Her Politics Are Showing
Posted on May 21st, 2009 in Uncategorized |
Scooping the Crimson, the Globe reports that Drew Faust has endorsed federal legislation known as the Dream Act, which would create a pathway to citizenship for students who are also illegal immigrants.
She acknowledged that students with “immigration status issues” attend Harvard, and said the bill would be a “lifeline” to such students.
…Harvard students said they have been lobbying Faust for months on the issue. They held a rally and submitted a petition with 120 signatures, said Harvard junior Kyle de Beausset, one of the organizers….
But Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said Harvard should not admit illegal immigrants because they displace students here legally.
“Maybe the elites at Harvard should come down from their ivory tower and get some ground perspective on what kind of cost and competition that legal US residents are actually incurring these days,” said Dane.
Dane’s argument would be more compelling if it were coherent. What does that mean—”what kind of cost and competition….legal US residents are incurring”? One hardly worries that hordes of illegal immigrants are stealing places at Harvard from more deserving US citizens. Besides, they’re here anyway—it’s not like they’re sneaking across the border to take the SATs. Better to have an educated illegal immigrant contributing to the economy than a poor one taking services from it.
Still, here’s something I don’t understand.
Faust, who declined to be interviewed….
So the president of a publicly supported university takes a position on a matter of public importance and then refuses to speak to the press about it?
As a matter of principle, that’s dingy. As a matter of public relations, such reticence makes Faust look weak—oh, sure, she’ll take a stand in a letter to a friendly senator, but talk to a reporter who may ask her to go off-script? Nuh-uh.
(Which, of course, makes it look like there’s a puppet behind Faust, a Karl Rove figure with liberal ideas—someone who said, you should do this, I’ll write the letter, you don’t have to say anything—kind of like the people behind Caroline Kennedy’s absurd Senate campaign.)
Harvard pays so many presidential advisers and PR people so much money, and yet they fail to realize that, in obsessively trying to protect Drew Faust, they simply make her look like she needs to be protected. They also create the appearance of a university president who is more interested in doing business behind closed doors and without accountability than in exposing her actions to public debate and possible criticism. Which may be true, but isn’t the kind of image they should be promoting for Faust.
11 Responses
5/21/2009 7:29 am
I wonder if the advisors keep her from reporters in case the questions stray from issues at hand (support for illegal immigrants) to other matters, like finances, layoffs, budget cuts, Allston, endowment investment strategy, etc. Maybe they feel better not to start. Still a bad idea, but might explain some of why she won’t speak on an issue she might actually have some strong feelings about.
5/21/2009 7:29 am
Excuse me, darling, but how does one instance of her declining to be interviewed translate into Rovian conspiracy and the rest of your blah blah blah?
5/21/2009 7:47 am
Um, aside from puff piece profiles, when has she been interviewed on any topic?
5/21/2009 7:49 am
Maybe she just doesn’t have time to answer every reporter’s questions because she’s trying to run a university.
5/21/2009 8:11 am
During this budget crisis, all the focus has been on what individual schools (especially FAS) have to do. But over the last decade, the massive growth in administration has been at the University level: the provost’s office, the vice presidents’ offices, etc. The much-criticized growth in FAS administration is minuscule by comparison. Not to mention that the investing blunders that have contributed to the crisis are obviously the responsibility of the central administration, not FAS.
So all the talk, until this year, was about “One Harvard.” Now that budgets need to be slashed, it’s apparently back to each tub on its own bottom. Within FAS, salaries and faculty searches have been frozen, student services cut, early retirement and layoffs have been occuring. Meanwhile, what is happening in the central administration, where senior staff are at a higher pay grade than in FAS? Is there a salary freeze over there (in Holyoke)? Layoffs? Reshaping?
Faust and others insist they are committed to maintaining Harvard’s central educational mission. Isn’t it at least possible that doing this would require shifting resources away from the professional schools and central administration to the one school that educates undergraduates, namely FAS? But I’ve heard no talk of how the pain is to be shared across the schools, perhaps sparing FAS some of the worst. The silence of the president on this issue is troubling, as is the apparent failure of Smith to stand up for FAS interests.
5/21/2009 8:30 am
Good comment from the previous poster…
Still, you’d have to concede that the press about the shooting at Kirkland and Faust’s likely controversial statement about immigrants are brilliant ways to diffuse the rising voices that were asking for transparency in the budget cuts and questionning the fairness of how the adjustment process would be shared. President Faust clearly has capable communications advisors working for the University.
5/21/2009 8:34 am
You may be underestimating students’ attention spans and focus. It may take a few more distractions to get them off the budget cuts and Commencement is a golden opportunity for students to get the attention of graduates and donors.
If you are right about Smoke and Mirrors we should expect to see a few more semi-controversial news items next week. Even if we do, this may not be enough to derail the student leadership questionning who is to be fired and who and what has been protected from cuts.
5/21/2009 9:32 am
What’s going on in Central Administration and elsewhere around the University? How about budgets being slashed, services being cut, people taking early retirement, layoffs, offices being restructured, etc. But you know what else, there’s a lot of creative thinking going on as to how people can still do their jobs, and in fact, do more, even if the resources just aren’t there. That seems to be a good bit different from what I understand is happening within FAS where there appears to be nothing more than righteous indignation and whining since word came down that they’ll be subject to cuts as well.
But then, why should people be surprised by this?
5/21/2009 9:49 am
What’s more, FAS has been deficit spending for many, many years. Faculty of other schools have grumbled that in shared agreements to run various centers (of which there may be too many, but that’s another point) that include a need to share the burden of raising funds, FAS has not been willing to pull it’s weight — beneath them and their center of the universe perspective. But by all means, cut the graduate schools that have relentlessly brought in donors and grants, afterall their just professional schools not lofty.
5/21/2009 3:22 pm
There are more severe budget cuts (-15%) and more early retirements happening in central admin than in FAS, plus salary freezes for non-unionized staff, and hiring freezes all around. I promise you there is plenty of pain to go around, it’s not just about FAS.
5/21/2009 8:48 pm
There’s an epidemic of early retirements taking place all over Harvard. Not just in FAS.
What I can’t understand is this. If the situation is so desperate that Harvard can’t take a downturn in the economy, how did it get to be this way? The budgets were expenditures are out of sync with income could not have gotten to this point overnight, but gradually. How did this happen? Was there anyone paying attention? It is hard to blame this crisis on Faust or Smith, they have been in their current positions too short a time to take the blame. Why isn’t anyone asking WHO is responsible for this mess? Isn’t asking this question essential to ensuring that appropriate corrective action can be taken? If this crisis is but a sympton of a deeper structural and organizational disfunction, shouldn’t those be addressed directly, rather than try to deal with the symptoms of the underlying problem?