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Ruth King

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The Curious Case of Natalia Veselnitskaya Did the Russian lawyer visit the Trump campaign to undermine it? Matthew Vadum

By on July 14th, 2017

It turns out the Moscow-based lawyer whose brief meeting with Trump campaign officials last year was obtained under false pretenses has significant ties to Democrat opposition researchers in the United States and was extended special privileges by the Obama administration.

Could this mean attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya came, or perhaps was sent, to America to hurt Donald Trump’s campaign for president? And if Veselnitskaya had less-than-honorable intentions, what role, if any, did Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee play in this unfolding drama?

The Hill newspaper reports that the Obama administration went to extraordinary lengths to allow Veselnitskaya to enter the U.S. and remain here to complete her business in this country. After Veselnitskaya, who reportedly has several pro-Hillary Clinton and anti-Donald Trump items on her Facebook page, was denied a U.S. visa, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch personally intervened and cleared the way for her to come to this country.

British music publicist Rob Goldstone helped to set up the storied June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan between Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, claiming boastfully in an email exchange with Donald Jr. that the Russians wanted to share incriminating information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

We now know Veselnitskaya had no earth-shattering revelations to impart about the Russia-friendly former secretary of state who was then running against Donald Trump. Instead of offering “Political Opposition Research” at the roughly 20-minute-long get-together, the Russian woman “had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act,” Donald Trump Jr. said earlier this week in a statement on Twitter.

The Magnitsky Act, which Russian President Vladimir Putin despises, allows the U.S. government to refuse visas to Russians considered guilty of human rights violations. After it was enacted at the end of 2012, Russia retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian orphans and banning entry to Russia by specific U.S. officials.

Veselnitskaya, who was a prosecutor in Russia 16 years ago, told NBC News she “never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton,” adding she wanted to let people know about “the real circumstances behind the Magnitsky Act,” and was hoping to testify about the sanctions statute before Congress.

There is some evidence that Democrats were working with Russia against the Trump campaign, radio talk show host Erick Erickson suggests.

“There is a remarkably small degree of separation between Natalia Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, the Democrat opposition research firm that came up with the Trump dossier,” Erickson writes, and this “raise[s] the issue of whether Democrats and Russians were as collaborative as the Democrats claim the Trump team was.”

The “piss-gate” dossier is the unvetted 35-page report written by former British spy Christopher Steele and published by cat-video website BuzzFeed. The FBI had been considering paying Steele “for his Trump dossier work,” Erickson notes.

“Fusion GPS was paid by a Democratic ally of Hillary Clinton’s to conduct the research,” the Daily Caller reported. The dubious document claimed, among other things, that Trump hired prostitutes to urinate on a hotel room bed in Moscow.

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GOP Activist Who Sought Hillary Clinton Emails Killed Himself Body was found in hotel room located across the street from Mayo Clinic By Shane Harris and Reid J. Epstein

By on July 14th, 2017

WASHINGTON—Peter W. Smith, a Republican political activist and financier from Chicago who mounted an effort to obtain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers, died on May 14 after asphyxiating himself in a hotel room in Rochester, Minn., according to local authorities. He was 81 years old.

Mr. Smith’s body was found in the Aspen Suites hotel, located across the street from the Mayo Clinic, according to a medical examiner’s report. An associate of Mr. Smith said that he had recently visited the clinic. A representative for the facility wouldn’t confirm if Mr. Smith was a patient.

It wasn’t clear who found Mr. Smith’s body.

Mr. Smith died about 10 days after an interview with The Wall Street Journal in which he recounted his attempts to acquire what he believed were thousands of emails stolen from Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. He implied that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then serving as the senior national security adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, was aware of his efforts.
Peter W. Smith Photo: –

Mr. Smith’s attempts to obtain what he believed would be politically damaging emails marked the first potential evidence of coordination between members of the Trump campaign and Russian hackers, a central issue in probes by Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

When the Journal reported on Mr. Smith’s efforts last month, it wasn’t clear how he died. His obituary listed no cause of death, officials in the town where he lived didn’t release information, and messages left at Mr. Smith’s home went unanswered.

