Legacy Preferences, Child Ambassador

Harvard, to the Highest Bidder

If the Ivy gates are locked, just buy yourself a key

Way before Donald Trump even considered running for President of the United States, Harvard’s student newspaper – The Harvard Crimson – railed at the university’s practice not only of giving the underwhelming scions of Harvard alumni so-called “legacy preferences” but at “selling” freshman admissions to clearly unqualified high school/prep school grads in exchange for a minimum donation – $2.5 million. Here is an excerpt from an October 4, 2006 Crimson article by Cormac A. Early (see the title above):

“How much is a place at Harvard worth? Hard to say, of course, but if a recently published book by Daniel L. Golden ’78, ‘The Price of Admissions: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates’ is any indicator, the answer probably ranges in the millions. 

“It might arouse the ire of many that someone like Jared C. Kushner ’03, despite what could politely be described as modest academic credentials according to the book, gained admission in the wake of a $2.5 million donation from his billionaire father. But even more galling than the thought of filthy lucre corrupting Harvard’s cherished meritocracy is the thought that the same spot could have been sold for a lot more.” Emphasis added.

Born into a mega-wealthy real estate empire (who didn’t make money in real estate if they bought early?… it’s buy “low, leverage, sell high”), Jared Kushner is the very definition of a spoiled elitist with less-than-stellar intellectual abilities… married into another elitist real estate family, convincing his bride-to-be into converting to Judaism, a point which riles Trump’s neo-Nazi-KKK- white supremacist constituency no end.

With all the White House chaos, a revolving door of departures and arrivals, and with the obvious and very public Trump-battles with the two most important cabinet officers on his supposed team – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions remain on the outs with the President – the underqualified nepotistic coterie of family advisors remains the only constant. It’s a running joke (not so funny) to those watching the power accorded to people who clearly have no clue what they are going… and perhaps lacking the moral commitment necessary for such positions of national trust.

Business Insider (August 28^th): Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's eldest daughter and top adviser, is reportedly referred to as ‘princess royal’ by some White House aides — at least behind her back —according to a new Vanity Fair report. 

“The first daughter's lofty — and, critics say, unearned — position in her father's administration has sparked frustration among some aides, who say she and her husband, senior adviser Jared Kushner, are ineffectual additions to the president's team… Some are put off by the Trump family's nepotism. Critics were incensed when Ivanka temporarily took her father's seat at a meeting of the G-20 in Germany earlier this summer.” Trump’s base cheers as critical policy decisions are made by untrained elitists.  

But Donald Trump’s mid-30s, senior advisor, the mega-underqualified Jared Kushner, has been appointed to be this nation’s senior negotiator to bring peace to the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout the Middle East, Jared Kushner is seen as the appointment of a monarch-wannabee’s child-ambassador. It’s a joke to just about anyone remotely close to this “peace process” (aka, in Trump-speak, the “Ultimate Deal”). While Middle Eastern leaders are presenting a supportive face – discussed below – there are no polls in any regional nation that present a majority of locals in any regional country (particularly Palestine and Israel) who believe Kushner has a chance in hell at effecting what has eluded career diplomats and national leaders for decades. Some are hoping that his naiveté, inexperience and lack of knowledge might inadvertently work. Right….

“Before arriving in the region, Kushner, along with a delegation that includes Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Deputy Adviser Dina Powell, visited the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. If Trump wants to initiate a regional peace initiative, these three countries are critical players in the process. Kushner even met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi despite the United States cutting $100 million from its aid to Egypt this week… In Tel Aviv and Ramallah, Kushner is encountering two leaders seemingly unable and unwilling to make concessions that are necessary for any real progress.” CNN.com, August 24^th.

Statements from both sides seem so optimistic, but these statements belie the snickering behind Kushner’s back and disbelief that an American president could be so stupid as to send such an underwhelming representative to address such a complex diplomatic effort. Here’s what the leaders of the two sides are saying publicly. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (who is facing a major corruption investigation): Such a deal is "within our reach," and promised to work with the Trump administration "to advance peace, stability and security in our region." Palestinian lead, Mahmoud Abbas: "We know that things are difficult and complicated, but there is nothing impossible with these good efforts." What else can they say?

But not only is Jared Kushner one of the least-qualified representatives this nation has ever had at such a senior level, his boss – The Donald – has sent him on a fool’s errand, with two equally intransigent factions without even sanctioning what American policy supported long before Trump – the “two state solution.” Diplomatic experts (international, American, Israeli and Palestinian, with incredible uniformity), simply, tell us that Kushner’s peace effort was dead on arrival without the slightest change of generating that “Ultimate Deal.”

Kushner may keep trying, but he not only lacks the relevant policy support from his father-in-law, but he simply is unprepared for the job. Trump has no problem undercutting his own Secretary of State, contradicting him at every corner, but he has placed one of the most difficult diplomatic tasks in the hands of one of the most unqualified representatives in recent memory.

Not that the turmoil in the Middle East is relegated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Qatar’s isolation from its neighbors, Israel’s looming face-off with Hezbollah (Iran’s regional surrogate) and Syria, Trump’s battle to scrap the Iran nuclear accord, Turkey’s severe veering towards a Sunni autocracy, and the territorial squabbles as ISIS is suppressed. Each variable impacts on regional stability… and on that elusive “Ultimate Deal.” Think Kushner is a regional expert on all these issues? To do his anointed job, he has to be.

As a Foreign Service (Department of State) brat, I know how qualified senior U.S. Foreign Service Officers really are. My step-father, for example, never quite made it to full career ambassador (just one step below). He only had two PhDs (including one from Harvard), three master’s degrees and four bachelor’s degrees… and only spoke six languages, including Hindi and Hungarian. But then, Trump believes that such well-trained and well-educated professionals are swamp-dwellers to be drained and ignored. Instead, we get a child ambassador who had to buy his way into an undergraduate program.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the damage that such callous disregard for professional diplomacy has wreaked in terms of our global credibility is incalculable and will take decades to reverse.