Higher education isn’t what it used to be.
Now, it seems almost like you have to be liberal-minded to succeed on college campuses, where conservative voices are frequently silenced and professors give students extra credit for protesting Trump…(flashback to the aftermath of the 2016 election)
On Monday, Harvard took back an admissions offer they had extended to Kyle Kashuv – Parkland school shooting survivor and outspoken conservative Trump supporter – over some things he wrote on a Google document several years prior to the shooting.
Kashuv took to Twitter to explain the situation from his point of view and to chronicle his futile efforts at getting his admittance into the prestigious university back:
Here's more, from Fox News:
Kyle Kashuv, the 18-year-old conservative activist and high school shooting survivor, will not attend Harvard next year.
He has the grades and the test scores: a 3.9 GPA and 1550 on his SAT. He has the extracurriculars. For almost a year, Kyle served as the high school outreach director for Turning Point USA, organizing young conservatives throughout the country. He even has an acceptance letter welcoming him to the Harvard College Class of 2024. But Harvard has rescinded that acceptance after a political adversary of Kashuv's leaked a years-old Google Doc on which he had written the "n-word" and other offensive terms.
Kashuv promptly apologized for the childish private remarks. "We were 16-year-olds making idiotic comments, using callous and inflammatory language in an effort to be as extreme and shocking as possible," he wrote. "The comments I made are not indicative of who I am or who I’ve become in the years since."
Of course not. I suspect the comments do not reflect even who he was at 16.
The Hill has more details on the situation:
A survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting said Monday that Harvard University has rescinded his acceptance after recently surfaced screenshots showed him using racial slurs a few months before the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Fla.
Kyle Kashuv, 18, who was admitted to Harvard earlier this year, wrote on Twitter that he had been made aware of “egregious and callous comments” he made when he was 16 years old.
Classmates had accused him of repeatedly using the N-word, according to The Washington Times and HuffPost.
Kashuv, a gun rights activist, later posted on Twitter explaining his previous remarks, saying “we were 16-year-olds making idiotic comments” and that he was “embarrassed by it,” adding that “the comments I made are not indicative of who I am or who I’ve become in the years since."
“When your classmates, your teachers, and your neighbors are killed it transforms you as a human being,” he wrote. “I can and will do better moving forward.”
After widespread national coverage of the comments, as well as dozens of individuals calling on Harvard to rescind Kashuv's admission to the school, the university sent him a letter dated May 24 saying it “reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission” and asked for a written explanation within 72 hours.
In his response to Harvard, Kashuv apologized “unequivocally” for his previous actions and said he’d reached out to the college’s Office of Diversity Education and Support to “begin a dialogue that I hope will be the foundation of future growth.”
In a letter dated June 3, Harvard notified Kashuv that it was rescinding his acceptance.
“As you know, the Committee takes seriously the qualities of maturity and moral character,” Harvard wrote in the letter, which Kashuv posted to Twitter. “We are sorry about the circumstances that have led us to withdraw your admission, and we wish you success in your future academic endeavors and beyond.”
On Harvard's decision, The Daily Wire commented:
Our universities may be irrevocably broken.
On Monday, Parkland survivor and outspoken conservative Kyle Kashuv announced that Harvard University had withdrawn his admission from the school over the revelation of racist, offensive, idiotic posts written on a private Google document with friends when he was sixteen years old. Never mind that Kashuv apologized publicly for the comments; never mind that his public behavior has evinced no racism whatsoever.
Forgiveness must be withheld.
As far as his Harvard qualifications, they weren’t based on his activism. Kashuv was ranked second in his class, with a weighted GPA of 5.345 and an unweighted GPA of 3.9; he scored a 1550 on his SATs. But Kashuv’s activism has been impressive nonetheless: he has worked consistently across the aisle to bring about school safety measures to protect other high schoolers, and that his terrible comments were written before the life-changing event the mass shooting at Parkland represented.
Kashuv’s comments were originally surfaced by fellow students who oppose him politically, in an overt attempt to damage him. Kashuv did the right thing and issued an immediate apology
What do you think?
Was Harvard's decision fair or an act of hypocritical prejudice?
Is higher education broken?
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