The Chicago Tribune , which first reported Mr. Smith’s cause of death on Thursday, said a pile of documents and a statement that police called a suicide note were found with his body. The note said that Mr. Smith had been ill and that he held a life-insurance policy that was due to expire, the Tribune reported.

Mr. Smith apologized in the note and said that “no foul play whatsoever” had occurred with his death, according to the Tribune.

In emails and documents meant to recruit others to his efforts to find Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails, Mr. Smith and an associate identified Mr. Flynn’s company, Flynn Intel Group, and Michael G. Flynn, the general’s son, as allies in the operation.
Peter W. Smith’s body was found in the Aspen Suites hotel, across the street from the Mayo Clinic. Here, the clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minn. Photo: Elizabeth Nida Obert/Associated Press

Neither Mr. Flynn nor his son responded to requests for comment at the time of the original article.

The group Mr. Smith assembled included technical experts, lawyers and a private investigator in Europe who spoke Russian, he said. The group made contacts with five groups of hackers, including two that were Russian, who claimed to have obtained Mrs. Clinton’s emails, Mr. Smith said. He ultimately didn’t acquire the messages because he said he couldn’t verify their authenticity. Instead, he urged the hackers to give the emails to WikiLeaks.

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After 500 Years, an Italian Jewish Rebirth Long-dissolved communities form anew, and kosher food is suddenly chic. By Michael Ledeen

By on July 14th, 2017

Catania, Sicily

Late last month a Jewish community was established here in southern Italy—the first such founding since King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ordered the expulsion or forced conversion of the Jews more than 500 years ago. On the same day the community was revived, the Catania city government gave the top floor of a palace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea to the International Institute for Jewish Culture. The small community is now looking for a rabbi and raising money to furnish the space, which will be used as a synagogue.

While anti-Semitism is on the upswing in many parts of Europe, Judaism and Jews are experiencing a renaissance in Italy. The country is most strongly associated with the Roman Catholic Church, but Jews have been here for thousands of years. Given Italy’s place as a political laboratory in the Western world, its role in the revival of Judaism—particularly in the south—is worth watching.

In 2015 the bishop of Palermo gave a Jewish group a local church to convert into a synagogue. The same year Catholic authorities in Trani, on the mainland, did the same. Yet the situation in Catania is unique, as it fully revives a Jewish community abolished in 1492. This community was only one of the 52 disbanded at the time, and other communities in Italy are in the process of being revived. Baruch Triolo, a Catanian attorney who converted to Judaism while living in Miami, is leading the revival project. He has received support from numerous local and regional governments, as well as the island’s philo-Semitic Masonic groups.

State support for the Jews extends beyond helping to revive communities. The federal government helped finance the Italian translation of the first volume of the Talmud. The new volume was first presented at the country’s most prestigious cultural institution, the Accademia dei Lincei, on the banks of the Tiber river in Rome. The first two runs of the translation sold out almost immediately, and the buyers are overwhelmingly non-Jewish, according to the publisher.

Perhaps the clearest indicator of the strength and depth of Jewish popularity comes at mealtime. Jewish food, including kosher food, is suddenly chic. Restaurants in Rome’s Jewish ghetto are regularly packed. You can even get fried artichokes made “Jewish style” at takeout stands. Kosher food and wine are now regularly featured at national food fairs and can be purchased at upscale stores throughout the country.

“Regular people are selling and buying Jewish food precisely because it’s Jewish,” says the Italian journalist Carla Reschia. “Food is an example, but you can see it also in literature: In a country where Jews number less than 0.1%, Jewish authors are disproportionately popular.”

Italian historians, archaeologists and anthropologists are hard at work to document the presence of Jews from ancient times into the early modern period. There is no lack of evidence, some of which dates back to the first century, following the Roman conquest of ancient Israel. Yet many museums are not aware of the considerable quantity of evidence they have in their archives and deposits. In recent years, Sicilian cities have begun to publish catalogs of this material, and I recently attended a public meeting in southeastern Sicily that featured professors and government officials intent on creating a tourist guide to Jewish Sicily, from Taormina to Siracusa and Noto.

