Harvard dean rescinds Chelsea Mannings visiting fellow …

Harvard University withdrew a fellowship invitation to Chelsea Manning after CIA Director Mike Pompeo distanced himself from the school. (Reuters)

Harvards Kennedy School of Government rescinded a visiting fellowshipofferedto Chelsea Manning,the former militaryintelligence analyst who spent seven years in prison forleaking classified government secrets, after the university faced forceful backlash from CIA Director Mike Pompeo among others.

I now think that designating Chelsea Manning as a Visiting Fellow was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility, Douglas W. Elmendorf, the schools dean, wrote in a 700-word statement released shortly after midnight Friday.

Manning wasone of fourvisiting fellows announced two days earlier by the Kennedy Schools Institute of Politics. As part of the program, visiting fellows appear on Harvards campus for speaking engagements and events,interacting with undergraduate students ontopical issues of today, the schools initial announcement explained.

Elmendorfdecided to withdrawthe invitation after realizing that many people view a Visiting Fellow title as an honorific, though the school had not intended to honor [Manning] in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds.

Sheis stillwelcome to spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak at theschools John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, the deansaid.

I apologize to her and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard today for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation,Elmendorf added.

Mannings website generates an automatic response to media requestsandindicates shes not giving interviews.

On Twitter, however, she accused the school of suppressing marginalized voices and caving to pressure from the CIA.

The deans decision came only hours after Pompeowithdrew froma planned appearance at the Kennedy Schooland chastised the institution for calling attention to Manning. In a biting letter to the events organizers, Pompeo, who earned a law degree from Harvard, brandedManning an American traitor whose actions and ethos contradicted the intelligence agencys most basic and sacred values.

Harvards actions, Pompeo added, implicitly tell its students that you too can be a fellow at Harvard and a felon under United States law. I believe it is shameful for Harvard to place its stamp of approval upon her treasonous actions.

Pompeos blustery withdrawal from Thursdays event joined a chorus of denunciationfrom national security experts, military veterans and others.

Earlier Thursday, in a stern letter of his own, Michael Morell, a former CIA leader who spent more than three decades at the agency, resigned from HarvardsBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs.He had been a fellow theresinceSeptember 2013. The schools invitation to Manning, Morell said, all but endorsed her decision to break the law.

I have an obligation to my conscience and I believe to the country to stand up against any efforts to justify leaks of sensitive national security information, wrote Morell, 59, who twice served as the CIAs acting directorand retired in 2013 as the agencys second-in-command.

Pompeopraised Morells decision to resign,writing in his letter that Harvard traded a respected individual who served his country with dignity for one who served it with disgrace.

A former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Morell, resigned from a spot at Harvard Sept. 14 after the school offered a visiting fellowship to Chelsea Manning. (Reuters)

Manning, 29, is transgender.As an Army private first class named Bradley Manning, she was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 35 years in prison for providingthousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, which Pompeo and Morell characterized as an adversarial foreign intelligence service.

Supporters of the sites founder, Julian Assange, consider him a champion for transparencywhose public disclosures of sensitive information are in protest of government overreach.

On Thursday, Assange assailed Pompeos withdrawal from his Harvard appearance.

President Barack Obama commuted Mannings prison sentence before leaving office, and she was freed in May from themilitarys supermax prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Since then, Manning has been a prominent voice for LGBT rights and routinely writes about the social, technological and economic ramifications of Artificial Intelligence,as Harvards fellowship announcement noted.

Manninghas saida responsibility to the public compelled her to leak government secrets. Buther harshest criticsdescribe those actions as traitorous, having put deployed U.S. troops at risk. President Trump and lawmakers from both political parties have questioned Obamas decision to commute her prison sentence, which he called disproportionate when measured against the punishment meted out to other whistleblowers.

Like the Obama administration, Trumps White House has struggled to curtail informationleaks.National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster issued a memothis month to leaders throughout the federal government, imploring them to conduct an hour-long training session next week. Pompeo, in particular,has prioritized this matter, calling it a leading reasonfor his decision to have the agencys Counterintelligence Mission Center report directly to him.

[At CIA, a watchful eye on Mike Pompeo, the presidents ardent ally]

The Institute of Politics at Harvards Kennedy announced a broad range of visiting fellows for the 2017-2018 academic year, including Sean Spicer, President Trumps short-lived White House press secretary, and Corey Lewandowski, who was fired as Trumps campaign manager several months before the election.

Manning noted their participation shortly after Elmendorf, the dean, said he was withdrawing her invitation to serve as a visiting fellow.

In selecting Manning for a fellowship, Elmendorf said, Kennedy School officials felt they were keeping with the programs guiding objective, which is to expose students to individuals whose words or actions influence world events even if they do not share our values and even if their actions or words are abhorrent to some members of our community, he noted.

We do this not to endorse those actions or legitimize those words, but because engaging with people with fundamentally different worldviews can help us to become better public leaders, he wrote. Because controversy pervades many questions in politics and public policy, some speakers are controversial. While we do not shy away from that controversy, we insist that all speakers take questions, and these questions are often hard and challenging ones.

Hearing a very wide range of views, regardless of what members of our community think about the people offering those views, is fundamental to the learning process at the Kennedy School.

He added that I think we should weigh, for each potential visitor, what members of the Kennedy School community could learn from that persons visit against the extent to which that persons conduct fulfills the values of public service to which we aspire. This balance is not always easy to determine, and reasonable people can disagree about where to strike the balance for specific people. Any determination should start with the presumption that more speech is better than less.

In retrospect, though, I think my assessment of that balance for Chelsea Manning was wrong.

Harvard fellow and former congressman Jason Chaffetz said the deans decision to revoke Mannings invitation was the right call.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who was in the same class offellows with Manning, expressed the same sentiment. Speaking on Fox News Fox and Friends Friday, he said that while there is a need for an open and honest discussion of ideas,it is quite another to take someone who has been a traitor to his country and invite them to be part of the process.

The schools initial announcement suggested Mannings advocacy on LGBT issues would be a focal point during her campus visit, and that discussions with students mightcenter onthe social challenges associated with being transgender in the military.

At Trumps direction, the Pentagon is studying how to implementhis ban on transgender men and women in the armed forces.In their letters, Pompeo and Morell specifically sought to distance themselves from any suggestion their decisions were motivated by Mannings choiceto become a woman or publicly discuss her crimes.

But it is my right, Morell added, indeed my duty, to argue that the Schools decision is wholly inappropriateand to protest it by resigning from the Kennedy School in order to make the point that leaking classified information is disgraceful and damaging to our nation.

This post has been updated.

Jim Mattis didnt undermine President Trumps transgender military ban. Trump already had.

Chelsea Manning doesnt look glamorous in Vogue. And thats great.

Chelsea Manning on leaking information: I have a responsibility to the public

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Harvard dean rescinds Chelsea Mannings visiting fellow ...