Grover Norquist is Over-stating the Anti-Catholic Bias at Harvard

Grover Norquist told the Daily Caller that President Barack Obama's HHS regs reflect the anti-Catholic bias to which Obama would have been exposed at the Harvard Law School.

Norquist was graduated from Harvard College and the Harvard Business School. “He went to Harvard, I went to Harvard, I know the level of anti-Catholic animosity you run into from people at Harvard,” said Norquist. “It usually doesn’t translate into government policy, and with Obama it does.”

I beg to differ. Norquist is five years older than the president and I, so he attended Harvard that much earlier. Five years is not a generation, however, so I find it hard to believe that Norquist's Harvard experience was that different from mine or from Obama's.

I cannot say I ever encountered any anti-Catholic sentiment at Harvard. To the contrary, the Catholic student community there was quite vibrant, so much so that in those early years after graduation, I donated to the Catholic Student Center rather than to the law school.

And since Norquist hones in on the law school, I must likewise point out that the Harvard Law School Catholic community was strong enough that we started having our own Sunday night masses at the law school (Pound Hall), so we wouldn't have to walk three blocks in the cold.  In fact, we had an ordained priest in the class ahead, who acted as our own unofficial law school priest. I also recall one student who attended the Sunday law school mass who decided to stay after graduation and attend Harvard Divinity School. He would have moved on if the bias was as Grover portrays.

It's too bad that Grover's experience was so different.  Based on my own not that many years after him, I tend to think he was exaggerating.

Obama's policy as manifested in the HHS regulations, coercing people to violate their conscience, is abhorrent. But it cannot be blamed on Harvard.

Obama Nominates Harvard Law Dean to S.G.

Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan has sent an email to alumni to announce that President-elect Barack Obama will nominate her to be Solicitor General. If confirmed by the Senate, she will take a leave of absence from Harvard.

I have accepted this nomination because it offers me the opportunity, working under the leadership of the President-elect and his nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, to help advance this nation's commitment to the rule of law at what I think is a critical time in our history. I am honored and grateful, awestruck and excited, to be asked to contribute to this most important endeavor. And perhaps, for me, it adds a special touch of sweetness to the occasion that the person making the nomination, in whose capacity for greatness I deeply believe, is himself a member of the group to which I am writing.

At the same time, I feel today real sadness - a sense of loss of what, if confirmed, I will be leaving that is every bit as strong as my sense of anticipation of what will be to come. Now isn't the time for me to attempt a grand wrapping-up or final farewell; I don't in any way want to presume the outcome of the Senate's consideration. For the present, I'll say only this: it has been both the joy and the privilege of my life to serve as dean of this most wondrous law school. I love it, and I love the extraordinary community of people - you - who make it up. I look forward to staying in close touch.

Although I don't know Dean Kagan personally, she has made some outstanding appointments to the law school's faculty that demonstrate an interst in seeking opposing viewpoints. That is, she's appointed true conservatives (Federalist Society members!) who have done much to enhance the ideological diversity of the school.

She'll make a great S.G.

Color My Burkha Crimson

Harvard University has given in to requests of Muslim women to close its gym to men for six hours a week to "accomodate" women who feel "uncomfortable" or "awkward" exercising in the presence of men.

Harvard Islamic Society's Islamic Knowledge Committee officer, junior Ola Aljawhary, concedes that the policy was in part initiated by the school's Islamic group. Nonetheless. she maintains that women-only hours are not a case of "minority rights trumping majority preference." She notes that women of different faiths have showed interest in the hours.

"These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms not because they don't want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way," she said.

That rationale proves too much. If all it takes to close down the gym is the assertion that a woman feels "uncomfortable or awkward," then fat women might similarly claim the right to exercise without men. Likewise slender and attractive women, who don't want to be hit on while they work out. That's why some women join Curves for Women and others go to Wellesely. Muslim women, of course, have the same options.

And so we get to the real rationale:

"We live together in one community, it only makes sense for everyone to compromise slightly in order for everyone to live happily," she said. "This matter is simple: Can't we just display basic decency and show tolerance and inclusion for people not a part of the mainstream majority?"

"Tolerance and inclusion" : those are code words to warn white men that they are about to get discriminated against, and better like it.

There are aspects to Harvard banning the men from the gym that are just surreal. First, Harvard was founded as a men's institution. Women asked to be included. And that has to imply that women will suffer the presence of men, even during exercise. If anything, the men have stronger precedent to demand the right to exercise without women.

Here's the deal, ladies. When you graduate, you will be forced to work with men, no matter what field you pursue. It's better to learn to accept that now. Indeed, you should take advantage of the opportunity to play squash with your male class mates; it will improve your game.

Ironically, Harvard's first benefactor, John Harvard, was a Puritan minister, though the school's focus became secular. Harvard prides itself on the broad range of backgrounds of its students, and correctly so. It is therefore appropriate for Harvard to welcome the Muslim women, if they meet the academic requirements.

But these women chose to go to there; they applied and matriculated to a school that includes men and did not ban men from the gym, prior to their arrival. And to demand the institution to bend to accomodate their sensibilites -- whether or not they are based on religion -- is the height of arrogance.

The Muslim women really are asking for more than an accomodation: they are asking for an imposition on everyone else. It would be like Orthodox Jews demanding that all students eat Kosher foods. Or an Evangelical Christian forcing all other students to only read texts that do not discuss evolution.

Colleges teach more than academics; they provide life lessons, too. And the Muslim women of Harvard need to learn that it's not all about them.

H/T: Instapundit.