<p>I agree with the above, but I don’t personally care if we are admitting communists. It’s a valid point if they were really doing anything about the education; for instance, Noam Chomsky disagreed with MIT being paid off in order to educate Iran grad students in nuclear engineering in the early 70’s. These Iran students went back and built their country’s nuclear capability. </p>
<p>But for the overall point, yes pizzagirl, we get it that one should raise one’s kids to be better people and to perform better, not to be worrying about whether the process is fair.<br>
But it’s up to the adults, especially alumni of said elite schools (of which there are many on these forums,) to influence policies one way or another.</p>
<p>By the same token, how do you know the offspring of these terrible people think the same way their parents do, or have the same intentions? Perhaps an education at one of the world’s leading universities will open their minds.</p>
<p>The offspring of repressive leaders have a track record of not being model students. Bo Xilai’s kid was a party boy with middling academic performance. I would hazard to guess that solving world hunger was way down on his list of priorities.</p>
<p>Muammar Gaddafi’s kid, Saif, had someone write his PhD thesis for him at the London School of Economics</p>
<p>Would it be better if these children of leaders, and future leaders themselves, stayed in their prospective countries and received education only about their own political system? Couldn’t there possibly be benefits to them learning about US and other cultures and political systems by experiencing it for themselves? Just as we aim for cultural diversity here, the more they are exposed to different cultures and different thoughts, hopefully the more consideration they will give for others in the world. Hopefully through their experiences they will try to make a difference in their own countries with regard to human rights. Maybe I’m naive, but even with their privileged lives, their time at Harvard may be one of the only times they have unlimited access to “uncensored” internet.</p>
<p>I think you are being naive. These privileged people have fancy homes in countries with faster internet service than the U.S., bought with the money from cronyism.</p>
<p>I am no more in favor of colleges giving admissions preference to legacies, than I am of colleges giving admissions preference to the kids of repressive world leaders</p>
<ul>
<li>Kim Jong-Un lived in and attended school in Switzerland for a while.</li>
<li>Bashar al-Assad went to school for opthalmology in the UK.</li>
</ul>
<p>@SoMuch2Learn,
I guess I am irritated by the hypocrisy of these schools espousing their commitment to human rights, then giving legitimacy to repressive leaders by admitting their party-boy/party-girl kids.</p>
<p>But, hey, life is full of irritating things…</p>
<p>The top US universities could fill all their slots with full-fare Chinese Communist Party members. Said institutions have non-profit tax-exempt status. Money talks, wherever it comes from. At least education is one good we still produce in America for the Chinese market.</p>
<p>Harvard can admit whoever they want for whatever reason they want. They can even admit students with totally fabricated resumes, SAT test scores earned by surrogates, applications prepared by consultants and essays written by paid authors. </p>
<p>But they will be sorry when the Chinese recreate the Harvard campus in a suburb of Beijing, right down to the ivy covered walls, and hire away half of the Harvard professors and make their own ivy league university.</p>
<p>True, but don’t people consider that American students could learn something about other perspectives from these elite Chinese as well? Maybe it helps U.S. students to be a little less egocentric about their own country’s ideologies and political system. There are good things about the Chinese way as well as bad. For one thing, they are a lot better at planning long-term and developing strategies for future decades. Assuming these students have a grasp of the mindset of their leaders/families, the may contribute a lot to healthy discussion in many areas.</p>
<p>Wildwood7 yes the opportunity is there to learn from them as well. Off topic, but I can’t help but thinking that while our planning is shortsighted in many areas (nuclear waste and its storage comes to mind) there are many examples recently in China as well. I’m thinking in terms of the one child policy and other human rights issues, and even the shoddy construction of the schools which resulted in such tragedy in the earthquake. Clearly when the Great Wall was built, they were thinking long term, but not when those schools were built. The Chinese people are amazing. I look forward to the day they regain their freedom. Maybe one of the students studying here will be a part of that change. You never know. At the least, there’s definitely the potential for many lively discussions.</p>