Left Unsaid.

The Week in Review.

So after an extended break for this blogger's 21st birthday, Left Unsaid is going live again today with the latest insights and incitements. Let's get right to it...

Last Monday, the High Court ruled 8-0 that the government can cut federal funding from any university that won't go along with outright discrimination in the form of military recruiting. Looks like the feds get the final word in university policies. And homophobes get the final word in employment options. Farewell to free speech and equal protection.

On Tuesday, Harvard Law School's courageous administration made it abundantly clear that it would bow to the government and accept discrimination back on campus. Apparently, Harvard's stated principles are not worth the millions of dollars it would lose if it actually stuck to them. It remains to be seen whether students are ready to fight back against the military invasion of this university.

On Wednesday, Harvard's Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) kicked off its public education campaign with a packed event called "Workers' Speak Out for Their Human Rights." It sparked some heated but irrelevant debate on our friends' blogs between people who did not bother to attend or ask questions but were content to be passive receptacles for whatever they read in the paper.

The real news came from the voices of the voiceless. Like Gerardo Cajamarca, who related stories of the brutal violence he witnessed against his fellow workers at Coke plants in Colombia; Fidel Solano, a Harvard security guard who spoke of having to choose between rent and heart medicine when they wouldn't pay him for the hours he worked; and Ed Childs, a dining hall worker who told how workers like him have won better lives at Harvard through the power of a union.

From Colombia all the way to Cambridge, these workers were telling the same story: Workers need the right to organize, and they need it now. If you concur, Left Unsaid thinks you should sign the petition and get involved.

Last but not least, Friday was a day of action that will go down in American history.

A new movement for freedom flooded the streets of Chicago in the largest immigrant rights demonstration ever. As many as 300,000 marched against legislation which would make the borders more dangerous, criminalize 11 million Americans, and shame a country that was built by immigrants.

To learn more about the debate, check Left Unsaid's recommended blog of the week, Immigration Orange. It's the work of our friend Kyle, who will be crossing the border with illegal immigrants this month to draw attention to these issues.

"We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us" - Saying in the Southwest

What Your Parents Didn't See.

This Junior Parents Weekend, there were some things that your parents probably did not have the pleasure of seeing. Aside from the obvious like your friends Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo I can think of three sights that went unseen.

*Homeless in the Square. Where'd they all go? Apparently the veritas of our society was not on the agenda for the weekend. So move along, poor people. I mean, a university sitting on $25.9 billion clearly needs your family's money more than they do, right?

*Final clubs. While the sight of daddys little boys toasting their own privilege in Mt. Auburn mansions wouldve made the old money proud, the whole taking-
advantage-of-your-daughter thing might have rubbed some parents the wrong way.

*Demonic faculty. Little do your parents know that the Harvard faculty actually consists of a pack of rabid radicals plotting to bring down the great men of our time, corrupt the youth with their left-wing ideas, and destroy Western civilization as we know it.

At least they made up for what they missed with experiences we don't get the rest of the year. Like art museums, professors you can talk to, and the semblance of a Harvard community.

Anti-Summersism is not Anti-Semitism.

This is what anti-Semitism looks like.

This is not.

That some campus conservatives have equated faculty criticism of President Summers with anti-Semitism - supposedly because of its ties to the Israel divestment petition - not only suggests an attempt to stifle free speech, but an insult to all Semites at Harvard.

I believe my fellow Jews should speak out for the freedom to speak out. Now I hear people like Prof. Wisse speaking against it, and in so doing, inciting racial division on campus, belittling the real victims of anti-Semitism, and exploiting my people's pain for their own agenda.

Just because I'm a Jew doesn't mean I support anyone who happens to be Jewish. Just because someone happens to be Jewish doesn't mean their critics are anti-Semites. Nuff said.

Patriotism?

If you thought political correctness was the biggest threat to our freedom, think again. Today, the Senate voted 89-10 to renew the USA "PATRIOT" Act. Permanently.

The renewed provisions invite the federal government to obtain your library records from Widener, search your dorm without telling you, read your email and tap your cellphone at will - even without a warrant, as we've learned from recent revelations of domestic spying on American citizens. We have to hold everyone who voted for this accountable.

As a great American once said: "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin).

Click here to read the PATRIOT Act. Click here to see what you can do about it .

Support the Troops!

