News Notes the Harvard kids aren’t alright
By Maya Shaffer
The Harvard Crimson has been under attack by a group of activists upset that the student newspaper sought comment from ICE about a protest the group had led against ICE. Despite a bunch of coverage of the issue, there has been a key detail missed by the media so far. The protest group who has accused the paper of endangering the undocumented students were the ones who, in reality, endangered the students. The group, Act on a Dream, has called for students to boycott the paper, hosted a “teach-in” action, released a FaceBook profile frame, and filed a petition against the paper’s policy of following basic ethical journalism standards.
The protesters published a medium piece that makes a compelling case that ICE is dangerous. They fault the paper for reporting the names of students who spoke with the paper and fault the paper for raising the issue to the national level. However, as activists planning a public event they ought to have had a media plan (about who would make official comment) and should have told participants in the action to direct press inquiries to the people who could speak safely.
The Crimson followed basic journalism ethics by seeking comment from the protesters and from ICE about the protest. The Crimson later clarified that they did not disclose any protester’s names to ICE. Act on a Dream argues that by printing the names of the students who spoke to the paper is unethical because ICE might read the paper. It’s unclear why the students would speak with the paper and then be upset when the paper publishes about their protest and cites the people they spoke with but, as Borat proved, complaining about what you said on the record is an empty endeavor.
Not only did the protest organizers fail to have an effective media engagement plan they absolutely put the protesters in danger by publicly publishing details including the meeting location and plans for the protest publicly days in advance, and provided updates with new info in the leadup to the event. In their written medium piece the activists make it clear that they know that ICE monitors activists like themselves and groups like theirs on the internet. They write, “Given ICE’s long history of affiliation with anti-immigrant hate groups, violating laws, targeting activists, and using the internet to surveil immigrant communities...”. Their choice to publish the protest information publicly on their FaceBook page was must be seen as them knowingly endangering rally attendees.
Posting events where the group expects and specifically invites people who are undocumented to attend publicly beforehand despite the danger inherent wasn’t a one time thing either. Act on a Dream holds a yearly event for undocumented people and this year they put the details up in public beforehand, potentially allowing ICE to target attedees. The real ongoing threat to the undocumented people at Harvard is absolutely the very people who are now attempting to muzzle the media through boycotts and petitions.
The wider context of the activists spending their time and effort on attacking their student paper makes even less sense when you consider that they could be addressing local threats to the undocumented community. The group from Cambridge holds some events in nearby Boston and recently the Boston Police were nailed cooperating with ICE despite the city’s so called sanctuary status. Under Walsh, who has made contradictory statements about deportation, this is the second time the BPD has been caught going around the law to aid ICE with no apparent consequence. Currently, the City of Boston is considering a ban on masks at protests (given the BPD’s access to cameras and facial recognition software, the ability to wear a mask at a protest would protect undocumented peope who wish to protest but need to do so anonymously). Each of these three local issues endangers the community members that the activists claim to be concerned about but the group hasn’t even commented on them while they waste their efforts assailing The Harvard Crimson.
* I did not seek comment for this piece from Act on a Dream given the group’s attacks on journalism and their history of anger when people affiliated with the group are cited in the press for the comments they made to the press.
