In this particular case, the school has determined that Kashuv’s presence at the school would harm its evolutionary mandate. Perhaps administrators are overreacting. Or perhaps Kashuv’s rejection is emblematic of their trying to be better. I am personally agnostic about his predicament, though I do support the notion that teenagers should be granted ample opportunities to transcend their worst mistakes. (Being awarded a spot at Harvard hardly qualifies, to be sure.) Maybe if he and his supporters were as openly critical of, say, draconian prison sentences for juveniles, or if they supported more expansive admissions considerations for Harvard applicants generally, I would have fewer doubts about their long-term commitment.
But the reality is that, while there may be an argument that Harvard should be in the business of doling out second chances to high-schoolers, that is never how it has actually operated. Thousands of students are denied admission every year because a middling semester torpedoed their chances of securing a high-enough GPA. College admissions are determined almost entirely by the minutiae of what applicants did and did not do in high school. Kashuv seems unremarkable in this regard. If his stellar grades and contrition mean his bigoted behavior should be overlooked by administrators, as his defenders contend, surely there are a handful of rejected applicants who did not write nigger in a Google Doc to provoke their classmates or rank female peers by race and attractiveness who are as deserving, if not more so, of having their applications reconsidered. It would certainly be more consistent with the kind of growth that Harvard appears to be pursuing — even if Kashuv would rather it guaranteed a paved road to his own exoneration.
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