This is all about the fact that Rick Snyder is a Republican. Do you think the Democrat mayor of Flint would have gotten the same treatment?
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Ex-Michigan Governor Out at HarvardRick Snyder, the Republican former governor of Michigan, told Harvard University he won’t be heading there for a fellowship after all. His announcement Wednesday follows days of vocal opposition to Snyder’s appointment to the Taubman Center for State and Local Government as a senior research fellow.Snyder’s critics cited his response — or lack thereof — to the Flint, Mich., water crisis during his governorship, from 2011 to 2019.”It would have been exciting to share my experiences, both positive and negative; our current political environment and its lack of civility makes this too disruptive,” Snyder said on Twitter. “I wish them the best.”In an email to Harvard’s Kennedy School, Douglas Elmendorf, the school’s dean, wrote that Snyder withdrew from his fall fellowship and that “we and he now believe that having him on campus would not enhance education here in the ways we intended.”Flint’s population, “especially low-income black residents,” he said, has “suffered acutely because of their poisonous water supply and I have been deeply moved by the personal and thoughtful messages I have received from people in Flint.”In 2017, Elmendorf made a similar announcement regarding the appointment of convicted Wikileaks source Chelsea Manning as a visiting fellow to the Kennedy School. While Snyder backed out, however, Manning’s fellowship was rescinded. She was still invited to talk on campus, Elmendorf said at the time, but was not right for the perceived honorific of fellow.
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