Said John Stauffer, quoted in "From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones" (NYT). He's one of 2 American studies professor at Harvard, who "flagged Ms. Jones’s file for the admissions dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences... and questioned whether she had minimized her crime 'to the point of misrepresentation.'"
Jones served 20 years in prison for murdering her 4-year-old son.
While top Harvard officials typically rubber-stamp departmental admissions decisions, in this case the university’s leadership — including the president, provost, and deans of the graduate school — reversed one, according to the emails and interviews, out of concern that her background would cause a backlash among rejected applicants, conservative news outlets or parents of students.Whatever you think of the redemption of murderers and the feelings of rejected applicants, the fear of conservative news outlets — fear of Fox — is incredibly lame.
The admissions dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences refused to be interviewed, and it's a good policy not to talk to the press about students and would-be students. But there was leakage here, and that quote from Stauffer looks just awful — "Fox News... I mean, c'mon." Is that the way insiders at the exquisitely eminent university speak? Ironically, the conservative news outlets should be savaging Harvard for rejecting an applicant out of fear of conservative news outlets.
Or am I falling into a trap laid by the New York Times?
Anyway, read about the history work Michelle Jones did while in prison:
After meticulously logging demographic data from century-old registries from the Indiana Women’s Prison, Ms. Jones made a discovery: There were no prostitutes on the rolls. “Where,” she asked, “were all the ladies?” meaning so-called ladies of the night.The top-rated comment at the NYT is:
With the help of a state librarian, she and another inmate realized that a Catholic laundry house that opened around that time in Indianapolis was actually a reformatory for “fallen women” — those convicted of sex offenses. Then they found more than 30 similar institutions around the country, akin to the Magdalene Laundries recently unearthed in Ireland.
[T]hey wrote up their findings, published them in an Indiana academic journal, and won the state historical society award. Ms. Jones also presented the paper remotely at multiple academic conferences, and, at others, shared different work about the abuse of early inmates at Indiana Women’s Prison by its Quaker founders.
Ms. Jones fulfilled her sentence and has risen to achieve what society could only hope that other incarcerated individuals achieve. It's ridiculous for some people at Harvard to question if she had disclosed enough about her past and to question if she could handle the pressures of their program. Let Ms. Jones have the opportunity to soar or to fail on her own accord. This question of letting her into the program strikes at the heart of society's false promise agreeing that incarceration rehabilitates. So many prisoners languish inside prison for a set term and then are dumped on the street with $40 and a bus ticket. Ms. Jones is exceptional and should be held as an example of what can be achieved. Society should at the very least honor the commitment that once a sentence is served, society is obligated to make every effort to support prisoners with opportunities for work, education, and mental health services.The second-highest-rated comment is something I would imagine some of you are about to write in the comments:
This woman killed her four year old son, and the NY Times wants my heart to bleed for HER because she didn't get into her first choice of doctoral programs after serving 40% of the sentence she was given. Nearly every day the Times reminds me of why the Democrats lost the election in 2016.
Posts
91 comments:
The second-highest-rated comment is something I would imagine some of you are about to write in the comments:
@Althouse, remarkably prescient of you.
or am I falling into a trap laid by the New York Times?
Probably.
The second-highest-rated comment is something I would imagine some of you are about to write in the comments
I am perceiving this as a barb, but actually, it's a compliment to the common sense and moral compass of your readers.
Fuck that cunt. She should be dead.
You can't be 'rehabilitated' from being a child-murdering piece of shit.
I'm having trouble aligning the values expressed by Harvard about redemption, and Students covering the Statue of Thomas Jefferson, because he owned slaves. Is you work showing greater good, the measure of a person, or their past actions?
This is not snark, I want academia, and today's students on campus to explain their values, and why or how they are not consistant.
Ms. Jones is exceptional and should be held as an example of what can be achieved.
Fuck you too, Linda Salzer of Cambridge.
Ms. Jones' story is Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" poem personified. And Harvard's loss. Congrats Ms. Jones, please keep doing your excellence [sic] work.
Fuck you, Jennifer in Chicago.
First of all, "American Studies" is another bullshit field which avoids History and implies mediocrity and weak scholarship.
I haven't been this angry over something in the news in a long time. I want every single fucking asshole defending this woman to be forced to look at photos of beaten four year olds, and then I want them to never open their worthless cakeholes ever again.
