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Human Shields
This post is not about Hamas and its propensity to use human shields in its conflict with Israel. I am talking about a problem that takes place in America when its institutions desperately seek to avoid change.
It was announced yesterday that Harvard’s authority to enroll foreign students has been suspended by the Trump administration. This is the latest of multiple moves by both Harvard and the White House toward addressing the government’s desire to establish a new approach to higher education. Will some innocent students be hurt? Of course. And that will be the progressive talking point for media and other political allies in the ongoing conflict. (As an aside: Some students will benefit by transferring to other universities whose reputation is not tanking like Harvard’s.)
This argument (harm to students/children) is not new. Any opportunity to claim, whether in education, immigration law, or health, that any change will do avoidable harm naturally follows such adjustments. Nor is it limited to children and young adults in training. It is also used to cite harm to women, various minorities, the economically disadvantaged, etc. The tactic is always to put a “human face” on the consequences of change.
Truth be told, there are always innocents who are harmed when institutions are in need of correction. There is never a consequence-free change. There is never a perfectly executed change in which no one is harmed unjustly.
And if that is the standard, then no institution can be prevented from continuing along the path it has chosen. Remember that the next time a politician, media figure, or an institution’s mouthpiece tells you of the horrible personal consequences that change is making. They are setting out a “human shield.” They want to make change agents the bad guys, when, in reality, it is institutional unwillingness to make changes in their operations and objectives that is causing harm — both to the public and to human shields.
Published in General
There is harm no matter what you do. DEI harms both those whose merit is deliberately ignored and the institutions who advocate it by the devaluation of their reputations. Its elimination harms the bureaucracy.
Thomas Sowell makes the argument that when a student gains entrance to an occupation or institution for which they are unprepared, they suffer the humiliation of failure when they might otherwise excel in a job or institution that better fits their capabilities. That is not a racial argument unless you choose to make it so.
But it is an unpopular argument in today’s culture. And That is a symptom of our current culture’s sickness.
Question … in WW2 were there cries from the Left that civilians in Berlin or Dresden were being indiscriminately killed, or were starving? No. Why not? It’s a version of FAFO. The civilian population authorized the policies of the government that lead them into war. Provoke the bull … get the horns. Same with Gaza. They voted for Hamas. This is the road they chose. FAFO.
Why not? Mainly because by the time we entered the war Germany had attacked the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union was all in on destroying Germany.
Most of the leftist movements decrying treatment of civilians by Western nations through 1991 were funded by the Soviets as part of their war against the Free World. It was a form of guerilla warfare. Those movements were active in the US prior to June 21 1941 to undermine US support for Britain. They all flipped off as if a switch were thrown when Germany and the Soviets went to war.
Similarly, in the 21st century these people are being funded by China, and for the same reason – it is an effort to undermine the West. History may not often repeat, but it certainly rhymes.
Bravo, Rodin, bravo.
If Harvard did not take Federal funds, would Trump have the authority in peace time to prevent them from enrolling foreign students?
I expect the federal government can always deny student visas.
Somehow, I can’t find it in my heart to grieve for foreign students, many Chinese and Arab currently attending Harvard who will be forced to find another school to attend. Of the former group one might ask, how many are agents of the CCP’s intelligence arm, and how many of both groups are likely to become American citizens in future. The facts show that very little is accomplished in terms of changing the views of these young people that is of much benefit to our country. I remember too well the line from Bridge on the River Kwai when Sesiu Hayakawa says, ” I was educated in your country, at UCLA.” only he said UCRA. At that point he was the commandant of a POW camp using American and English soldiers as slave labor to build a bridge. I suspect that is a more common outcome of educating foreigners in our schools than that they become advocates for the USA when they return home. If ending the practice at Harvard and a bunch of other schools currently giving a home to Chinese students, like UPenn, and sucking up vast amount of what can only be called graft from their governments causes some disruption in the finances of those schools, perhaps they will be forced to fire a bunch of the deadwood in their administrations that provide no benefit to students. Now, there’s an idea whose time has come!
If DEI were just some selective tokenism to make white liberals feel good, there would not be this death struggle with Trump. The fact is that DEI is institutionalized mediocrity. “Victims” and “allies” do not need to be competent in any genuine academic field. They just need to be au courant in lefty lingo. A return to merit, substance and performance is a career=-ender for a huge slice of the academic industry and because they are vastly better at inside politics than actual scholars, they speak for the institution.
If Harvard were smart, they would use Trump as an excuse to clean house. Golly, we would have liked to preserve the huge cadre of DEI political officers, continue to eliminate standards that once made us distinctive and continue to stuff the curriculum with utter garbage but gosh darn it, that Trump guy forced us to change. But instead they are choosing to double down on stupid. Win or lose, their image is horrifically damaged.
I was stationed at Whiteman AFB when the first operational B2 stealth bombers were delivered. During a security briefing we were told that after the USAF announced that B2s would be coming to Whiteman, the number of Chinese students at the nearby University of Central Missouri tripled.
Looks like a court has blocked the executive action again.
I am reminded of Bastiat’s book, or the modern version “Economics in One Lesson”. When a change is proposed and those who oppose it start wailing about those who will be hurt by the change, they never consider all those who are currently being hurt by the status quo, and who will be immeasurably helped by the change.
When evaluating a change, one must always consider what is seen and what is not seen.