It’s Tuesday, May 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Kat Rosenfield on the lethal price of suicidal empathy. The congresswoman who wants to shoot sea lions. Frannie Block’s deep dive into the persecution of Chinese Christians. Aaron MacLean and Dan Blumenthal preview the Trump-Xi summit. And more.
But first: What did Harvard’s slavery reckoning achieve?
Four years ago, Harvard University committed $100 million to what it called the “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative,” an excavation of its historical involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Harvard was hardly unique among American universities in launching a racial justice self-examination, but the scope and price of Harvard’s undertaking were extraordinary.
And so was its failure, writes Novi Zhukovsky. Checking in on the project four years later, Novi discovered “a cascade of institutional embarrassments: high-profile resignations, the dismissal of an entire research team, a string of HR complaints, and a rebuke from Antigua’s ambassador to the United States.” Most damning of all: “Its signature effort—to find descendants of people Harvard had enslaved and then do something for them, presumably financially—has so far failed miserably.” How did America’s most prestigious school get it so badly wrong? Read Novi’s story to find out.
—The Editors
How Suicidal Empathy Kills
Last Thursday night, a 76-year-old man died after he was shoved down a flight of subway stairs by someone who had just been released from a New York City psychiatric ward. The alleged killer had been arrested four times since February, but one of his victims, a 23-year-old woman, declined to press charges because, as she said, “I don’t want to put another black man in jail.” You would struggle to find a clearer example of suicidal empathy, Kat Rosenfield writes, born out of a belief that “those who hurt us can be loved into submission, that the goal of justice is to humanize rather than punish.” Read her piece on a murder that shouldn’t have happened, and the dangerous idea that enabled it.
And for more on suicidal empathy, be sure to catch Rafaela Siewert’s conversation with the man who coined the phrase, Gad Saad. He explains to Rafaela why he thinks the West is on a suicide mission.
Online trolls are the masked bandits of the internet Wild West. Almost anybody, no matter their age, can point to a run-in with a troll, especially those who write for a living like Arthur Brooks. How are we to understand these comment-section bullies? Today, Brooks leverages his study of psychology, harnessing the character traits and personality types of the humans behind the online abusers, concluding that the trolls are, in most instances, destroying themselves as much as they are hurting the victims of their online scorn.
This week, President Donald Trump will travel to China to meet with Xi Jinping. Ever the wild card, Trump’s mindset going into the meeting with China’s president remains a mystery—not to mention whatever fruit the bilateral meeting between the two superpowers will bear. One of the foremost experts on China and the Chinese Communist Party, Dan Blumenthal, joins Aaron MacLean on ‘School of War’ to discuss the high-stakes meeting in Beijing.
One thing that Trump says will be on the agenda when he meets Xi this week is the case of Ezra Jin, a Christian pastor who has been behind bars and unable to talk to his family since October. Frannie Block has followed Jin’s case closer than any other reporter, and has obtained exclusive access to never-before-seen footage of Chinese police arresting Christians, audio recordings of police interrogations, and testimony from those who have witnessed the raids firsthand. Read her eye-opening report on Jin’s case, and the persecution of Christians in China.
In February, Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez took aim at a new foe: sea lions, which she referred to as “Corolla-sized vermin,” as in Toyota Corolla, the sedan. Will Rahn spoke to the polarizing moderate Democrat about her plan to defeat the salmon-devouring sea lions that have taken over a vital river in her district—and about her unique style of politics.
MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS
THE NEWS
President Trump said on Monday that the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement is on “life support,” calling the latest Iranian proposal to end the war a “piece of garbage.” The president did not rule out the possibility of a deal but reiterated that the Iranian leadership is “very dishonorable.”
A gunman opened fire on a busy Cambridge, Massachusetts, street near the campuses of MIT and Harvard on Monday afternoon. The suspect, 46-year-old Tyler Brown, was quickly shot by a law enforcement officer and a civilian and taken into custody. Two men were struck by gunfire and are currently hospitalized for life-threatening injuries. In 2020, Brown was charged with trying to kill police officers.
Seventeen American passengers and a dual British-U.S. citizen evacuated from the cruise ship that was struck with a hantavirus outbreak arrived in the United States on Monday. Most were transported to the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha, Nebraska. Two other passengers were flown to Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based. One passenger has tested positive, while another is showing symptoms.
The man accused of last month’s assassination attempt on President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, is facing four federal charges, including attempting to assassinate the president and assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon.
Six people were found dead inside a Union Pacific railroad boxcar Sunday afternoon in Laredo, Texas. Local officials confirmed that the bodies of five men and one woman were recovered, with preliminary medical examinations determining that the cause of death was heatstroke.
President Trump endorsed a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax in an interview with CBS News on Monday. “When gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in,” he said. The average price of gas is $4.52 per gallon, up from $3 per gallon before the U.S.-Iran war began. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon.
Virginia Democrats filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, asking it to halt a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that struck down a redistricting measure. The redistricting all but gave Democrats four more congressional seats. “The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment,” wrote Virginia attorney general Jay Jones and lawyers for the state Democratic Party.
“Its effort will likely follow the well-worn path of local reparations programs across the country: introduced with a bang and then quietly abandoned as the logistics and finances prove untenable.”
The virtue signaling is loud, but the results are quiet. Grifters looted billions through BLM. Perhaps Claudine Gay can donate her $1 million annual salary to reparations - embarrassing that Harvard still employs this antisemitism plaigiarist.
AS A PERSON OF COLOR…
I appreciate the support of the lady who said…
“I don’t want to put another black man in jail.”
I and my brothers and my sisters of color have suffered for too long from an oppressive bourgeois capitalist system that exploits us and demands that we follow the laws like everyone else.
Surely Martin Luther King was correct when he said... "People should be judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character."
Beige is Beautiful!
😉