It is hard to overstate the enthusiasm for the Jewish revival. Cooperative ventures between Italian and Israeli universities are under way. These efforts should produce new experts and new historical finds in the coming years. Such activities will be reinforced as other communities emulate the Catania model and new centers of Jewish life are created. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

“It’s About Time We Had an Intifada in This Country!” (video)

By on July 14th, 2017

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
A collection of eyebrow-raising pronouncements from an American professor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2k5QaUOBE4

Asserts the uploader, Canary Mission, which has a must-read post here,

‘Nablus-born Hatem Bazian, is notorious for calling for intifada [violent uprising] in the USA. He is the founder of radical organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). He is a serial pusher of conspiracies, and has a ‘project’ to re-write history. More worryingly, he is largely responsible for the wave of antisemitic incitement across North American campuses.’

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Alan Moran Electricity: All Hope is Lost

By on July 14th, 2017

Alan Finkel’s otherworldly prognosis is bad enough. But toss in Malcolm Turnbull’s advocacy of renewables and then add an imported American chief regulator who would have been happier working for Hillary Clinton and where are you? The simple answer: thoroughly stuffed.

With Australian electricity prices now approaching world-beating highs, we have on Friday another meeting of the Council of Australian Government (CoAG) energy ministers who have created the current energy catastrophe.

They are to examine the Finkel report into electricity. Among the many counter-productive recommendations this report offered was an increase in the electricity market’s “governance”. This is a demand for even more of the political tinkering which, in the space of just 15 years, transformed the Australian electricity industry from the cheapest in the world to one of the dearest. Distortionary subsidies to renewable energy, which have also undermined reliability, are paramount in this.

Finkel decided that renewables are inevitable (which is why Malcolm Turnbull appointed him) and commissioned economic research to demonstrate that this is so. The modelling showed future lower prices from the substitution of wind/solar for lower cost coal. It did so by using two mechanisms.

First, it has the renewables subsidised and with priority access to the grid, meaning coal powered stations have either to run at a loss or close down. The optimists assume coal will run at a loss in an oversupplied market then close down in an ‘orderly’ manner.

In theory, this allows a second mechanism – forecast cost reductions of wind and solar – to swing in.

One shortcoming of this picture is that if the coal stations hit major expenditure needs at an inconvenient time, they will be forced to close down. This was the case with Hazelwood, which was operating in the face of Worksafe notices and requiring perhaps a billion dollars for new boilers. Finkel’s solution (adopted by politicians) of requiring three years notice of closure is absurd and unworkable.

Moreover, the fabled and imminent onset of cheap renewables will not occur, just as it has not ocurred through the past 30 years of similar erroneous predictions. Ah, but batteries will save the day, I hear some say. But no, they won’t. Batteries are simply a costly way of smoothing out the peaks of renewables’ intermittency.

Compared with the cost of coal at below $50 per MWh for new power stations and less than that for existing ones, wind is at least $90 plus the costs of storage ($14 according to the totally inadequate estimates published by Minister Josh Frydenberg) and requires aditional transmission expenditure.

With current policies having brought wholesale prices to around $100 per MWh, Finkel decided to airbrush from history the sub-$40 prices that prevailed until the renewable subsidies started to bite in 2016.

It is easy to forget the changes that the deregulation of energy created, before politics overturned its competitive nature.

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Media, Dems Ignore Hillary Ukraine Collusion By Daniel John Sobieski

By on July 14th, 2017

“Where are the Congressional hearings on Hillary’s collusion with the Ukraine? Where are the hearings on her making it possible for Russian interests to control 20 percent of our uranium supply in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation? ”
Call it “the Seinfeld meeting,” because the conversation between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer was a meeting with a nobody about nothing, from which nothing resulted. Yet in the Democratic and media (sorry for the redundancy) alternate universe, it is more worthy of attention than North Korea, ISIS, or jobs and the economy.

