What Happened?
Parkland shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv took to Twitter on Monday, saying that Harvard University recently rescinded his acceptance to the university.
In his tweet, Kashuv spoke on a recent controversy involving racial slurs that he and classmates shared between each other through digital messages nearly two years ago.
In the Twitter thread, Kashuv apologized for his past comments and spoke further on Harvard’s decision to revoke his acceptance.
“Harvard deciding that someone can’t grow, especially after a life-altering event like a shooting, is deeply concerning,” Kashuv said. “If any institution should understand growth, it’s Harvard, which is looked to as the pinnacle of higher education despite its checkered past.”
“Throughout its history, Harvard’s faculty has included slave owners, segregationists, bigots and antisemites,” Kashuv said. “If Harvard is suggesting that growth isn’t possible and that our past defines our future, then Harvard is an inherently racist institution. I don’t believe that. I believe that institutions and people can grow. I’ve said that repeatedly.”
Kashuv said Harvard’s decision has cost him scholarships and opportunities from other universities because the deadline for all of them has passed.
A spokesperson from Harvard told CNN that they will “not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants.”
In Context
According to a string of tweets from Kashuv, private messages between Kashuv and fellow classmates with intentional “shocking and extreme” racist comments were made public two years after Kashuv survived the fatal Parkland shooting in 2017. After issuing an apology statement to Harvard and attempting to work with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Kashuv said that the university rescinded his acceptance and declined a request for a private meeting.
According to Kashuv’s apology letter, he and his fellow classmates were 16 years old and “using callous and inflammatory language in an effort to be as extreme and shocking as possible,” two months before the events in Parkland. Kashuv credits his growth to the horrors of the shooting and said he is embarrassed by the comments and that they do not define who he is today.