Having lived her life in a billionaire bubble, Betsy DeVos expects deference. She did not get it at the Kennedy zdchool at Harvard last night.
Protestors unfurled banners and raised their fists as Betsy tried to speak about the glories of school choice.
One said “Our Students Are Not for Sale. Another said, “White Supremacy.” Another said “Dark Money.”
When she asked in her speech whether more money would solve the problems, a line that must have been greeted with applause when she spoke at ALEC, a student shouted out “YES.” This was not the answer she expected.
Betsy thought she was in a safe space, given that the event was sponsored by pro-choice scholars and the Koch brothers and the Gates Foundation, but she forgot that the audience was students.
Students were warned that they would be evicted if they were disruptive but that didn’t stop the protestors.
In the future, she will have to keep students out of her audiences. They are unpredictable.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
She should get used to this type of treatment. As long as she continues her assault on public schools, then she deserves every bit of the protesting and criticism.
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I don’t feel the least remorse for her. She is arrogant, entitled, and uses her money to impose her will. She is the face of privilege. She wants to destroy the public schools and replace them with private schools. She should be hooted wherever she goes. That’s the power of the powerless.
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I agree. In fact, I don’t think she has had near enough criticism. She is unqualified, incompetent and has an agenda that is wrong for 90% of the students. She should be greeted coldly wherever she choses to speak.
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The face of privilege at Harvard.
What an anomaly.
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Why did her “talk” need sponsorship? Is she not an official of the US government paid with tax dollars? She should not be compensated for doing her job.
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My hunch is she didn’t get paid but The Kennedy School and PEPG needed to pay the expenses and fees to panelists. They got paid, not her.
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If a tree falls in the forest and there are no dollars there to attract think tank wankers, does it make a sound?
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“School Voice”
Betsy, from her bubble
Tried to speak of choice
All she heard was trouble
Choice is really voice
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Good one, SDP.
Betsy loves Choice, hates voice.
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It’s almost like having a real job … Reality can be rude at times …
To those raised in style to which they are unaccustomed to it.
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DeVoodoo is a ditz.
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“In the future, she will have to keep students out of her audiences. They are unpredictable.”
YEP! Students are unpredictable-it’s what helped keep me sane when dealing with the insane mandates from adminimals that had nothing to do with helping me insure that all students were learning.
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I bet it wasn’t just students and that many outside were not from Harvard.
Betsy’s problem is much bigger than just students. The Mass AJ has been a very vocal critic of DeVos and Mass residents just rejected an effort to increase charter schools.
I suspect that in the future DeVos will have to fill her audience with prescreened bots built in a lab at MIT.
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Prescreened cuz not even all bots support DeVos
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Next step to protect Betsy: no audience other that bona fire members of rightwing think tanks and Evangelicals.
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Is bona fire the same as bonfire?
Reform is burning like a giant bonfire and people like DeVos, standing in the middle, are completely oblivious.
“VAM pyres”
VAM pyres raging all around
Chetty papers on the ground
Politicians un-aware
Of their burning underwear
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Bonfire of the Inanities …
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Protesters outside were definitely not all students. There were also current and retired educators, and activists young and old who are working to oust Trump.
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Very funny, Jon
Insanities also works, of course.
As does “inhumanities”
As does the original title.
The inane in vain, stays mainly in the insane.
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The Boston Teachers Union was one of 8 organizers. The BTU president spoke. She shared for the first time in public that she was sexually assaulted while a student at Harvard. Among several other speakers- a public school teacher, a BPS parent and a graduate of the Kennedy School who shared that he had been a student with special needs. Harvard students were there, but seemed outnumbered by educators and education activists.
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Good for you!
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As an organizer of the student protest inside, all INSIDE protesters were students! The outside was planned by MEJA but all participants and organizers of the inside protest were students of Harvard University (multiple school involvement)
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“YEP! Students are unpredictable-it’s what helped keep me sane when dealing with the insane mandates from adminimals…”
You and me both!
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The hate filled comments on the Wash Times article is sad. Lots of people insulting the students, questioning their right to be at Harvard
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The only “debate” they’re having in ed reform is whether the new privatized systems should be regulated or unregulated.
DeVos is in the unregulated camp.
Nothing she says is relevant to public school families. She’s exclusively concerned with expanding the choice sector. “Government schools” are unfashionable at Harvard and in DC.
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The most striking thing about all of her speeches is how she offers not one concrete benefit to kids in public schools. She literally adds no value to public schools- she doesn’t even pretend to.
It’s remarkable that ed reformers don’t notice the omission. They exclude 90% of people and it’s such a bubble they don’t even notice.
Some of these “experts” probably ARE PAID by public schools as consultants and such, and STILL they omit public schools.
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DeVos, the Kooks, or Gates chiding that money is a secondary matter. Walk your talk bozos.
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I don’t fully agree. If students are peacefully protesting, good. If they are interrupting public speeches (as has been the case elsewhere), then no. Take a look at UC Berkeley, and you’ll see many of these “protesters” are simply thugs.
Democracy isn’t yelling at a public speaker because you disagree with them.
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I disagree. Democracy certainly isn’t a bunch of rich elites making unilateral decisions to have a controversial speaker and a stacked panel with a limited audience speaking for the university. If Harvard had had a balanced panel in the first place, then I might agree with you. But democracy means you have the right to speak, but not the right to speak unchallenged or unimpeded. I think Harvard students and other affiliates have every right to demonstrate in any way that it takes that Betsy DeVos does not speak for them.
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Do you have a right to go to a public park and speak uninterrupted? No. But Harvard is a private institution, and if they are organizing the event, they can put in whatever rules they want.
