Short Take: Harvard’s Chelsea Morning

Harvard has been quietly beefing up its cred with the most passionate young minds of America, from eliminating the LSAT requirement at its law school to its upcoming announcement that all finals can be answered by emojis. It filled its disability quota of the intellectually challenged when it brought Shaun King aboard, and found triple duty when it named Chelsea Manning a “visiting fellow.”*

A sequence of events happened in rapid order.

Mike Morrell, former acting director of the CIA, resigned as a senior fellow of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Mike Pompeo, current director of the CIA, canceled his appearance to speak at a Harvard forum.

Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf of Harvard’s Kennedy School thereupon withdrew Manning’s visiting fellowship.

In reaction, Manning twitted:


The emojis certainly nailed down the point. And Chase Strangio, Manning’s attorney, twitted this statement:


There is no question that the choices made by Morrell and Pompeo to sever their connection was entirely appropriate; they’re under no duty to be engaged with Harvard given their views of Manning’s conduct. They made no demand of Harvard. They simply exercised their agency to disengage.

As for Manning, Strangio is right, it was an act of cowardice to throw someone invited to be a visiting fellow under the bus to appease their CIA overlords. Of course, the CIA provides jobs to its graduates, and Manning is as valuable to their education as Kim Kardashian. Revealing classified documents doesn’t make one influential, but treasonous. Even as an act of conscience, once it’s done, it’s done. There isn’t anything further to impute intellectual value to the soldier who sold out a country because of feelings.

But the culprit here is Elmendorf, who tried desperately to weasel his way out of the significance of his decision, while taking full responsibility.

We invited Chelsea Manning because the Kennedy School’s longstanding approach to visiting speakers is to invite some people who have significantly influenced events in the world even if they do not share our values and even if their actions or words are abhorrent to some members of our community. We do this not to endorse those actions or legitimize those words, but because engaging with people with fundamentally different worldviews can help us to become better public leaders. Because controversy pervades many questions in politics and public policy, some speakers are controversial.

There is a huge hole in this reasoning. There are many controversial people in the world, but would Elmendorf name Charles Manson a visiting fellow? Obviously not, and not simply because he’s a murdeous psycho, but because he has nothing of value to offer.

On that basis, we also named Chelsea Manning a Visiting Fellow. We did not intend to honor her in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds, as we do not honor or endorse any Fellow.

However, I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a Visiting Fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility.

It hadn’t dawned on Dean Elmendorf that conferring the title “visiting fellow” at Harvard would create ascribed credibility for Manning? Whether it’s an “honor” is another matter.

In retrospect, though, I think my assessment of that balance for Chelsea Manning was wrong. Therefore, we are withdrawing the invitation to her to serve as a Visiting Fellow—and the perceived honor that it implies to some people—while maintaining the invitation for her to spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak in the Forum.

The withdrawal of the invitation was an act of cowardice and, as Strangio says, a reflection of the power of the CIA over the school. The problem was that Manning was invited to be a visiting fellow in the first place. Harvard invites plenty of people to speak there without giving them a title. Naming Chelsea Manning a visiting fellow was meant to send a message.

This wasn’t a message about Manning having brilliant ideas to impart to students, but collecting cool people with mad emoji skillz to stroke the feelz of its students and impress their twitter followers.

*By including Chelsea Manning, Harvard covered ex-con, transgender person, traitor to a nation and icon of the left in one fell swoop, thus enabling it to turn away Michelle Jones from its doctoral program. Jones’ twitter followers are unknown.

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35 thoughts on “Short Take: Harvard’s Chelsea Morning”

  1. xenonman

    How could Manning’s actions have endangered intelligence personnel. On the CIA’s sacred death wall in Langley, only 119 stars appear, presumably all killed since the Agency’s founding.

    In that same period of time, how many hundreds of thousands of US military personnel have been killed??

  2. Lee

    “We did not intend to honor her in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds, as we do not honor or endorse any Fellow.”

    Wow. And we lawyers have a reputation for lying with a straight face. .

    1. Elpey P.

      They might want to rethink at least one of the words in their website description of the program to avoid future confusion:

      “The Visiting Fellows program brings distinguished veterans of public life for a short, yet comprehensive stay”

  3. Erik H

    would Elmendorf name Charles Manson a visiting fellow? Obviously not
    On what basis do you sound so confident?

      1. B. McLeod

        Well, it was very unwoke of Harvard to term Manning a “fellow”. I am surprised that “Chase Strangio” wasn’t on them about that.