At her trial, a former friend testified that Ms. Jones confessed to having beaten the boy and then leaving him alone for days in their apartment, eventually returning to find him dead in his bedroom.
That baby died alone, in pain and fear, inflicted by the one person on earth he should have been able to trust to keep him safe. She never gave up where she buried the body, which would have been the only decent thing to do if she had a shred of remorse, and IANAL but I have to think that a body would have gotten her a needle in her arm and then retarded Harvard grads reading the NYT wouldn't have the agony of their alma mater not having shat another useless American studies PhD into the world.
I'm torn here. If she had been executed, I'd be fine with that. But if she's out, I'd rather have her working for her money.
Just not as a babysitter.
You guys are forgetting the first rule of life in the USA:
A woman must never be made to feel bad, or be forced to take responsibility for her choices or actions.
So, she did not fulfill her sentence.
A minority? Probably. How many elective abortionists are there in the first-world?
She never gave up where she buried the body, which would have been the only decent thing to do if she had a shred of remorse
Yeah, that doesn't really seem like rehabilitated, does it?
Sometimes post partum depression can last for an interminable period. Also we should take into consideration whether the child was cute or appealing. The child may have been overweight or whiny. There are many mitigating factors that could cause a woman to take such a seemingly drastic measure.
I am also beginning to be amused by how much people fear FOX NEWS reporting. It's become a substitute for a moral compass I suppose.
@William, I don't think you should have gone there.
Why is her ethnicity even relevant to the decision?
@Birches, heck yeah! Meanwhile I imagine that they're popping corks down at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. Mighty Harvard is afraid of what Fox News might have to say about them.
This is fake news about Fox. She was rejected and they are mentioning Fox to mitigate the blowback.
The relative popularity of the comments speaks more to the makeup of the readership of the NYT than any reality. There are some acts that are not redeemable in this life. Certainly not with a freakin' diploma.
"American Studies" is another bullshit field
Probably, though Tom Wolfe got his degree in that.
Regardless of whether her crime disqualifies her, lying or misrepresenting her past on her application should disqualify her. Also not smart on her part, since she should know that there's nothing Harvard types want more than someone with her profile, if only to stick it to conservative law and order types. This is a university that just gave Chelsea Manning some kind of fellowship.
"Why is her ethnicity even relevant to the decision?"
It looks like some people at Harvard believe they no longer have plausible deniability regarding issues of race and merit.
"That baby died alone, in pain and fear, inflicted by the one person on earth he should have been able to trust to keep him safe. "
Yes. It gives me chills. Abortion is bad enough.
Now that Harvard has taken in Chelsea Manning, a traitor, what's their excuse for this? Like Fox didn't cover Chelsea?
I think, if we impose a punishment, and someone endures it, and shows remorse for their crimes, that we take them back. If we aren't willing to do that maybe we need to up the punishment until we are. I don't like "we'll punish you explicitly then cast you out forever no matter what you do."
But does that apply to this woman?
Did she serve her time? Not really. Less than half. Less than half of what is I think a mild sentence for child murder too.
Did she show remorse? Harvard thinks she obfuscated what she told them. Minimized it. Does that sound like remorse? Does anything indicate atonement of any kind?
Rehabilitation is possible. Even ex-abortionists have repented and reformed their way of life. As a sinner in need of mercy I'm not going to second guess someone else's reformation without cause.
I agree it's unlikely, perhaps she's just a smart murderer, but it could be real. I don't know enough to decide: for example did she express remorse or only regret at being imprisoned. I don't trust the NYT to give us the full picture.
The second-highest-rated comment is something I would imagine some of you are about to write in the comments.
LOL. But you left out the word dopey.
Prior to WWII, FDR accepted just five hundred German Jewish refugees into America. Most of them had Hollywood or art world connections.. Neville Chambberlain, who is no one's favorite British PM, accepted some fifty thousand of such refugees........Chamberlain was criticized for using class distinctions as a criteria in accepting Jewish refugees. FDR is, more often than not, absolved of blame. The fault lies not in FDR but rather in the anti-semitism of the American public and, in particular, those nasty Republicans he had to work with........,,That's the way it works. Harvard didn't turn this woman down. Fox News did.......In like fashion, I'm sure the woman involved feels that it was the outward circumstances of her life which caused here to act the way she did and not any inner flaw. The good people who sentenced prostitutes to a lifetime of laundry work are the true criminals in society.