In a bit of irony, the lawyer with which Donald Trump Jr. was allegedly colluding, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was allowed to be in this country by the Obama administration and its attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Natalia may have overstayed her visa and at the time of the meeting may have been, dare we say it, an illegal alien. Extreme veting, anyone? As reported by Fox News Politics:

The Obama administration granted the Russian attorney who met with Donald Trump Jr. last June a special type of “parole” to be in the United States after she initially was denied a visa, Fox News has confirmed – though it remains unclear whether she had permission to be in the country when she attended the Trump Tower session. …

Well before the June 9, 2016, meeting, she was denied a visa to enter the U.S. in 2015, according to court filings first reported by the Daily Beast. She was granted a “parole” to be in the country from October 2015 through early January 2016. However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York told Fox News on Thursday that their office did not extend that status.

“She was not granted a second parole by our office,” office spokesman James Margolin told Fox News in an email. “Her case-related immigration parole ended early in 2016, and it was not renewed by us.”…

“She shouldn’t have been in the country,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday. “I think the lady Russian lawyer that was there in that meeting, I’ve written to [The State Department and Department of Homeland Security] to find out what she was doing in the country when presumably either her visa or parole expired.”

Maybe the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign were colluding with the Russians to let her in and let her stay to try to st up Team Trump? Why was she allowed in the country? Why was she allowed to overstay her welcome or “parole”/ Media curiosity about the meeting apparently has its limits.

Some, such as Mark Steyn, have approached the meeting with the trivial pursuit it deserves:

…Mark Steyn dismissed the notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin was pulling the strings behind the meeting of Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer.

“The guy [who Trump Jr.] is colluding with is a washed-up pop music publicist for John Denver in the 1980s,” Steyn, a “Rush Limbaugh Show” guest host, said.

Steyn said Robert Goldstone, who he said is now a publicist for a pop star in Azerbaijan, would never be someone Putin would confide in to collude with the Trumps.

Others, including the usually-grounded-in-reality Charles Krauthammer, seem to have swallowed this “evidence” of “collusion” whole:

Charles Krauthammer said the scandal surrounding Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton was “the first empirical evidence” of the campaign’s collusion with Russia.

Collusion to do what exactly? Conspiracy to adopt Russian children? Collusion to get front row tickets at that Azerbaijani pop star’s next concert? Opposition research is not a crime and Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting was far less interesting than the fake dossier the Democrats used to fuel their “Russia, Russia, Russia” campaign.

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Trump-haters rallying Saturday By David Zukerman

By on July 14th, 2017

On January 4, 2017, The New York Times printed a full-page ad calling on the American people to: “STOP THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME BEFORE IT STARTS.” Signers included Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, a revolutionary- left group, known for its deadly bombings, and reportedly a friend of former President Barack Obama.

The January 4 ad having failed in its aim, the organization behind the ad — www.refusefascism.org — is bringing its Hate Trump/Pence message to the nation this Saturday, July 15, with protests scheduled mainly at locations in Deep Blue America, including New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angles. Boston, and Seattle. (Other cities include Detroit and Philadelphia, cities in states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, that narrowly voted for Trump/Pence.)

The theme of the July 15 demonstrations is “Protest and Demand — THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO!” As of the date of this writing, it is not clear if any Democrat — or Republican — anti-Trump elected officials will participate. Nor has it been suggested that officials from the Obama administration — National Security Adviser Susan Rice, or former CIA director John Brennan — will take part. Nor is there word that Senator John McCain will attend one of these Trump-Pence Hate gatherings to declare: This reminds me of my involvement in the Maidan protests in Kiev, a few years ago, when Ukraine overthrew its duly-elected president.”

Protest material does not set forth plans for the federal government, once Trump and Pence “GO!” Certainly, the July 15 demonstrations must have a deleterious impact on our democratic institutions, and erode confidence in our election process. And haven’t leftists been claiming, since November 8, that this has been the intention of the Kremlin?

Evan McMullin, in a New York Times op-ed piece, December 5, 2016, pointed out:

“Authoritarians often exaggerate their popular support to boost their perceived legitimacy. But the deeper objective is to weaken the democratic institutions that limit their power. Eroding confidence in voting, elections, and representative bodies gives them a freer hand to wield power.”

