The world is complicated.  Harvard represents complication and nuance and sophistication and expertise.  There are other places to learn blunt force.   Harvard attempts to teach the limitations of that.

The Dean of the Kennedy School just announced that it was a mistake to name Chelsea Manning a Visiting Fellow.   I agree.   It would have been fine to invite her to speak, but not fine to honor her.