The cancel culture comes for Elise Stefanik

Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who represents the North Country in upstate New York, has now been initiated into the club of people who have become targets of the liberal/socialist cancel culture. The source of the attack probably won’t come as too much of a surprise since it came from Harvard. Stefanik graduated from Harvard in 2006 but has kept up her involvement with the school, mentoring students and serving on the Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Advisory Committee. Now she’ll have some free time on her schedule because the school announced that she is being dropped from that position. The reason? She was apparently seen as being too closely aligned with Donald Trump. This report is from our colleague Cortney O’Brien at Town Hall.

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Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) says she is proud to join a growing list of conservatives who have been banned or shunned by college campuses. On Tuesday, the Harvard Kennedy School informed the conservative lawmaker that they have decided to boot her from the school’s Senior Advisory Committee for what they referred to as her baseless claims of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. Stefanik was in Harvard College’s class of 2006 and has been mentoring students ever since.

In a message to the Senior Advisory Committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, Dean Doug Elmendorf explained his decision to kick Stefanik off the panel. He added that he was still “grateful for her long and committed service.”

Following this consideration, I spoke with Elise and asked her to step aside from the Senior Advisory Committee. My request was not about political parties, political ideology, or her choice of candidate for president. Rather, in my assessment, Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence, and she has made public statements about court actions related to the election that are incorrect. Moreover, these assertions and statements do not reflect policy disagreements but bear on the foundations of the electoral process through which this country’s leaders are chosen.

The Dean asked Stefanik to resign and she flatly refused. That put him in the position of having to forcibly remove her. Notice how he went out of his way to proclaim that the decision had “nothing to do” with politics, political parties or anything remotely related to such things. Perish the thought! In reality, anyone who didn’t immediately bend a knee to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and dared to ask for a full investigation of potential voting irregularities was going to wind up on the chopping block.

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Stefanik’s response was professional and yet blunt all at the same time.

Having been the youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives when she first took office, you might think that Harvard would have been honored to keep the name of a figure like Elise Stefanik on their rolls, despite any disagreements on non-academic matters. Despite being among the worst of the liberal “woke holes” in the country, they managed to tolerate having the young Republican official for quite some time. But Stefanik’s star has been on the rise over the past couple of years, particularly for her relentless work in getting more Republican women to run for and be elected to office.

That no doubt drew some negative attention in the hallowed halls of Harvard. But her refusal to distance herself from Donald Trump must have been the last straw. This bruhaha over election fraud combined with the January 6th riots were probably not only the final straw for the liberal lords at Harvard, but the perfect excuse to remove a conservative thorn from their side. That’s really a pity because the young women (in particular) attending that school could probably use a strong, successful role model like Stefanik to help prepare them for the harsh realities of the world they will encounter after they leave the socialist hothouse where they spent their early formative years. It’s Harvard’s loss and I have no sympathy for them.

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