Robert Kennedy was not killed by a Palestinian nationalist but rather by America's gun culture and lax gun laws.
I'd like to think William's posts on this topic are parody, but I fear they are serious.
"Robert Kennedy..."
Read your comment after going into a deep reverie about RFK.
I was thinking about what we would think if Sirhan Sirhan had used his prison time to acquire a college degree and to write a paper on some significant historical topic.
"Ms. Jones fulfilled her sentence and has risen to achieve what society could only hope that other incarcerated individuals achieve."
Would people who agree with this feel differently if what she wanted to do was open a daycare? Would her work while in prison change that? Would you send your child to her daycare? Point being, it doesn't always matter that the person in question completed their sentence. Some things will stick to you forever, and it is reasonable that a Ph.D. program would have a general policy of tending to not admit anyone who has committed a very serious crime.
"On May 10, 1982, Sirhan told the parole board: "I sincerely believe that if Robert Kennedy were alive today, I believe he would not countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I think he would be among the first to say that, however horrible the deed I committed 14 years ago was, that it should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment under the laws of this country.""
Every student who is taken into the program is in the position that would be occupied by the best of the rejected applicants.
Back when he was running for president I loved Robert Kennedy. I looked forward to voting for him. As an adult, I realize that Bobby would have made a terrible president, vastly worse than Dick Nixon on his darkest day. Despite this, I think Sirhan Sirhan should rot in jail, whether or not he "used his prison time to acquire a college degree and to write a paper on some significant historical topic."
It's not Fox News they fear. (Well, not directly.) They're seeing the ghosts of Jack Abbot and Norman Mailer. That's where the fear is coming from.
What a horrible injustice Harvard has done. It's not like she committed and downplayed a real crime like these students committed (https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaheilweil1/2017/06/05/harvard-rescinds-10-admissions-offer-for-offensive-facebook-memes-ollowing-commencement-speaker-zuckerberg/#663517b13dbd)
I agree the school's stated/leaked reasons sound terrible. I actually agree that a person who has served an appropriate sentence, credibly expressed remorse for their crime, and shown themselves to be rehabilitated should be accepted back into society. I would only draw the line at automatically restoring voting rights, but even there I think there ought to be a good system for restoring that where appropriate.
I will point out, though, that these are the same institutions of higher learning--populated by the same hard Leftists administrators & professors--that view ideological noncomformance as an unpardonable sin. These are some of the same people who argue that it's wrong to have "controversial" speakers even appear at campus events! These are the same people who assert that anyone who deviates from the accepted (Leftist) line is a Nazi and must be cast out of society--utterly ostracized (loss of job, loss of standing as a person, etc)--presumably forever. Forgiveness and tolerance, in other words, is something they insist must never be given to their enemies.
So I'm not sure they're actually in a great position to argue for redemption, for making a place for people with difficult pasts or who have done or believe things with which we disagree.
Boy NYT readers are really starting to talk back at the paper of record. I can see both sides of the argument, as can their readers. But I do find it ironic that Republicans are held account for imaginary crimes all the time by the NYT-centric media cabal. Takes the kerfuffle over Ted Cruz's ostensible "Like" of a porn tweet this week. Many members of the MSM-DNC complex are doggedly pursuing whom on Ted's staff made the erroneous "Like." To the contrary of Mrs. Clinton's claims, no MSM outlet even tried to get to the bottom of the email scandal, and unlike Ted, she wouldn't answer questions with any specificity when confronted. We remember.
We remember when the MSM ignored Benghazi. (Do we even know why ambassador Stevens was in that dangerous city on 9/11? Or why his pants were on backwards when he was "found" at a local hospital?)
We remember when the MSM ignored gun running to Mexican cartels. (Do we know who set that stupid plan in motion? Was anyone punished?)
We remember when the MSM ignored the tarmac meeting with Lynch and Billy. (Does anyone think if the participants were in the Trump admin the MSM would have been so blase' about this?)
James K
It looks like William is being sardonic.
...how much do we really believe in the possibility of human redemption?
Not this much.
"the fear of conservative news outlets — fear of Fox — is incredibly lame." Well, yeah, as in lame excuse, but really no, since it's deliberate and strategic. We can't admit a murderer, because Fox. We just couldn't win the election, because Fox. We're not getting through on immigration and health care, because Fox. It's the mean conservatives thwarting us.