That’s why they said unruly students would be escorted out by HARVARD security. If they want to put on a controlled event, it is their prerogative.
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Matt,
I think you meant to answer “yes.” I can go to my local public park and speak ad nauseum, and no one will stop me.
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Harvard can put on a biased panel, but the ethics of scholarship–not written in law or obligatory–implies a semblance of balance, fairness, open discussion and debate. To hold a biased conference on a controversial topic is legal but unscholarly, and puts the Kennedy School in the same camp as ALEC.
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Diane,
Yes, I agree. My point was that even if the event is completely disingenuous, they have a right to hold it in a civil way since they are the host.
And if students want to protest, fine, but yelling at speakers is not a mature or productive approach.
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“…they have a right to hold it in a civil way since they are the host.”
They knew Betsy was/is a polarizing figure. If they didn’t want her to be challenged, it would have been smart to control who attended more effectively. I’m afraid those who support public education have been dismissed or ignored for far too long for Betsy’s crowd to expect a tea party that didn’t have something to do with Boston Harbor.
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Harvard gets $600 million in federal grants A Year and whether it goes specifically to Kennedy Center is irrelevant because money is fungible.
So the idea that they have the right to do what they want and exclude whom they wish is just ridiculous.
If Harvard wants to exclude and do there own thing, that’s fine.
Just as long as they don’t finance their elitism with American tax dollars.
I don’t think that is the least bit unreasonable.
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Do “their” own thing
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If they wish to do their own thing and “control” the debate, then they should have to forgo the Federal funding –ALL $600 million of it.
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Matt,
The protest seems to have been mostly quiet.
It involved unfurling banners.
One audience member blurted out “yes” when she rhetorically asked whether more money was needed for schools.
Protest is the way the powerless get a voice.
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Yeah Matt – She asked a question and got an answer just not the answer she was looking for – not a crime or even a protest, just honesty.
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Next time they will ban the students and cherry pick the audience and have an HUGE LED sign above the stage out of sight of the camera that lights up when they want the audience to stand and give her repeated ovations.
Next time if there is a Q and A session, all the questions will be written ahead of time by someone on Betsy’s staff and the questioners will be handpicked.
Expect them to stage all future events modeled after a Republican convention during a presidential election year. Next time, everyone in the audience will be paid to perform.
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Yes, like Trump she will start to be very careful about choosing her appearance venues, making sure that the audience is friendly and giving her agenda a necessary veneer of visual support.
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This is not about the ethics of scholarship. It is about money.
DeVos spoke in a hall with this sign on display. Kennedy School of Government, Institute of Politics.The venue was made available by
Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.
These are website entries for the Institute of Politics.
”Harvard’s Institute of Politics was created as a memorial to President Kennedy to inspire students to get involved in politics and public service. The institute oversees the John F. Kennedy, Jr. Forum, one of the world’s premier arenas for speech and debate, and runs a unique resident fellows program for political practitioners to spend a semester at Harvard.”
There is more: Institute of Politics Fellows. “The IOP Fellows Program represents a unique opportunity for political practitioners with diverse experiences and viewpoints to spend a semester at Harvard. Fellows lead a not-for-credit study group, participate in Institute activities, and engage in informal interchange with students and faculty. The Fellows Program is central to the Institute’s dual commitment to encourage student interest in public life and to develop ways for the academic and political communities to learn from each other.”
Now who is supporting these programs? Look over the two lists below. These are the cheerleaders and financiers of the policies Betsy Devos is advancing.
Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance is supported by: The Achelis & Bodman Foundations; BASIC Fund Scholarship Foundation; Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation; The Annie E. Casey Foundation; Thomas B. Fordham Foundation; Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Gordon & Llura Gund Foundation; Kern Family Foundation; Charles Koch Foundation; John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.; Lovett & Ruth Peters Foundation; William E. Simon Foundation; Smart Foundation; The Walton Family Foundation, Inc. These are not friends of public education.
These are listed as “Affiliates” of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.
The Affiliates unite the foundations of the super rich, listed above, with other foundations, institutes, centers, and alliances of the ultra right, with free marketers, consumer choice fans, and others who are eager to destroy public education, East and West and North and South.
Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston; Center for American Political Studies; The Institute for Quantitative Social Science; Thomas B. Fordham Institute; Brookings Institution, Brown Center on Education Policy; Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Alliance for School Choice; Center for Education Reform; Education Leaders Council; Heritage Foundation; Institute for Justice; Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation; Empowering Parents for Informed Choices in Education (EPIC); Children’s Scholarship Fund; Heartland Institute School Reform News; Joint Center for Poverty Research; Black Alliance for Educational Options; Foundation for Excellence in Education.
All of that money and the commitments attached to it are supposed to honor the legacy of the man who said …”My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.”
The Kennedy legacy seems to be this: Sell your country and the system of public schools and universities to the highest bidders with the deepest pockets. DeVos, The Kennedy School of Government, The Institute of Politics are not the least bit interested in scholarship. They want to end public education in the United States.
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Harvard PEPG is the think tank if the far right on education
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They must laugh every time they read, if they read Kennedy’s call to public service.
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They laugh, all right.
…all the way to their $37 billion endowment, where they deposit their $600 million federally funded research dollars.
Isn’t money funny?
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see for yourself at
https://www.c-span.org/video/?434821-1/education-secretary-betsy-devos-speaks-harvard
Some protestors snapped their fingers. Some held banners.
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Yes! Love that student. 👏
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Apparently, Betsy is used to adressing a controlled audience of sheep. She needs to understand that her approach to education is foreign and faulty when addressing intelligent people of the younger generation. However, at the venerable old age of 74, and a retired teacher, I would be protesting her deplorable approach to public education. She needs to go back to selling Amway products.
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