Exactly so, Miriam.
Hijacked for certain.
But it was no accident.
I'm just getting to the Chris Hedges article. I will grab some sort
of snack, and settle in to listen to the Prophet Chris.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/17/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think that Chris Hedges has described what has happened to Harvard. Think
about this story and the one about Chelsea Manning. Harvard, like most of
our universities, has been corrupted. Its educational mission has been
hijacked. Academic freedom is an empty phrase because the universities, like
the New York Times and the Washington Post, have become merely mouthpieces
for corporate government manipulation of the population.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2017 11:40 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Remarkable Story of Michelle Jones'
Redemption and Harvard's Cowardice
Much of that which is taught at Harvard is nothing more than
"indoctrination" into the American Empire way of life.
That is not to say that Harvard and other "prestigious" schools do not
excite the minds of their students, but even as they offer challenging
courses, they direct thinking through the total "educational process".
Our educational system spends more time indoctrinating, rather than
challenging young minds. It is simply a matter of self preservation on the
part of the Empire.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/16/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Harvard hasn't done too well lately. They offered Chelsea Manning a
fellowship and opportunity to speak, and then retracted the offer at
the behest of a CIA torturer who holds a similar position.
Miriam
Michelle Jones was incarcerated in Indiana for more than two decades
and was released last month. In a breathtaking feat of rehabilitation,
Jones has become a published scholar of American history and an author
of plays.
(photo: Andrew Spear/The Marshall Project)
The Remarkable Story of Michelle Jones' Redemption and Harvard's
Cowardice
By Andrew Spear, The Marshall Project
15 September 17
Michelle Jones was released last month after serving more than two
decades in an Indiana prison for the murder of her 4-year-old son. The
very next day, she arrived at New York University, a promising Ph.D.
student in American studies.
In a breathtaking feat of rehabilitation, Jones, now 45, became a
published scholar of American history while behind bars, and presented
her work by videoconference to historians' conclaves and the Indiana
General Assembly.
With no internet access and a prison library that skewed toward
romance novels, she led a team of inmates that pored through reams of
photocopied documents from the state archives to produce the Indiana
Historical Society's best research project last year. As prisoner No.
970554, Jones also wrote several dance compositions and historical
plays, one of which is slated to open at an Indianapolis theater in
December.
N.Y.U. was one of several top schools that recruited her for their
doctoral programs. She was also among 18 selected from more than 300
applicants to Harvard University's history program. But in a rare
override of a department's authority to choose its graduate students,
Harvard's top brass overturned Jones's admission after some professors
raised concerns that she downplayed her crime during the application
process.
Elizabeth Hinton, one of the Harvard historians who backed Jones,
called her "one of the strongest candidates in the country last year,
period." The case "throws into relief," she added, the question of
"how much do we really believe in the possibility of human
redemption?"
The Marshall Project obtained internal emails and memos related to
Jones's application, and interviewed eight professors and
administrators involved in reviewing it.
While top Harvard officials typically rubber-stamp departmental
admissions decisions, in this case the university's leadership -
including the president, provost, and deans of the graduate school -
reversed one, according to the emails and interviews, out of concern
that her background would cause a backlash among rejected applicants,
conservative news outlets or parents of students.
The admissions dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
declined to be interviewed, and a university spokeswoman did not
respond to a set of eight questions about the case, saying that "as a
policy, we do not comment on individual applicants."
Instead, the spokeswoman offered a general statement saying the
graduate school "is committed to recruiting and enrolling students
from all backgrounds" and "strives to create an inclusive and
supportive environment where all students can thrive."
Harvard has, indeed, made room for a wider range of voices on its
campus in recent years, including the formerly incarcerated. Drew
Faust, a historian who is departing as Harvard's president in June
after a decade, has expanded global outreach and financial aid and
hired a host of minority faculty who have broadened perspectives about
prison reform and black culture. In that mode of outreach, staff
members of both Harvard's history and American studies departments
took it upon themselves to type Jones's application into Harvard's
online system since she could not.
But after the history department accepted her and the American studies
program listed her as a top alternate, two American studies professors
flagged Jones's file for the admissions dean of the Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences. In a memo to university administrators, these
professors said the admissions dean had told them Jones's selection
would be reviewed by the president and provost, and questioned whether
she had minimized her crime "to the point of misrepresentation."