Of course, society doesn't "promise" prisoners that prison "rehabilitates." Truthfulness aside, Harvard has to consider not just her credentials but also her chances of future success: will teaching institutions hire a faculty member with her past? Will students want to attend her courses? They should just make a new rule: only murderers who give up the body of their victim will be considered for admission.
Anyway, we deplorables think she got off easy. We are predictable that way, with the moralism that bores our betters.
So, there's nobody more deserving of a $200,000 grant then a former Child killer?
But anyway, if there's anyone who should be involved in educating young people its a former child killer.
Or at least liberals think so.
Its not like she's a conservative. Harvard wouldn't stand for that.
Really.
Way down in the article you finally some specifics on the issue of how she downplayed or misrepresented her crime and convictionton for murder:
"In the personal statement, which was not required, she did not detail her involvement in the crime, but wrote that as a teenager she left Brandon at home alone, that he died, and that she has grieved for him deeply and daily since."
Wow. That's like a Clintonesque statement that "I accept responsibility" while never accepting any responsibility or conseeuences.
Personally, I don't give a shit what Harvard does, they jumped the shark into irrelevancy a long time ago in my opinion.
As far as this woman being cheated or mistreated or misunderstood or further punished after serving her time... really? She's going to NYUs graduate program (apparently though unspoken on a full ride scholarship). Yeah, my heart bleeds for her. Total victim of the patriarchy and the system of white privilege. ONLY got into NYU and not HARVARD.
Good Lord what kind of country are we leaving our children...
"On May 10, 1982, Sirhan told the parole board: "I sincerely believe that if Robert Kennedy were alive today, I believe he would not countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I think he would be among the first to say that, however horrible the deed I committed 14 years ago was, that it should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment under the laws of this country.""
Yeah yeah; and like Lefty Charles Pierce said "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."
exiledonmainstreet said...
Gahrie said...
You guys are forgetting the first rule of life in the USA:
A woman must never be made to feel bad, or be forced to take responsibility for her choices or actions.
9/14/17, 10:15 AM
I'll make the obvious point. If this was a man who murdered his own small child, what sentence would he have received? Would he be out of jail at this point? Would Harvard want him as a student? Would Linda Salzer of Cambridge or Jennifer in Chicago be applauding his rehabilitation?
Of course, we know the answer to those questions.
toxdoc: Thank you, that's a perfect example of what I was talking about!
Here's your link in a click-able form: Harvard Rescinds 10 Admissions Offers Over Offensive Facebook Memes
Posting the wrong thing or making an offensive joke in a semi-private forum is enough to get Harvard to deny an applicant admission, so listening to people who think that's correct talk about forgiveness and tolerance for people who have committed actual terrible crimes...it's a bit much.
People who murder children might be forgiven and one day embraced.
People who offend the Left and are labeled racist/sexist/homophobic/bigoted, though, can never been forgiven and must be cast out. Such deplorable people are irredeemable.
"Jones' upstairs neighbor, who also noticed Brandon's absence, observed Jones washing the inside and outside of her car frequently.
At some point during the mid-summer of 1992, apartment manager Norris was walking by Jones' residence when she noticed hundreds of flies covering the inside front bedroom window of Jones' apartment."
William said...
Also we should take into consideration whether the child was cute or appealing.
"Brandon suffered from gynatictropin[sic?] independent precocious puberty, a disorder which accelerated the child's physical development."
Chutzpah.
First the Manson woman; now this woman. For whatever reasons, even if it was only for lying on her applications, Harvard did the correct thing.
And if Harvard was concerned about a conservative backlash, then they acted correctly on that count as well.
Ironically, there is an issue of academic honesty here. Could this person, who brutally beat and abandoned her four year old child, accept the vicious criticism of graduate studies. There is not a graduate student alive who has not had to put with asshole no-nothings on a dissertation committee demanding extraordinarily childish corrections to a thesis. Could this person accept such whining? Or maybe act on violent impulses on the supervising graduate faculty.
It would not be the first time such things have happened.
Good call by Harvard. They were REALLY afraid of a backlash from the Left.
