It’s not that they all are jihadists, it’s that it is so easy to believe that many of them share these same sentiments. Suppose they found five Harvardians who were pro fighting ISIS. That would be a story because it would take an exhaustive search to find them.
"It’s not that they all are jihadists, it’s that it is so easy to believe that many of them share these same sentiments."
First of all, some of the sentiments shared are not far from a conservative critique of the current regime. One or two of the four (four out of SIXTY-FIVE HUNDRED) specifically mentioned the role of the failure of US policies in helping to create or build up ISIS. Anyone here have any doubt that Hussein Ebola's policies have, at the very least, strengthened ISIS?
Thus, even with this extremely small sample, what is represented as the opinions of these students is somewhat distorted, and they don't all agree even with each other. The media go looking for radicals at Harvard (look at the title: "When Ivy League turns ISIS League" - not much uance there), and can't even find four who clearly enunciate real radicalism.
"Suppose they found five Harvardians who were pro fighting ISIS. That would be a story because it would take an exhaustive search to find them."
Not really. Out of 6500 undergraduates, there are a couple of hundred Muslims on campus. You think you could scare up a handful of jihadists from a couple of hundred Muslims?
But what does that say about the other 6000+ students?
Nothing.
There 6500 undergraduates at Harvard. If you spend five minutes in Harvard Yard interviewing them, you should find folks who represent nearly any point of view imaginable, if you put any effort into it. My two sons are slightly-libertarian-leaning socially-conservative, devout Catholic undergraduates at Harvard. They have a large circle of like-minded friends.
Yet, my older son's roommate in his freshman year was an atheist anarchist vegetarian from the Netherlands who now runs around protesting Israel and "climate deniers." He dates a Jewish girl who is very supportive of Israel. My son got along great with his roommate, but that didn't make my son - or the rest of Harvard's undergraduates - atheist anarchist vegetarians.
Nonetheless, if you asked my sons, "who is more dangerous, the US or ISIS," they might answer that under the Kenyan anti-Christ Hussein Ebola, the US is, because ISIS is the symptom, Hussein Ebola is the cause, and that the US is not the force of good it once was. Do you count that as "pro-Isis"? That's largely the argument two of the interviewed students made in the video.
Harvard is a liberal school with a liberal campus and a mostly-liberal student body. But they are mostly orthodox, doctrinaire liberals who are young folks who haven't yet thought out all the things that they have often absorbed quite well from their parents and teachers before getting to Harvard.
My sons tell me that many students, when you question their politics, are open to conservative ideas, and especially libertarian-leaning ideas. They like the ideas of a less-powerful government, and thus are open to smaller government that takes in less money, that interferes less with folks and their businesses.
This headline is a cheap shot at a pretty diverse set of folks. The headline, the article, the interviews, say way more about the organization who put it together - and none of it good - than about Harvard students generally.
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