From some young people brave enough to spend months cowering-in-place at Mom’s house… “What Comes Next: How Harvard Must Combat Systemic Racism” (The Harvard Crimson):
Our subsequent three editorials will address actionable responses the University can take. In the first, we will call on the University to address its own complicity in racist and anti-activist policing. Harvard must abolish its private police force. The Harvard University Police Department is no different than municipal and state forces across the nation. HUPD has been deployed in the armed policing of Boston-area protests and has helped arrest protesters at least once in recent memory. It has a history of racist policing and a current culture of racism, unjustifiable violence, and unaccountability. It has no place on our campus.
In the second, we — in a long-overdue shift — will join the call for Harvard to divest from private prisons and the prison industrial complex. Our previous precedent was not only insensitive, but missed the point. We can no longer fail the black community by failing to take into account the magnitude of oppression enacted by the prison industrial complex and its investors. Harvard can’t either.
In the third, we will dive into Harvard’s continued engagement with issues of race, both internally and externally. From explicitly — and with real financial teeth — supporting mutual aid funds, nonprofit organizations, and bail funds that combat state oppression of black people, to moving beyond facile diversity and inclusion rhetoric toward a more robust engagement with racism, discrimination, and ignorance on our campus, we will call attention to a number of ways — long advocated for by the activists already committed to this fight — that Harvard can consistently make its campus and community more just.
Racism in the U.S. (and “genocide” perpetrated by Israel) doesn’t stand a chance now that Harvard undergraduates are Zooming to the front lines.
Related:
- my own prediction regarding investments in private prisons in light of the coronapanic
Without the HUPD who is going to cover for the high on drugs naked black Harvard students that like to wander Cambridge harassing pedestrians? Those poor sons of rich African dictators would end up meeting the real police and might face real justice.
So is anyone at Harvard going to stand up for the HUPD? Who would dare?
I dunno, I just visited the HUPD website ( https://www.hupd.harvard.edu/annual-security-report ) and it looks pretty chill and very well run. It’s a lot better than the police website in most towns in Massachusetts. They look like they do a great job and really care about Harvard and its students and community. They’re all sworn special State Police officers with deputy Sheriff powers. They have no fewer than 8 separate emergency notification modalities. They have a very public, daily police log, which is available in three locations:
https://www.hupd.harvard.edu/public-police-log
It looks like they spend a lot of time responding to theft reports and suspicious texts/phone calls and emails. They seem to be the model of transparency and community responsiveness. They have a very well-written and thorough annual report, 143 pages long:
https://www.hupd.harvard.edu/files/hupd/files/19_asr_final.pdf
Harvard’s radicals can demonize these people but if they succeed, let’s face it, they deserve what they get. They’re crazy.
What’s even more amazing is their detailed reporting of crime statistics (beginning on Page 56). They reported a total of 2 bias crimes (race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc.) in all of 2018. Does the Harvard Crimson dispute the numbers? On what basis do they assert “It has a history of racist policing and a current culture of racism, unjustifiable violence, and unaccountability.” ???
It looks to me like the HUPD does a fantastic job keeping people safe at Harvard. Shuttle buses, shuttle trackers, daytime and evening van services, campus escorts, etc., etc. It looks to me like you have to work really hard to have any kind of problem rising above the level of a hangnail that the police won’t respond to at Harvard.
Is anyone in the Harvard senior administration going to stand up for them and cut the crap?
I really don’t get all this BLM, defund the police, the rioting, etc. etc. Look at cities, towns and community in which black folks are poor and under privileged. Then look at the leaders in those towns who are leading those cities, towns and communities for the black folks. You will see that the leaders themselves are black but yet they are way, way better off. In many cases, they live either outside those poor neighborhood or, when they live in black majority town, they live in the much, much better area of the neighborhood. Those black leaders are suppose to look after and up-keep the black community, but yet after years and years of leading and and new leaders leading, and after years and years of pumping more money into those communities, almost nothing changes. So if I was a black person, I should be mad as hell at my city, town and community black leaders and I would be rioting against them and demanding them to be defunded. After all, those few black community leaders keep on excelling in life year after year but the black community that they lead doesn’t improve much at all.
Abolishing the private police forces of universities (part of the private law, or ‘privilege’) seems like an excellent idea.