I think it's edifying and instructive to compare and contrast the way John Hinckley was treated with that of Sirhan Sirhan. In retrospect, it seems apparent that Sirhan's big mistake was shooting a Democrat rather than a Republican. If he had shot a Republican, he would have made parole years ago. Democrats have a principled opposition to life imprisonment whereas Repbublicans have a dogmatic insistence on punishing the so called "criminals"....... I just hope all this hysteria over the Scalise shooting doesn't lead to the Democrats giving up their principled crusade to decriminalize the shooting of Republicans.
Ann Althouse wrote: "Or am I falling into a trap laid by the New York Times?"
I doubt it, otherwise you wouldn't be asking the question.
Interestingly (to me, at least), is that despite the title of the NYT article and the heroic photo of Michelle Jones placed prominently at the top of the page, the article really isn't about Michelle Jones at all.
On one level, perhaps the article asks a legitimate question regarding the appropriate consequence of past criminal behavior on the course of a person's life after their jail time has completed. The article mentions the question, but it doesn't really explore it or the range of thinking that exists about it much beyond a superficial mention of the "ban the box" campaign.
On another level, perhaps the article is exploring the rather unusual act at the highest level of a university to cast (apparently) an administrative veto against a department decision that almost always is "rubber-stamped" by the administration. That feels a little closer to the motivation, but the article doesn't provide any direct, original source evidence or analysis of the veto or the discussions leading to it by the people who actually executed the veto. All that is presented is a set of assertions and opinions expressed by people who did not make the veto. Even by the watered down standards of the modern NYT, academic gossip seems an awfully thin basis for a 2,300 word front page article in a prominent newspaper.
One might expect that the article is about Ms. Jones and her "plight," but her voice is surprisingly minimized in the piece, with only a couple of direct quotes amounting to perhaps a hundred words. We are encouraged to believe that Ms. Jones is a superlative, ambitious, perceptive scholar with an extremely valuable point of view, yet her words make up only about 6% of the article. Further, her plight isn't really much of a plight, is it? She applied to eight prestigious universities, was courted actively by at least four of them, and she matriculated into a PhD program at one of the country's most prominent schools in one of the world's great cities and is afforded the means and opportunity to travel to Harvard to audit a seminar every other week. No, this really isn't about Ms. Jones.
The one consistent pattern in this article is that it shares a lot of innuendos and a handful of opinions and details, but it never actually says anything that constitutes a clear conclusion, much less a coherent theme. It's like an impressionist painting that conveys a feeling or sentiment but that doesn't want you to look too closely at the details.
A clue to what the article really is about can be found in the fifth paragraph, which (surprisingly) confesses that "The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that focuses on criminal justice...produced this article for The New York Times..."
Take a look at the Marshall Project's website and click on a few of the links. This is a political advocacy group that pretends to be a non-partisan non-profit. The article is more of an advertisement or "content marketing" piece than it is a news piece. Think of it as part of a larger public relations campaign, and keep an eye out for similar pieces. Who is running the campaign, and what is the campaign's objective? (My guess is that it is linked to the "Ban the Box" campaigns, but I'll reserve judgment for now.)
From Fernandinande's link:
" Here, the jury had before it the testimony of Blevins, who stated that when she discussed Brandon's physical disorder with Jones, Jones commented that "she did not want to raise a freak." (R. 1947)."
Well, goodness, isn't that the same thing women who discover they are going to have a Down syndrome baby or a kid with some other genetic abnormality say when they are on their way to the abortion clinic? No wonder the NY Times readers sympathize with Jones' plight. Who wants a kid with a birth defect? That's so icky!
Just think of it as a very late term abortion.
PS. I forgot to add, "The article's real purpose is setting the mood."
Maybe she'll beat up some Harvard professors and lock them in a room.
Biff, is this part of the non-profit content the NYT asked for recently?
Brandon Sims was her four-year-old son's name. His mommy beat him to death and left him (either dead or alive we don't know) to bleed to death in his bedroom while she went to a "weekend theater network conference." Makes me cry to think of his fear and pain, inflicted by his own mother, before he passed. -- Jessica
How about that Ivy League professor that was fucking his daughter for years. . . Is he back and "rehabilitated?"
...how much do we really believe in the possibility of human redemption?
Quaestor can be redeemed for half as much. Harvard, where's my check?
strikes at the heart of society's false promise agreeing that incarceration rehabilitates
Society never promised that or agreed to it, bub.
Only Progressives really believe it, and that's their problem.
