Use racial slurs a few times as a teenager, and you don’t get to go to an elite college.
That’s what Harvard supporters said last week, after the conservative world was whipped into a frenzy when the young conservative activist Kyle Kashuv had his acceptance to Harvard rescinded after his use of racial slurs as a teenager came to light. A vicious public debate ensued, with most on the Right arguing that Harvard’s decision excessively punished a young man who had grown and learned from his past mistakes.
There’s no need to throw yet another think piece into the sufficiently covered debate over whether Harvard’s decision was fair. Instead, it’s worth reexamining how we got here in the first place, and whether Kashuv and others like him should’ve ever been put into the public spotlight.
Kashuv rose to prominence along with several of his classmates after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. While survivors such as David Hogg, Emma González, and Cameron Kasky went on to start anti-gun movements such as the March for Our Lives, Kashuv emerged as something of a lone pro-gun stalwart, lobbying for new school safety measures that don’t involve restricting gun rights.
During the debate that ensued after the Parkland tragedy, Kashuv began to receive advising from conservative thought leaders such as Ben Shapiro. Additionally, he attracted the attention of members of the Trump administration and elected officials, even joining Turning Point USA.
His talents aside, it’s clear Kashuv was recruited, propped up, and used by dozens of prominent political figures to advance an agenda. Most of these adults probably never saw anything wrong with what they were doing. Many are good people who thought they were just helping a young conservative.
Still, it’s hard not to see their embrace of Kashuv as the recruitment of a shooting survivor to use as a political cudgel against one’s opponents. The same could be said for liberals’ embrace of Hogg, González, and Katsky. Each side sought to trot out their poster survivor to fight their political battle for them.
Thus, the Kashuv-Harvard controversy becomes all the more poignant when you discover who was behind it. The push to get his acceptance rescinded was spearheaded by fringe right-wing activist Laura Loomer and aided by other unsavory characters such as Mike Cernovich and Jacob Wohl. Just as Kashuv’s rise had been aided by politically motivated adults, he had his dreams destroyed by them. He was used as a tool by jealous grifters to strike back at the so-called establishment conservatives such as Shapiro.
In all likelihood, Kashuv is just a good guy who has made some mistakes. We’ve all said things we regret or exhibited poor judgment before. Frankly, much of the blame for Kashuv’s perils falls onto the adults who propped him up in the first place for political gain and the ones who spitefully targeted him.
Most teenagers aren’t mentally, emotionally, or intellectually equipped to enter into the political fray in such a high-profile manner. So, they will trust political stars, who may not have their best interest at heart. Kashuv is not the first young person to be harmed by opportunist adults for political reasons. Yet if there’s one thing we should take away from the Harvard controversy, it’s that he should be the last.
Dylan Housman is a college student and president of the University of Maryland College Republicans.