    1. SHG Post author

      Treason is originally defined in Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution.

      Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

      Manning gave aid to our enemy.

      1. Robert

        Cut the crap. Manning was indeed charged with “aiding the enemy”, the most serious charge out of the long list of charges, but was acquitted of that charge.

        I have seen you chastise people before regarding doing things like continuing to refer to somebody as a “rapist’ when they were acquitted of charges of rape, but here you go engaging in the exact same sort of nonsense. Just stop.

          1. Jesse

            I dare say that charging Manning thusly is akin to “catch all” charges used by police that you so frequently criticize. There group that was principally aided by Manning were the free citizens of the United States.

            1. SHG Post author

              There are similarities. There are differences. The ability to distinguish between the two requires thought. Thinking is hard. As for the “free citizens,” that’s unacceptably nuts around here, I daresay.

          2. Robert

            When talking about the law, lawyers have a responsibility to not make people stupider. What possible basis is there for claiming that Manning committed “Treason” — except for an absurdly overbroad view of the vague phrase “aiding the enemy”?

            How did he “aid the enemy”? For that matter, who the hell is “the enemy” that he supposedly aided? Is the US at War? If so, against who exactly?

            It is not the law in the US that merely revealing classified info constitutes “aiding the enemy” as envisioned in the Treason clause in the Constitution. No court, to my knowledge, has ever adopted such a broad reading of the phrase “aiding the enemy”. On the contrary, courts have been quite clear that such a broad reading is bogus.

            What Manning did was reveal to the US Public how dishonest their own gov’t was in many ways, how it was lying its damned head off regarding the Iraq War and related issues. It takes a really warped view of the whole issue to give the gov’t a free pass for its blatant lying and gross misdeeds, including war crimes, while condemning the whistleblower as a “traitor.”

        2. David Meyer-Lindenberg

          True. Manning’s just a convicted spy and thief who handed classified intelligence over to a Russian proxy. It’s outrageous to call her a traitor because she wasn’t convicted of all three dozen or so charges,

            1. John Barlycorn.

              Don’t you worry esteemed one everyone’s legs look pale when they get their Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit all tangled up.

              I could have done without seeing your hairy toes today but at least you didn’t try to correlate some Orwellian equivalencies to make your knees look sexy.

              Good thing David stoped by to show off  his tan lines. Who knew he wore speedos?

              And speaking of proxies and volunteers did I ever tell you the one about the toilet water getting all pissed off at the cyclone for not giving him his fair share of the Coriolis Effect?

      2. Eliot J CLingman

        Its worth mentioning that if the Iraq war were a war of agression, fought with rules of engagement violating the law of war, then her treason could be morally if not legally justified.

        Ben Franklin and friends would have been justified traitors, except that “if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

  6. Jake

    Well, the Tuesday night undergrad Pizza ‘n Politics group should look at the bright side: They still get to hang out with Sean Spicer.

  7. stevie g

    Wow, what vapid reasoning to use “Chelsea Morning.” Why not Chelsea Clinton? Would have given you more credit Juevon.

      1. Miles

        I’m deeply disappointed that Stevie didn’t come back to explain himself. So much potential for humor squandered. It’s a disgrace.

    1. SHG Post author

      Apparently not too broken, but if something is screwy, let me know. Or, send me your comment and I’ll put it in on my side.

    2. Billy Bob

      There once was a commenter named Pedantic,
      Who occupied himself with all things *pedantic*.
      (Is that a real word?)
      He woke up one day, in a horrible haze, and
      and went belly-up and frantic,… not knowing
      who, what, where, when, why or how? What
      a turd!

      And that my dear friends is not the end. Stay
      tuned! CatptCha police, begone! We do not
      need your weird mathematics or crazy arithmetic.

  9. Scott Jacobs

    Apparently, the education system in Leavenworth is way better than I expected… How else could a fucking PFC with a high school education speak learnedly about the “social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence.”

  10. JK Brown

    “Of course, the CIA provides jobs to its graduates”

    It’s more than that. The Kennedy school is the finishing school for up and comers in the federal government, especially DoD and CIA. Morrell and Pompeo’s withdrawals were a clear signal. I expect there were a lot of sudden scheduling conflicts for upcoming seminars and programs. It’s not just the sure and steady flow of government training money. Having first crack at the future top bureaucrats is priceless.

Comments are closed.