Dr Michael Johnston: A golden opportunity for New Zealand’s universities

It is hard to feel sorry for Harvard University.

For two years running, Harvard has come at the bottom of the free speech rankings according to the Foundation Individual Rights and Expression. It has a shameful history of deplatforming speakers and censuring academics who express views at odds with progressive orthodoxy.

But none of this justifies Trump’s punitive ban on international students enrolling at the university. His treatment of Harvard is at least as illiberal as anything the university has done itself.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Ardern & her ilk called birdbrains....

The US President calls former NZ PM Ardern & her ilk at Harvard's Kennedy School "radical left birdbrains only capable of teaching FAILURE".

Yesterday the US President lambasted Harvard University. He ordered federal funding that it receives to be cut. For those curious about the inner workings of such places, the comments the President made as a Social Media Post weren't directed at the University as a whole. They were aimed at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. New Zealand's former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a Fellow of the Kennedy School, with an appointment lasting from 2024 to 2025.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Ardern in the USA

Harvard's Kennedy School should be using her as a Case Study of the Dangers of Charisma

Having left Kiwis the legacy of a cost-of-living crisis, falling education standards for our poorest children & racial division, former PM Ardern is now shacked up in the Kennedy School at Harvard University, enjoying the pleasures of being on the receiving end of the University's $US 60 billion endowment. She recently gave a rousing speech there, saying the secret to great government policy is to "bring in the public". Did the out-of-touch Harvard folks not hear about the landslide defeat her Labour Party just suffered because it was hard to find anyone she brought with her? Nearly every policy she enacted has been reversed these past months because the public slam-dunk rejected them.

Oliver Wiseman and Bari Weiss: Claudine Gay, We Hardly Knew Ye…

Can Harvard be saved? 

Why did Claudine Gay step down yesterday as president of Harvard? In a letter announcing the bombshell decision, Gay wrote that it was in “the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.”

She also blamed racism: “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” Gay wrote in her email Tuesday.

Suze: Harvard Is Learning Lessons the Hard Way

Flying the flag of personal political opinion has consequences

Influences at work during Covid twisted our thinking using irrational fear and withholding solutions that might have alleviated those fears; in the process revealing the absence of three big-ticket political items: genuine political opposition, a properly functioning fourth estate and academic institutions exhibiting fair and open debate.

Carolyn Moynihan: Speaking at Harvard, Jacinda Ardern stokes the ‘disinformation’ wars

New Zealanders have heard a lot about “disinformation” in the last couple of years. And “misinformation”.

According to the home-grown research group The Disinformation Project, “Misinformation is false information that was not created with the intent to harm people,” while “Disinformation is false information that was created with the intent to harm a person, community, or organisation.”

Either way, what the TDP calls “information disorders” have become such an issue for the government that our Prime Minister made them the subject of the Commencement speech she gave at Harvard University last week.

Unfortunately, it was rather one-sided, reflecting values that, judging by the frequent applause, went down well in one of the bastions of liberalism, but are themselves a breeding ground of information disorders.

Guy Hatchard: The Necessity of Kindness

This morning Jacinda Ardern received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, hitting out in her acceptance speech against keyboard warriors spreading disinformation:

“When facts are turned into fiction, and fiction turned into fact, you stop debating ideas and you start debating conspiracy.”

Was she echoing Orwell’s 1984?

David Cohen: How New Zealand's zero Covid strategy fell apart

The biggest thing in the political rock world returns to the international stage this spring with a one-off appearance at Harvard University on 26 May. The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, is booked to be the venerable institution’s main speaking act at its 371stCommencement, welcoming the classes of 2022 and 2021. Harvard lauds Ardern as ‘one of the most respected leaders in the world’. But trying telling that to fed-up Kiwis.

Ardern herself has been off the international speaking circuit ever since she declared her country a no-go zone in response to the pandemic, effectively shutting the nation of five million off from all physical contact with the outside world. Out of sight, maybe, but certainly not out of mind since that snap closure of March 2020. The tsunami of laudatory notices she has received overseas continues apace.