McMullin was identified by the Times as “a former C.I.A. officer [who] was a conservative independent presidential candidate in 2016.” The print title of his op-ed ,”The Constitution in Danger,” appears on-line, as “Trump’s Threat to the Constitution.”

In view of John Brennan’s apparently contributions to the “Trump must go” campaign, should we be surprised that “a former C.I.A. officer” sought to draw votes from candidate Trump and, after his election, charged Donald J. Trump as a threat to the Constitution, putting him in the Trump Hating mainstream?

Material promoting the July 15 Hate Trump demonstrations include this battle cry: “We will not accept the cruel and brutal future of the Trump/Pence Regime…they must GO!” This theme appears in the ravings of New York Times Trump Hate columnists and, certainly, in the Republican-Hate propaganda spewed by congressional Democrats, with nary a reply from the Republicans.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Travel Ban, and Beyond Srdja Trifkovic

By on July 14th, 2017

The Supreme Court decided on June 26 to allow key parts of the Trump administration’s “travel ban” to go into effect temporarily. This was an unexpected victory for the President—and for common sense. Until the Court hears the full case in October, the administration will be able to bar travelers from six majority-Muslim countries who cannot show a “bona fide” connection to a person or entity in the United States. The Court said the relationship must be “formal, documented and formed in the ordinary course, not for the purpose of evading” the travel ban.

Trump’s next task should be to make the 90-day ban permanent. Over the past two decades hundreds of Muslims born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States. They have included persons who came to America legally on visas, as well as refugees. More than 300 persons who came to the U.S. as refugees are currently the subjects of counterterrorism investigations by the FBI.
In the long term, Trump should seek to reinstate the substance of his original executive order, which was issued on January 27 and revoked on March 6. Its stated “Purpose” declares that

the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law . . . who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Without naming it, Trump’s original order treated orthodox Islam as a violent ideology inimical to America’s “founding principles.” After all, for a Muslim to declare that he accepts the U.S. Constitution as the source of his highest loyalty is an act of apostasy punishable by death under Islamic law. To a Muslim, sharia is not an addition to the Constitution and laws of the United States, with which it may coexist; it is the only basis of obligation. To be legitimate, all political power must rest exclusively with those who enjoy Allah’s authority on the basis of his revealed will, and America is therefore illegitimate ab initio.

Trump’s original order effectively demanded that a Muslim give up this key tenet of his faith in order to be eligible for admission. In principle a Muslim’s naturalization is also problematic, as it includes the oath “that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . . ” To swear this would be sacrilegious for a Muslim, since it means he would be prepared to shoot a fellow Muslim, or denounce him to the authorities, in defense of his adopted homeland.

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Obama DOJ Allowed Russian Lawyer to Enter U.S. Without Visa Before Trump Team Meeting By Debra Heine

By on July 13th, 2017

The Obama Justice Department cleared Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya last year under “extraordinary circumstances,” allowing her to enter the United States without a visa before she penetrated then-candidate Donald Trump’s inner circle, The Hill reported Wednesday evening.

Veselnitskaya spent June of 2016 lobbying government officials and lawmakers to reverse the Magnitsky Act and restore the ability of Americans to adopt Russian orphans. She managed to finagle a meeting with the Trump team by promising that she had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.

That work was a far cry from the narrow reason the U.S. government initially gave for allowing Veselnitskaya into the U.S. in late 2015, according to federal court records.

The Moscow lawyer had been turned down for a visa to enter the U.S. lawfully but then was granted special immigration parole by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.

During a court hearing in early January 2016 as Veselnitskaya’s permission to stay in the country was about to expire, federal prosecutors described how rare the grant of parole immigration was as Veselnitskaya pleaded for more time to remain in the United States.

“In October the government bypassed the normal visa process and gave a type of extraordinary permission to enter the country called immigration parole,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni explained to the judge during a hearing Jan. 6, 2016.

“That’s a discretionary act that the statute allows the Attorney General to do in extraordinary circumstances. In this case, we did that so that Mr. Katsyv could testify. And we made the 
further accommodation of allowing his Russian lawyer into the country to assist,” he added.

