Because nobody ever really fails out of politics, the GOP’s failed candidate for Virginia governor will grace Harvard’s campus this spring:
Ed Gillespie will be a Harvard Institute of Politics visiting resident fellow this spring. #VAGOV
— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) January 16, 2018
Ed Gillespie was a fairly orthodox Republican for most of his career—until the Trump era, when he adopted the president’s pernicious race-baiting to turn out voters. His questionable tactics, however, apparently do not trouble the Ivy League minds responsible for choosing visiting fellows. Gillespie joins august company: Similar honors have been granted to Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski, both of whom made their names by being loyal to Trump. (In contrast, Harvard disinvited Chelsea Manning after an outcry from CIA Director Mike Pompeo, among others.)
It’s not clear what Harvard thinks students have to learn from such luminaries. According to an editorial in The Harvard Crimson, the answer was “not much” as far as Spicer was concerned:
I was in a classroom session with Spicer and he told the same stories, including several easily refutable lies, that he’s told publicly since leaving the White House (some items were leaked). The classroom session followed the same playbook as his Press Secretary tenure: Dodge hard questions, make a few false statements, attack the media, claim that Trump is treated unfairly, etc.