Incarceration is a bit of retributive justice and a lot of "keeping dangerous people from being able to harm normals", at the highest level*.
Rehabilitation is optional, and something only people who want to be rehabilitated can achieve; it cannot be forced.
(* Which is another reason to not proliferate "felonies" that nobody thinks should be felonies, but that's a different issue.)
That photo captioned a "prison production of 'The Duchess of Stringtown,' a play written by Ms. Jones, inside the Indiana Women’s Prison" reminded me of the burlesque show show put on by the male prisoners in the movie Escape from New York, where Ernest "Cabbie" Borgnine first met Snake Pliskin.
I love how this brings Harvard down on the whole. They certainly deserve as much.
I wonder why the monster beat her child to death? Did she feel like he was thwarting her career plans?
Jones was released on parole after 20 years served under Indiana's mandatory parole law. Rehabilitation, redemption, remorse, revelation of the location of the body were not factored into the decision to let her out on parole. It was mandatory.
She has not "served her time." The conviction and 50 year sentence stand. She will simply be serving the remainder of her sentence on the outside - with a $200,000 grant from NYU to ease the pain.
Shame. Deep shame on all of you who condemn this bravery and beautiful woman.
Who do you think you are? All you Harvard grads in powerful positions who have waged wars where millions of women and children are maimed and killed as "collateral damage". You who have condemned the poor to lives of hell through your pitiless public policies that make you rich and "admired". Shame on you!
This woman knows more about love, courage, and redemption than you will ever know. " On this day, with me, in heaven".
Fuck you, Merton in Minnesota.
I think "Fox News" may be a euphemism for those people who possess common sense, i.e., non-indoctrinated people. It's Harvard saying, "How would a normal person think about this? We are elitists but we are not crazy."
No, it's Harvard trying to have it both ways. They didn't want the person around, but thought if they blamed Fox News the leftists would go easy on them for rejecting her. They should have somehow worked Trump into it and then maybe they'd have escaped criticism by the the left.
The NYT and Harvard -- my two favorite institutional punching bags.
Both have lost their moral compasses.
Privileged, leftwing, liberal guilt is no way to form one's world view. You miss a lot of good stuff, and intentionally avoid bad stuff (Michele Jones, Antifa) done by your side.
chicklet, I referred to this in my comment above. This appears to have been the motivation:
" Here, the jury had before it the testimony of Blevins, who stated that when she discussed Brandon's physical disorder with Jones, Jones commented that "she did not want to raise a freak." (R. 1947)."
She practiced eugenics in her own way.
She killed her 4 year old kid. She beat him with a wooden board and then left him alone and injured for several days until he died. Or so she says. It does not take too much imagination to wonder whether the child might have died even more horribly. The child's body would tell that tale.
But the article says that the body was never found. Well, she knows what happened to the body. She testified that she buried his body. Whether this is true nobody knows. But if it was true, she knew where.
This woman not only covered up the crime. She covered up how she executed the crime. She made sure than nobody could find that out. That's enough suspicion of even worse for me to say I don't want her in my grad school.
Drew Faust, the outgoing President of Harvard, is a distinguished historian. I have read several of her books. They are notable for their depth of scholarship, clarity of writing and (in my opinion) for a sensible humane perspective on difficult issues like the carnage of war and the mutual degradation of black and white under the slave system. There is no posing or posturing in her work.
I think her traits of humanity and clear thinking served her and Harvard well in this matter. I am quite sure she saw the issue as who you are willing to admit, not what Fox News might say about who you admit.
"Society should at the very least honor the commitment that once a sentence is served, society is obligated to make every effort to support prisoners with opportunities for work, education, and mental health services."
When did we make that commitment? We don't owe murderers special opportunities.
Reality: Murdering someone can close certain doors in life.
How would you like to know that you'd be studying at a supposedly elite institution with a child murderer who still hasn't given up the body? Takes some of the shine right off, doesn't it?
How would you like to know that you'd be studying at a supposedly elite institution with a child murderer who still hasn't given up the body? Takes some of the shine right off, doesn't it?
It would be comforting to me if there were some kind of uniformity of desire to make this woman into a pariah unfit to be around other humans, let alone in my own graduate program.
But what would really kill me is that, judging by the horrifying number of 'you go-girl!' comments from academics, at least some of my fellow grad students thought she was just peachy keen and "an inspiration."
