Tipsheet

Progressive Reporter Asks Pointed Question About Kyle Kashuv’s Rescinded Harvard Acceptance

Cortney covered this earlier this morning. Kyle Kashuv, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting and Second Amendment rights supporter, had his Harvard acceptance rescinded. He went on a lengthy Twitter thread about the controversy. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. Kashuv made some racist remarks in communications he thought were private…when he was 16 years old. Kashuv didn’t prevaricate or obfuscate what he had done. He didn’t try to pivot or downplay it; he admitted it. He informed Harvard after members that are associated with the alt-right revealed these communications:

In subsequent messages Kashuv explained how he had even reached out to Harvard's Office of Diversity and Inclusion, who sent him a warm message in return thanking him for his apology and telling him they were "looking forward" to connecting with him upon his matriculation…

[…]

He also admitted he has no clue what to do now.

"I had given up huge scholarships in order to go to Harvard, and the deadline for accepting other college offers has ended," he explained.

Conservatives torched the decision, seeing it yet another case of left-wing institutional bias, some even mocking the Ivy League’s anathema to its other perceived enemy: Asians. Yet, one progressive reporter, Michael Tracey, once again finds himself shooting inside the ship, seeing the more sinister slice of this fiasco that doesn’t revolve around Kashuv’s political leanings. He sees this as a disturbing trend in surveillance, noting the lengths parents go to monitor their children’s’ social media activity. 

“Kids are being conditioned to expect that their private affairs will be surveilled and held against them -- by universities, parents, future employers... everyone,” he wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread. “That's ultimately more troubling than anything related to this specific incident.”

Tracey also noted that many teenagers say stupid things. I’ve certainly been guilty of that; you probably have as well. 

“Imagine if your BS sessions with friends at age 16 were all entered into the public record, and used to change the course of your entire life trajectory. School-marm surveillance state,” warned Tracey. He aptly noted that these institutions are brutally enforcing this ethos of authoritarian political correctness and they’re making sure these kids know that from an early age—and this applies to their parents as well. It’s a clever and pernicious covert war on free speech. Tracey then throws an identity politics curveball into the mix:

If a black 16-year-old got caught making allegedly "offensive" statements on Snapchat or something -- say, "f**k the police" or "kill pigs" -- my reaction would be 100% the same. And if your reaction would be different, maybe self-reflect on what exactly you're objecting to…

I can bet the mortgage that liberals, especially white liberals, wouldn’t be as furious. Attacking a black kid like that would be…racist. Hey, these are their rules.