The prosecutor said Justice was willing to allow the Russian lawyer to enter the United States again as the trial in the case approached so she could help prepare and attend the proceedings.

The court record indicates the presiding judge asked the Justice Department to extend Veselnitskaya’s immigration parole another week until he decided motions in the case. There are no other records in the court file indicating what happened with that request or how Veselnitskaya appeared in the country later that spring.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in New York confirmed Wednesday to The Hill that it let Veselnitskaya into the country on a grant of immigration parole from October 2015 to early January 2016.

Justice Department and State Department officials could not immediately explain how the Russian lawyer was still in the country in June for the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and the events in Washington D.C.

The lobbying effort to repeal the Magnitsky Act fizzled out fairly quickly in the summer of 2016, sources told The Hill.

They described Veselnitskaya, who does not speak English, as a mysterious and shadowy figure. They said they were confused as to whether she had an official role in the lobbying campaign, although she was present for several meetings.

The sources also described their interactions with Veselnitskaya in the same way that Trump Jr. did. They claimed not to know who she worked for or what her motives were.

“Natalia didn’t speak a word of English,” said one source. “Don’t let anyone tell you this was a sophisticated lobbying effort. It was the least professional campaign I’ve ever seen. If she’s the cream of the Moscow intelligence community then we have nothing to worry about.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly requesting all records on how Veselnitskaya was able to enter and remain in the U.S.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard Considers Eradicating Social Clubs to Fight Sex Discrimination By Tyler O’Neil

By on July 13th, 2017

On Wednesday, a faculty committee at Harvard University has suggested “phasing out” fraternities, sororities, and other social groups on campus, with the goal of “ending the gender segregation and discrimination” of such historic college organizations.

“Harvard students may neither join nor participate in final clubs, fraternities or sororities, or other similar private, exclusionary social organizations that are exclusively or predominantly made up of Harvard students, whether they have any local or national affiliation, during their time in the College,” the proposed rule stated.

The rule also emphasized punishments for students in such organizations. “The College will take disciplinary action against students who are found to be participating in such organizations. Violations will be adjudicated by the Administrative Board.”

While the rule was vague about the type of organizations which would be specifically forbidden for students to join, Harvard spokeswoman Rachael Dane insisted that “appendix 2 in the report (page 17) clearly outlines which organizations they are suggesting.”

That appendix listed: social clubs with gender-neutral policies such as the Spee Club, the Oak Club, and the Seneca; female final clubs like the La Vie Club, the Bee Club, and the Pleiades Society; male final clubs like the Delphic Club, the Fox Club, and the Phoenix S.K. Club; fraternities like Alpha Epsilon Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Sigma Chi; and sororities like Alpha Phi, Delta Gamma, and Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Dane argued that that list was the entirety of the groups considered in the proposed ban, but the language of the rule — “private, exclusionary social organizations that are exclusively or predominantly made up of Harvard students” — suggested a wide berth of organizations, which could broadly be construed to include religious groups, activist groups, and social welfare groups.

The emphasis on preventing discrimination pervaded the document. “As long ago as 1988, a faculty member observed that ‘the final clubs are where Harvard students learn to discriminate.’ Such an attitude hardly prepares students for the pluralistic world into which they will graduate,” the committee wrote.

The Harvard faculty committee’s proposal outlined the “explicit goal of ending the gender segregation and discrimination of these organizations in a manner that is consistent with our educational mission, non-discrimination principles, and applicable law.” The proposal also noted that the committee “turned for inspiration to the practices of peer institutions that have taken steps to diminish the role of fraternities and sororities and/or equivalent exclusive-membership private social clubs on their campuses.”

The vague language employed in the second quote might be a hedge, in order to prevent students from forming organizations like fraternities and sororities while using other names to refer to them.

Even so, such a drastic action as forbidding all fraternities and sororities would open the door for the college to prevent other expressions of students’ freedom of association. If avoiding discrimination is the goal, why stop at gender discrimination? Religious and viewpoint discrimination may be fundamental to Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, or political advocacy groups on campus. CONTINUE AT SITE

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