The Harvard Kennedy School has revoked an invitation extended to Chelsea Manning to be a visiting fellow at their university, calling the invitation a "mistake," which is code for backing down because of CIA pressure. The transgender activist and former U.S. soldier was jailed for years after giving classified documents to Wikileaks, despite a Pentagon study that found her leaks had no strategic impact on the war.
This little fact didn't stop the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, from canceling an appearance at the university because of the initial invitation to Manning, which he called a "shameful stamp of approval." Manning was among a group of 10 people--including Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski, who helped Trump make it to the White House. In response to the withdrawal, Manning tweeted about the honor of being the first "disinvited trans woman" and also hung up a phone call with the Harvard dean, Douglas Elmendorf, who tried to justify rescinding the invitation.
The controversial snub from Harvard is, quite frankly, ridiculous given that the college is still allowing Lewandowski, the campaign manager who literally assaulted someone, stay on as a fellow and has supported another government leaker, Henry Kissinger, for years. Kissinger, let's all note, leaked private information about President Lyndon Johnson's 1968 Vietnam peace talks to the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon, who then sabotaged the talks to help get himself elected. That action, by Kissinger, led to the Vietnam War continuing for seven more years, which resulted in 21,000 more U.S. service member deaths.
In an attempt to rectify the shameful situation, Dean Elmendorf has said that Harvard's doors are still open and welcomed Manning to "spend a day at the Kennedy school and speak," but given Harvard's history and their handling of all of this, we won't hold our breath for that to happen.
