Vivek Ramaswamy Is Right To Oppose the Blacklisting of Harvard Students

Being against cancel culture requires consistency.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy harshly criticized Harvard University students who signed a letter placing all blame for the Hamas attacks on Israel itself.

But he broke with many other conservatives in opposing the blacklisting of all such students, decrying this as a form of cancel culture.

"It's not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus," wrote Ramaswamy on X, formerly Twitter. "Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas."

The Harvard student groups who co-signed the anti-Israel letter are simple fools. But it's not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus. Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas &…

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 15, 2023

Ramaswamy is correct on all counts here.

Harvard students have every right to make idiotic political statements, and prospective employers have every right to judge them for it. But as foes of cancel culture have frequently pointed out, this new norm of harshly sanctioning every single problematic utterance is going to make the whole country worse off. Everyone has done or said something they eventually come to regret; in the social media era, in which our worst moments are often preserved on the internet for all time, we ought to extend more forgiveness, charity, and compassion to people who find themselves in such trouble.

Ramaswamy drew fire for taking such a consistent stance. Conservative commentators Dave Rubin and Megyn Kelly both criticized him harshly. In the process of doing so, they overstated the claims in the Harvard letter; Rubin claimed the students who signed it were "genocidal maniac[s]," while Kelly said the students "applaud[ed]" the Hamas killers. To be sure, there are plenty of examples of leftist activists whose statements tacitly endorsed Hamas, including the Democratic Socialists of America in San Francisco and Black Lives Matter Chicago. The Harvard students did not go this far—their mistake was shifting all of the blame from the terrorists to the state of Israel.

Everyone who is genuinely opposed to cancel culture should join Ramaswamy in endorsing restraint here.