"We didn't have some preconceived idea about crucifying Michelle,"
said John Stauffer, one of the two American studies professors. "But
frankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google,
and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200
grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a
minority. I mean, c'mon."
Jones got pregnant at 14 after what she called non-consensual sex with
a high-school senior. Her mother responded by beating her in the
stomach with a board, according to the prosecutor who later handled
her case, and she was placed in a series of group homes and foster
families.
In a personal statement accompanying her Harvard application, Jones
said she had a psychological breakdown after years of abandonment and
domestic violence, and inflicted similar treatment on her own son,
Brandon Sims.
The boy died in 1992 in circumstances that remain unclear; the body
was never found.
Two years later, during a stay at a mental-health crisis center, Jones
admitted that she had buried him without notifying the police or
Brandon's father and his family. At her trial, a former friend
testified that Jones confessed to having beaten the boy and then
leaving him alone for days in their apartment, eventually returning to
find him dead in his bedroom.
Jones was sentenced to 50 years in prison, but released after 20 based
on her good behavior and educational attainment.
In her statement to Harvard, Jones wrote of Brandon: "I have made a
commitment to myself and him that with the time I have left, I will
live a redeemed life, one of service and value to others."
Brandon's father and grandmother could not be reached for comment.
'Where were all the ladies?'
Incarcerated in 1996, Jones worked for five years in the law library
at Indiana Women's Prison, and got certified as a paralegal. She
received a bachelor's degree from Ball State University in 2004, and
audited graduate-level classes at Indiana University.
Her blossoming as a historian began in 2012, when Kelsey Kauffman, a
former professor who volunteered at the prison, encouraged inmates to
research the origins of their involuntary home, which opened in 1873
as the first adult female correctional facility in the United States.
Soon, Jones was placing library requests for reference books and, when
they arrived months later, scouring the footnotes for what to order next.
After meticulously logging demographic data from century-old
registries from the Indiana Women's Prison, Jones made a discovery:
There were no prostitutes on the rolls. "Where," she asked, "were all
the ladies?"
meaning
so-called ladies of the night.
With the help of a state librarian, she and another inmate realized
that a Catholic laundry house that opened around that time in
Indianapolis was actually a reformatory for "fallen women" - those
convicted of sex offenses.
Then they found more than 30 similar institutions around the country,
akin to the Magdalene Laundries recently unearthed in Ireland.
Under Kauffman's tutelage, they wrote up their findings, published
them in an Indiana academic journal, and won the state historical society
award.
Jones also presented the paper remotely at multiple academic
conferences, and, at others, shared different work about the abuse of
early inmates at Indiana Women's Prison by its Quaker founders.
With the help of a state librarian, she and another inmate realized
that a Catholic laundry house that opened around that time in
Indianapolis was actually a reformatory for "fallen women" - those
convicted of sex offenses.
Then they found more than 30 similar institutions around the country,
akin to the Magdalene Laundries recently unearthed in Ireland.
Under Kauffman's tutelage, they wrote up their findings, published
them in an Indiana academic journal, and won the state historical society
award.
Jones also presented the paper remotely at multiple academic
conferences, and, at others, shared different work about the abuse of
early inmates at Indiana Women's Prison by its Quaker founders.
Jones was supposed to be released in October, but received a two-month
reduction of her sentence so she could start a Ph.D. program on time
this fall. She applied to eight, with Harvard her first choice because
of historians there whose work on incarceration she admired.
While those historians embraced her application, others at Harvard
questioned not only whether Jones had disclosed enough information
about her past, but whether she could handle its pressure-cooker
atmosphere.
"One of our considerations," Stauffer said in an interview, "was if
this candidate is admitted to Harvard, where everyone is an elite
among elites, that adjustment could be too much."
Alison Frank Johnson, director of graduate studies for the history
department, dismissed that argument as paternalistic.
"Michelle was sentenced in a courtroom to serve X years, but we
decided - unilaterally - that it should be X years plus no Harvard,"
she said. "Is it that she did not show the appropriate degree of
horror in herself, by applying?
"We're not her priests," Johnson added, using an expletive.
'A sentence is a sentence.'