Over 72% of U.S. troops say they want us out of Iraq in 2006, as reported in a landmark poll of almost 1,000 military personnel released yesterday by Zogby. Whatever you think of the proposition, this demolishes the dogma that supporting the troops means supporting the war. If you still believe that, you've been neo-conned. If you listen to the troops, and not the wise old men who sent them to war, supporting them really means bringing them home. So how about it?

The Rights Stuff.

On Monday morning, activists with the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) delivered a letter to Mass Hall in support of the people who make our drinks, the guards who keep us safe in our dorms, and everyone else who works for Harvard's contractors. It was the kickoff to SLAM's new "Right to Organize Campaign" which will be rocking it this spring.

SLAM requested a meeting with President Summers - a lame duck, but a lame duck with a long arm - to discuss its proposal for a policy that Harvard only do business with those who respect the right of their workers to organize. FYI: That's a human right under Article 23 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and a civil right under Section 7 of the US National Labor Relations Act. SLAM, like the Divestment Campaign, wants Harvard to take a good hard look at whether our mad money may be supporting human rights violations around the world.

Students are calling attention to Harvard's exclusive contracts with two notorious corporate criminals. First there's Coca-Cola Co., which has been tied to paramilitary death squads who do their dirty work of assassinations, tortures, kidnappings and more against union activists at Coke facilities in Colombia. Coca-Cola has refused to go for an independent investigation, and now over 10 U.S. universities - including NYU and UMich - have cut their contracts and switched to soft drinks that leave a better taste in the mouth.

Then closer to home we have AlliedBarton Security, which became our only contractor for campus security after Harvard outsourced the last of our guards' jobs and deep-sixed their union in '04. Since then, officers have testified about the company withholding their pay, suspending them without cause, and retaliating against those who speak up in all kinds of nasty ways. Now, students are teaming up with the guards to help them win their rights back.

So how does that late night Coke taste right now? And what's your take on the new campaign?

Back in Action.

After a quick power nap, Left Unsaid will once again be coming to you daily with the latest insights and incitements. Look out for upcoming pieces on Harvard's dubious contracts and investments, HUPD's war on drugs, professors who accuse other professors of anti-semitism, the once and future president Derek Bok, and the corporation that's really pulling the strings.

Question This.

Left Unsaid's Questions of the Day...

Why has it taken the university this long to offer condoms in first-year dorms?

Now that student reporters have lost their Supreme Court appeal against official censorship of their newspaper at an Illinois university, could it happen here?

Why is it all quiet on the campus front as Iraq descends into all-out civil war? Are we so fixated on Summersville that we just don't give a damn about the outside world anymore?

Just Kidding?

Muslim student groups got the apology they deserved today from Associate Dean of the College Judith Kidd. After the Salient republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Dean Kidd, ever caring, wrote to the editors expressing her concern that "some segments of the campus...may become dangerous." Apparently, our friends at the Salient are more deserving of concern than the Muslim student who was the victim of a hate crime in November near Lamont, a crime which met with silence from University Hall. What do you think's more dangerous, the Harvard Islamic Society or a discriminatory administration?

Over and out.

So its official. The big man has struck out. But he was over a long time ago.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom of my fellow students, I have to say that our university lost more than it gained under the Summers regime. From the women faculty to the Af-Am professors, from the dissenting voices to the popular deans, from the place of the arts to the role of the faculty in university affairs, Summers managed to shaft them all in 5 years.

But there was something else, too, that we were losing sight of. I'm not one to appeal to tradition, but some traditions are worth preserving. One of those is the spirit of free inquiry, integrity and independence on our fair campus. Summers undercut the integrity of Harvards doings, the independence of its research, and the free speech of its faculty.

Harvard was starting to smell less like Veritas and more like Wall Street or Washington D.C., with an administration obsessed with our brand, our bottom line, and perhaps most of all, its own power. As one sophomore opined in todays Crimson, I think hes kind of running Harvard like a businessand I respect that. I don't.

As an institution of higher learning, Harvard owes its excellence more to the daily work of our professors (not to mention students and staff) than the wheeling and dealing of our presidents. With the faculty pulling left and the administration pulling right, one was bound to pull the other down. I don't know about you, but I'm glad Summers went before the rest of the faculty did.

The guy needed a vacation. And now that our Summerstime is over, maybe we can actually get to work on the real issues confronting this university.