GREAT MOMENTS IN EDUCATION – AT 11:16 A.M. ET:  Harvard is the most influential university in the United States.  So this is especially discouraging, and frightening.   From The Fire, an excellent group that fights for the rights of students: 

BOSTON, May 6, 2016—In a stunning attack on freedom of association, Harvard University announced today that members of independent, single-sex, off-campus organizations will be blacklisted from Rhodes and Marshall scholarships and banned from leadership of on-campus organizations or athletic teams.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust stated that next year, members of fraternities, sororities, and “final clubs” will begin to be denied these opportunities in an effort to foster “inclusion” and “address deeply rooted gender attitudes.” According to Dean Rakesh Khurana, who recommended the changes, such organizations have been independent from Harvard since 1984. They operate as off-campus entities and do not receive any recognition or benefit from the university.

“Outrageously, Harvard has decided that 2016 is the right time to revive the blacklist,” said Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which defends freedom of association on campus. “This year’s undesirables are members of off-campus clubs that don’t match Harvard’s political preferences. In the 1950s, perhaps Communists would have been excluded. I had hoped that universities were past the point of asking people, ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a group we don’t like?’ Sadly, they are not.”

COMMENT:  Modern McCarthyism mostly comes from the left, so this doesn't really surprise me.  What does surprise me is that Drew Faust, the president of Harvard, is involved.  She's usually more thoughtful than this.  I'd imagine that, in some way, she was threatened.

This is very serious stuff, and I wonder how the groups involved will react.  We can assume that they're in touch with their lawyers.  I would hope that they would jointly sue Harvard. 

I wonder how schemes like this will affect women's colleges and historically black schools.  This is a can of worms.  Of course, we're speaking only of inclusive worms.

May 7, 2016