Over the past decade, some universities, corporations, and state and
local governments have begun to break down barriers that block
formerly incarcerated people from education and employment. A "ban the
box" campaign by civil-rights groups led scores of institutions,
including Harvard's graduate schools, to remove a question about
criminal records from their initial applications.
But most of these efforts focus on giving a fresh start to nonviolent
offenders, especially those caught up by tough sentencing laws for
drug crimes.
"It's like we only have enough imagination - and courage - to envision
second chances for the people who shouldn't have been in prison in the
first place," Johnson said.
Jones's many supporters include Heather Ann Thompson, who won the
Pulitzer Prize in history this spring, and submitted a recommendation
letter on her behalf. There is also Diane Marger Moore, the prosecutor
who argued that Jones receive the maximum sentence two decades ago and
is now writing a book about the case.
"Look, as a mother, I thought it was just an awful crime," said Marger
Moore, now a lawyer at a large firm in Los Angeles. "But what Harvard
did is highly inappropriate: I'm the prosecutor, not them. Michelle
Jones served her time, and she served a long time, exactly what she
deserved. A sentence is a sentence."
Her backers saw her background as an asset, given the growing academic
interest in incarceration.
"It was a chance for us to do something that we've been saying we're
trying to do at Harvard, which is to set up conversations between
academics and eyewitnesses," said Walter Johnson, director of an
American history study center at the university.
But the American studies professors said in their memo to
administrators that "honest and full narration is an essential part of our
enterprise,"
and
questioned whether Jones had met that standard in framing her past. In
the personal statement, which was not required, she did not detail her
involvement in the crime, but wrote that as a teenager she left
Brandon at home alone, that he died, and that she has grieved for him
deeply and daily since.
Stauffer emphasized in interviews that he and his departmental
colleague, Dan Carpenter, were simply trying to ensure that Harvard
did its due diligence about the candidacy.
"We do not want to stand in the way of, advance a case against, or in
any way hijack the career of Michelle Jones, who has served her time,
who has clearly done amazing things while incarcerated, who shows
passion for her craft, and whose full story the two of us can never
really know," they wrote in the memo.
"If officials who take a careful look at the case decide that Harvard
should move forward, then we think that the university should do
everything in its power and ability to welcome Jones here and support
her, and we are indeed happy to play a part in that effort," they
continued. "We have stated our concerns as questions, and we hope they
are treated as nothing more nor less than questions, not as an
implicit or explicit judgment against a person and her candidacy."
Jones, in an interview, said that if anyone at Harvard wanted her to
elaborate on the criminal case or her preparedness for the Ph.D.
program, they should have asked. "I just didn't want my crime to be
the lens through which everything I'd done, and hoped for, was seen," she
said.
"I knew that I had come from this very dark place - I was abhorrent to
society," she continued. "But for 20 years, I've tried to do right,
because I was still interested in the world, and because I didn't
believe my past made me somehow cosmically un-educatable forever."
'I've already graduated from the toughest school there is.'
Yale University also rejected Jones, though it is unclear what role
her crime may have played in its decision; officials there would not
discuss her application.
But she was courted by the University of California, Berkeley; the
University of Michigan; the University of Kansas; and N.Y.U., which
assigned graduate students to send Jones welcoming notes on JPay, a
prison email app.
She arrived in Manhattan during the back-to-school season of fresh
starts, having never used a smartphone. She wore prison-issue glasses
and carried boxes full of jailhouse research notes.
If her new parole officer allows it, Jones hopes to teach in N.Y.U's
prison education program, as a way to remember where she has been. She
also hopes to take the train to Cambridge, Mass., every other week to
sit in on a Harvard seminar on the history of crime and punishment in
America.
"We're having her come up here for that partly out of a sense of pique,"
Walter Johnson said.
At N.Y.U., Nikhil Singh, faculty director of the prison-education
program, acknowledged that "Michelle will have a lot to prove."
"Our hope is that she is actually far, far more resourceful and driven
than most college students," he added, "who take for granted they are
supposed to be here."
On the Friday before classes started, in a lounge on the N.Y.U.
campus, Jones said any presumption that she is not ready for a Ph.D.
underestimates her own moxie and "sells prison short."
"People don't survive 20 years of incarceration with any kind of grace
unless they have the discipline to do their reading and writing in the
chaos of that place," Jones said. "Forget Harvard. I've already
graduated from the toughest school there is."
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