Sarah Jones at TNR notes the Ed Gillespie, failed candidate for gov in VA, will be a teaching fellow at Harvard this spring. Gillespie, you all may recall, adopted electoral-college winner Trump’s pernicious race-baiting tactics to turn out voters. Perhaps he will teach a seminar on the art of demagoguery from Pitchfork Ben Tillman to Donald Trump.
Jones also points that he is not the only one. Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowsk are also “taking their talents” to Harvard’s ivied halls. Spicer, according to the Crimson, is predictably phoning it in:
“I was in a classroom session with Spicer and he told the same stories, including several easily refutable lies, that he’s told publicly since leaving the White House”
Presumably he must make do without his motorized podium. Lewandowski, a former lobbyist who as a political factotum assaulted several members of the press, can no doubt speak as an expert on money in politics and campaign security. (Chelsea Manning was apparently disinvited on bequest of the CIA).
Spicer, Fightin’ Ed, and Corey join a long list of luminaries who prefer the prestigious academic track to lobbying. Former Harvard fellows include Obama obstructionists Lamar Alexander, Iran-baiting Kelley Ayotte, and Eric “from Tea Party to Establishment” Cantor. This is not an uncommon practice. Alleged war criminal Henry Kissinger had an endowed chair a Georgetown for years (although Columbia students had the good sense to shut down the effort to install him there). Lawbreaker John Yoo teaches law at U-Cal Berkely. And these positions are not at some podunk ****hole of a college but are regarded as our more prestigious centers of learning.
But, hey, they are celebrities! The draw students! They draw donor money! So what the heck if they were involved in dirty money, fostered racism, broke the law, and engaged in mass murder. Book em! (no, not in jail, Dano—for spring semester!).
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Edit: Readers seem to be missing the point. If Harvard, well the Kennedy School, is a hot-bed of anything, it is of conventionality, as show by is celebrity-in-residence program. It would be one thing of the guest associates had distinguished careers. There is nothing at all distinguished about the suspects listed, other than exposure. They are guilty not of partisanship, but of star******* (said readers must not be familiar with the Rolling Stones as well). And enabling the bull****.
The appointments to Kissinger and Yoo are far worse, given that both skirted the law while in office. Are there any indiscretions on the part of a politician sufficient to earn academic censure?
Harvard, this one’s for you: