"Harvard rescinded my acceptance," Kashuv tweeted this morning in a thread that included photos of official letters from the school. "Three months after being admitted to Harvard Class of 2023, Harvard has decided to rescind my admission over texts and comments made nearly two years ago, months prior to the shooting."
After the massacre last year, conservative pundits and lawmakers immediately held up Kashuv as a foil for the larger number of liberal-leaning students who emerged after the tragedy demanding stronger gun-safety laws. As left-leaning teens created the March for Our Lives movement, conservatives instead rallied behind Kashuv — he at one point even met with Sen. Marco Rubio. The teen also became the director of high-school outreach for Turning Point USA, the campus conservative group most notorious for marching around Kent State University while wearing adult diapers.
But just recently, Kashuv's past racial slurs surfaced. In May, a student shared images from the Google Doc with HuffPost. Among other statements, Kashuv wrote, "KILL all the FUCKING JEWS!" and "FUCK THE JEWS." At another point, Kashuv was discussing a female student he said he found attractive but wrote she "goes for niggerjocks." In another instance, he wrote he was "really good at typing nigger ok like practice uhhhhhh makes perfect."
After the texts surfaced, he apologized and stepped down from Turning Point USA. Now Harvard has decided to drop him as well.
2/ A few weeks ago, I was made aware of egregious and callous comments classmates and I made privately years ago - when I was 16 years old, months before the shooting - in an attempt to be as extreme and shocking as possible.
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019
I immediately apologized.
Here is my apology: pic.twitter.com/eI38ziiQE8
Conservative pundits have already jumped to Kashuv's defense. Daily Wire commentator Ben Shapiro astoundingly compared Harvard's decision to the Spanish Inquisition — in which thousands of people were tortured and executed — and claimed the university was holding people to an "impossible standard." Though if Shapiro finds it "impossible" not to say the N-word, that might just be him.6/ I also sent an email to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to seek guidance on how to right this wrong and work with them once I was on campus. pic.twitter.com/3M1UEXXeQm
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) June 17, 2019