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Harvard’s Assault on Freedom of Association
Whether you follow the work of my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) or not, you may be aware of the ongoing dispute over Harvard University’s single-gender social organizations (e.g., the “Final Clubs”), which the university has been trying to drive to extinction through increasingly unsubtle means.
Last May, Harvard announced that members of these social organizations would be ineligible for recommendation for prestigious scholarships, chief among them the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, and also be ineligible for leadership positions in student organizations. It’s been a dark comedy of errors ever since. Perhaps sensing the backlash to come from the recommendations of the policy’s implementation committee, which recommended making the policy even harsher, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced the formation of a new review committee in January 2017. But Khurana then turned right around and said he would accept “nearly all” of the implementation committee’s draconian recommendations, and then appointed himself the head of the new review committee.
But even that obvious charade didn’t prepare us for the singular awfulness of the new committee’s recommendations, which aim to “phase out” single-gender social organizations entirely by 2022. Worse, they target not only single-gender organizations, but any social organizations whose membership criteria are in any way exclusionary. And students would be punished for running afoul of the new policy:
Harvard students may neither join nor participate in final clubs, fraternities or sororities, or other similar private, exclusionary social organizations that are exclusively or predominantly made up of Harvard students, whether they have any local or national affiliation, during their time in the College. The College will take disciplinary action against students who are found to be participating in such organizations. Violations will be adjudicated by the Administrative Board.
There was a lone dissent on Khurana’s review committee, from professor David Haig, who rightly criticized the scope and intent of the policy. “Rather than certain benefits being withheld,” he writes, ”the recommendation is that membership in these organizations be considered incompatible with being a Harvard undergraduate.”
I could marvel at the fact that only one member of the nearly 30-person student and faculty committee objected to this staggeringly illiberal attack on Harvard students’ freedom of association, but it seems about right, unfortunately, for a committee assembled by a dean who had already signaled his support for such draconian measures at the outset. It is unclear at the moment whether the Harvard administration will accept the recommendations as they are. What is clear, though, is that if it does it will have abandoned any pretense of being a defender of liberal values.
UPDATE: Harvard professor Steven Pinker has condemned the proposal as “a terrible recommendation, which is at odds with the ideals of a university.” Former Harvard College Dean Harry Lewis offers additional criticisms on his blog.
Published in Education
My principal form of discrimination is to associate with whom I please. Harvard fails my test and would never get any recommendation or acknowledgement of any status from me. This will apply anywhere else the actions described in the OP occur.
Harvard to potential students: You attend our $60,000/year institution, you play by our rules. We determine where and with whom you will live, associate, study, and interact. Abandon individual liberty, all who enter here.
Meanwhile, universities are setting up black-only residences and graduation ceremonies.
So if five female students meet every Sunday night for a study group, they’d be in violation? I think so, under the language you quote.
What great evil is it that Harvard thinks it is eradicating? Sounds to me like they’re trying to remedy Nature’s terrible, arbitrary division of humans into two sexes.
A young friend of mine recently wondered out loud whether he might be a bigot because he just wasn’t sure he’d ever want to have sex with a trans-woman.
Is Harvard’s next step going to be something like:
“Harvard students are free to remain celibate. If they choose to engage in sexual relations with other students, however, they shall not discriminate on the basis of gender, perceived gender, or gender self-identification. STudents found to be engaging in a pattern of initiating and/or consenting to sexual relations with others of only 1(one) gender, perceived gender, or gender self- identification shall be subject to disciplinary action. “
Don’t sue yet. Try this: Find a single sex social club at Harvard and, if they are willing to go along, get half of them to write to the Registrar saying they now “identify” as the opposite sex. As a matter of school records (which must remain confidential under FERPA, btw), the club membership would then officially “identify” as 50/50, male to female. If Harvard administrators take disciplinary action against the club anyway, it would necessarily have to be on the basis of the sexual identity Harvard’s administrators have assigned to the membership, despite the school’s own records, and the members’ wishes. If Harvard does this, the club then counter-sues Harvard for gender identity discrimination under the Massachusetts state law passed last year. You’d get your fees that way.
Unless you’re leftists, of course. Then you can vandalize and threaten at will.
People on the Left are now advocating raising “genderless” children. I guess that means, never looking down when they change diapers? Referring to the kid as “it”?
Seriously though, it’s a real thing.
So when those it-kids get to Harvard, I guess this policy will be obviated.
Harvard should only accept its.
Yes, and most students will gladly do so so they can join “the only club” that matters…the David Brooks Better-than-you Club. These kids are so conditioned to rule following just by the fact they got into Harvard, that this prohibition on association is a no-brainer for them. Anything for the credential…even if you check your liberty at the gates. Quite the Faustian bargain.
That does it. I will never hire a Harvard grad, or donate to the school. I’m also doubling my contribution to Hillsdale. Yes, I discriminate.
I hope everyone gets this double entendre: Harvard’s outgoing president is Drew Faust.
Pinker, even though he seems to be a leftist, is very sound on such matters. His book, The Blank Slate, takes on many of equalist ideas the Left holds dear. I’m surprised that he’s still at Harvard. You’d expect students to be outside the president’s office chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Steven Pinker has to go.” Maybe after this, they will.
When I have a question I’m mulling in my mind on issues like this, Pinker’s Blank Slate is one of my first sources. He has done great service getting human nature back in the picture.
They can get around the rule by having several members of a male only club state that they identify as female.
Ahem…yes…I meant to do that. (But I do like a double entendre! LOL!)
So no fraternities or sororities? It’s scary – they are taking the fun out of campus life – by forcing confusing policies that have nothing to do with school, like forcing all these gender policies on the military. Harvard Divinity School has equally undergone a radical transformation in a short time – instead of focusing on the Divine, in their student review, articles have titles like ‘Queer is the new Black’. Was it this bad 10 years ago?