In September, a Harvard activist group calling themselves “Act on a Dream” held an anti-ICE rally meant to raise awareness of a legal federal agency charged with the important mission of keeping dangerous illegal aliens out of our country. Okay, they didn’t quite put it in those terms, and, indeed, they were calling for the abolition of the agency – as is all the rage on the left these days.
But either way, the event was covered by the Harvard school newspaper, The Crimson.
Perhaps everything would have been okay had the paper’s journalists contented themselves with simply interviewing activists and telling their side of the story. Instead, the paper made the tragic mistake of actually adhering to journalistic principles, a decision tipped off by the inclusion of this sentence: “ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.”
Egad! They tried to talk to the ENEMY? That won’t do.
Infuriated, Act on a Dream began circulating a petition which has, as of this week, collected more than 600 signatures from the Harvard student body.
“Last month, Act on a Dream held a rally calling for the abolition of Immigration, Customs, & Enforcement (ICE). In the reporting of the article, The Crimson staff contacted ICE for a request for comment on the protest. In a follow-up meeting to discuss their policy, Crimson staff stood by their decision to call ICE and stated that they would do so again,” reads the petition.
“In this political climate, a request for comment is virtually the same as tipping [ICE] off, regardless of how they are contacted,” the activists continue. “We strongly condemn their decision to uphold a policy that blatantly endangers undocumented students on our campus.”
The petition goes on to demand that the Crimson “apologize for the harm they inflicted on the undocumented community, critically engage with and change their policies that require calling ICE for comment, and declare their commitment to protecting undocumented students on campus.”
Because, of course, a paper’s commitment to protecting illegals is far more important than any sense of journalistic ethics.
The petitioners have found support from the Harvard College Democrats, who have threatened to never speak to the Crimson again until they reverse their ICE-calling position.
They also garnered a thumbs-up from Marion Davis of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, who warned that “getting both sides isn’t always what is fair, especially when one side has already made its views well known through the megaphones of government.”
The Crimson, though (apparently not bothered by a future in which the College Democrats refuse to speak to them), is standing up for their decision. On Tuesday, they published a piece defending their policies, citing several journalism experts who backed their call to ICE.
“It was wholly appropriate,” said Society of Professional Journalists President Patricia Gallagher Newberry. “You’re not calling ICE to call out an individual person who might be in our country without the documentation required by ICE. You’re simply asking for it to respond in a holistic way to the Abolish ICE Movement.”
There’s no conceivable fashion in which The Crimson’s call to ICE could have endangered any illegal immigrant currently living on the Harvard campus. We’re not sure if Act on a Dream is smart enough to figure that out or not (probably not), but we know liberal fascism when we see it. This is just another attempt by the far left to make opposition opinions go away. Thankfully (for now), The Crimson is holding strong.
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