Also in today's news: "Chelsea Manning named visiting fellow at Harvard." http://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2017/09/13/c...
From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
141–150 of 152 posts
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fairness, she is a convicted murderer. And just try to imagine the magnitude of the blowback if she ever did anything wrong on campus, particularly to some precious darling of wealthy and connected parents. I'm not saying the Harvard administration made the right choice here, but they certainly had cause to be cautious.
So why ever release prisoners? Should institutions always be doubtful bystanders of the U.S. justice system and its rehabilitation guidelines?
> Should institutions always be doubtful bystanders of the U.S. justice system and its rehabilitation guidelines?
In some cases, that's how it works, yes. Many employers refuse to hire ex-cons. A felony conviction will bar you from some professional certifications entirely. And because of sex-offender registries, people convicted of sex crimes find it very difficult to live in built-up areas, since they are required to live away from areas frequented by children.
A serious criminal record is a quick ticket out of basically all of respectable society, including the part that people try to enter by earning lofty degrees from prestigious institutions of higher learning. We as a society clearly don't have anything close to full confidence in the rehabilitation of criminals.
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#143I don't understand why we let people out of prison if we aren't prepared to actually let them out of prison. I'm not really bleeding heart about this, I'd be fine with any murder of this sort meaning life in prison. What does not make sense is letting someone out and then not treating them as normal humans again. It only encourages people to revert to evil.
Harvard is for rich kids, and some extremely capable, to keep up appearances of 'we're not just a rich kids club, we're a real university', plus to make sure there's at least a few intelligent people running things in the long run. The extremely capable do all the work, while the rich get to intermingle. The extremely capable of course are carefully vetted to be fully indoctrinated in the system - you have to want to…
I wonder. Harvard certainly admits some on the basis of criteria other than academic merit. It favours legacy students. It gives an advantage to historically mistreated minorities. And it wouldn't be surprising if it tried to curry favour with the powerful by admitting their less-than-brilliant offspring, too.
But even with all that, my impression is that the bar is still pretty darn high. Even the stupid Harvard grads are pretty capable.
Is that true? Any Harvard alums or faculty want to speak for or against this notion?
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Harvard is for rich kids, and some extremely capable, to keep up appearances of 'we're not just a rich kids club, we're a real university', plus to make sure there's at least a few intelligent people running things in the long run. The extremely capable do all the work, while the rich get to intermingle. The extremely capable of course are carefully vetted to be fully indoctrinated in the system - you have to want to…
I wonder. Harvard certainly admits some on the basis of criteria other than academic merit. It favours legacy students. It gives an advantage to historically mistreated minorities. And it wouldn't be surprising if it tried to curry favour with the powerful by admitting their less-than-brilliant offspring, too. But even with all that, my impression is that the bar is still pretty darn high. Even the stupid Harvard gra…
You're being incredibly naive if you think folks from Harvard bother with reading HackerNews.
This place is for suckers, real capitalists read Forbes :)
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
You misunderstand me. I objected to the minimization of the rape. The "what she calls" language.
I think you are being political on the back of an awful incident / world. And distracting from the important point, once a person does their time, society should also move on. But to spell it out - She has to stick to her story of all the awful things that happened to her (which I'm sure most did). But you can't just take it all at exact value. If the story says it was rape (which is now a militarized word which is w…
A "high school senior" would have been at least 17, but given the academic environment was probably 19 or 20. So, he was more capable of consent than she was at 14.
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#146Can't believe we're to the point of debating whether a private educational institution can base an admissions decision, in part, on a past murder conviction. This isn't about redemption or rehabilitation. No one is suggesting she's going to beat, starve, abandon and murder another 4-year-old. That's very unlikely. But, what we are suggesting is that a private institution should be able to consider a person's entire s…
And I say we'll never know what her son may have contributed and she took him from the world.
Odds are, as an African-American son of unmarried teenagers subject to a horrific excuse for public education, he would already have been a victim of the "justice system". Like all of our Wars, our Wars on Drugs and Crime are not designed to be "won" by any of their direct participants. Killing one's own child, whether before or after an arbitrary event, is an act of hopelessness. It's not hard to understand how someone without hope could do regrettable things. Nor is it hard to understand how the status quo's educational mascot, or at least the administrative cretins who have seized its control from the faculty, could react in a knee-jerk, shambolic, thoughtless manner to "support" that status quo.
('98)
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fairness, she is a convicted murderer. And just try to imagine the magnitude of the blowback if she ever did anything wrong on campus, particularly to some precious darling of wealthy and connected parents. I'm not saying the Harvard administration made the right choice here, but they certainly had cause to be cautious.
> In fairness, she is a convicted murderer. Who did her time and paid her dues to society. That's the point of rehabilitation.
What makes you think people get rehabilitated?
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Also, murdering a 4 year old child should lead to lifelong sentence in any case imho, so sorry, no sympathies here.
She got pregnant at 14 after being raped by a high-school senior, suffered domestic violence from her mother and afterwards in multiple group homes and foster families she was placed in, culminating in a psychological breakdown. Given her state of mind then, this isn't directly comparable to other cases of cold, premeditated murder.
Downvote me to hell again, but if person is capable of beating 4 year old defenseless child severely and leave him to die slowly in agony and hunger over days, it's not a human -- it's a dangerous animal that must be kept locked. And no amount of jail-time or sub-par academic papers can change that.
Re: From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You either stand for your principles in all circumstances or none. If they only count for 'easy' cases they are worthless anyway." So a third-striker convicted to 15 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread is equally 'deserving' of help than a child murderer? Okay... Look I would agree if you would say 'we'll focus on a group and if there happen to be undeserving people in that group, we'll grudgingly accept that…
> child murderer Is she a murderer, or someone who committed murder once over 20 years ago?
A child murderer, obviously. Actions have consequences, some of them life long.