I'm not normally on board with the 'society is going to hell in a handbasket' crowd, but damn. This has been an eye-opening day.
She paid no price. The twenty years went by in a blink and now we have a picture of her looking all victimized in the NYT. Forget your fucking PHD. Do you think we are going to let you lecture the children we didn't kill, that we loved and raised through good and difficult times? Do you think it is OK that the children who were allowed to live and would like to earn a PHD are denied that spot so that your redemption can be certified and that the university can ride a higher horse? It isn't.
that quote from Stauffer looks just awful — "Fox News... I mean, c'mon." Is that the way insiders at the exquisitely eminent university speak?
You're actually surprised by this?
Certain people can literally get away with murder...if they have the right politics and/or are useful to the right people.
"I think "Fox News" may be a euphemism for those people who possess common sense, i.e., non-indoctrinated people"
Thomas Sowell noted in one of his books that liberal elites have a certain contempt for common sense, because, well, it's so,..., common.
Actually, common sense appears to be in short supply these days, but that hasn't made leftist elites and wannabe elites value it. All those assholes Pants is quoting undoubtedly preen themselves in seeing moral issues in a far more nuanced way than those mouth-breathing Fox News watchers with their outmoded Judeo-Christian values.
I'd like to hear from the other schools considering hiring her. Perhaps NYT has done decency a favor, inadvertently.
How long would a man who killed his four year old son have to serve in prison before he was released? Would he get a full ride offer to a prestigious university? This stinks of female privilege. I guess she could be worse, though. She could have owned a slave at a time that it was legal.
Jeez, the woman just killed a kid- it isn't like she was against gay marriage or a known Trump supporter.
Iowan2 said it first. HoodlumDoodlum provided further context. And then Biff came along and put it over the fences. Thank you iowan2, Hoodlum, and Biff. I think Biff is right in that this story isnt about this case.
C'mon. (Word of the Day) A Long Lesson on Forgiveness & Understanding, and how it is to be doled out, as brought to you by NYT or the Ivy Leagues. ?????? C'mon!!!!
Thank you to Mike for also noting the list of Things Not Forgotten. You might add the IRS.
Failed Poems by NKVD Chief Yagoda (1934 edt)
Some will be forgiven. Others will be not.
The one thing you shouldnt forget
Or, you will find to your regret,
Is Who decides Whom gets shot.
"...Nearly every day the Times reminds me of why the Democrats lost the election in 2016."
AMEN!
Harvard has its choice of the talent pool for everything -- undergraduate, graduate, fellows, professors. Plus the money to pay them.
They chose Bradley Manning. They chose this person.
Harvard is well and truly fucked.
In the head.
K School?
I can't find out where she's practicing. The K school is a cemetery for crappy politicians. See Dukakis, M. The college and the university were once serious places.
Where is she? I would like to know.
In college, if you get drunk at a frat party, and make an ass of yourself, and have awkward drunken sex with a female, you will get shamed and kicked out.
If you kill your 4 year old boy, Hey, come on in!
Leftism is so warped.
You literally have to swat it down, wherever it rears its ugly head.
The Ivy League, where the best and brightest are educated in smugness, arrogance, and the "correct" prejudices , totems, and mascots.
Logic and rhetoric are no longer available.
I wonder if there's less than complete overlap between the "Merton in Minnesota"s who celebrate this monster, and the sort of NYT reader who was appalled when Trump, in a speech, as a rhetorical device, mused about a hypothetical situation in which he shot somebody.
On the other hand, it does give me a warm feeling to think that I, too, could one day be accepted for graduate study at Harvard, if I followed Michelle Jones' example, and murdered her.
I'm guessing the number of convicted murderers accepted into a graduate program at any of the Ivy League schools in history is rather small. Redemption is one thing, but getting to the pinnacle of the graduate school pecking order is quite another. Then again, based on today's news, one can also be a former treasonous soldier and get hired by Harvard thanks to ticking a special identity box, so perhaps it's not surprising that murder is also excusable in the eyes of the university.
Fear of the reaction is a lame reason to object, and now Harvard is getting roasted for even accepting her in the first place along with getting roasted from its progressive friends who don't understand why murdering a child should be a disqualifying event.
I believe they've backed off on Bradley Manning too. Instead of a fellowship he's going to get one lecture or something.
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