This is a tough reply for me to put words to, as I’m an engineer and not a social scientist or a philosopher, but here goes:
I sort of have a different take to this. I think an argument can be made for bringing people into a discussion who haven’t accepted the social norm of what is acceptable behavior. As long as this person is respectful, in this case there is no indication that he openly “publicly” acted out in a way that matched his hateful private language, he would have provided a different bias when talking about issues. Additionally, if this activity were to occur on campus in actual acts of hate to do harm (ie publicly calling someone a racial slur), then I suspect it would not be tolerated.
From all the things I’ve heard from Pres. Zimmer on the UChicago way of approaching issues, I believe it is in line with those thoughts. Now, would he be accepted by the student body after this became public is a different issue, but in the spirit of Academic Diversity, I suspect this is right in what UChicago is open to promoting (the idea of different thought systems producing different ways of looking at an issue).
I do wonder how these private google docs and personal text messages became public? Was it politically motivated? Was it out of jealously? Did someone wake-up and say “it just isn’t right that Kyle got into Harvard, I’m going to do the world a favor and let Harvard know about some text messages I’ve received?” I fear the day when people not only can pull up past texts, but read past thoughts, none of us will be safe. In a way, if a person hated Kyle for his thought system/beliefs/upbringing and acted out on that, is it not a similar action? Taking action out of Hate? Is it ok to Hate the Hater? If it isn’t ok to Hate, than should the people who went public with this information also have their motivation reviewed to determine if they also need to have their admissions rescinded as well? (I assume that the Google doc messages and the text messages were between students and also assuming a Harvard admitted student would communicate almost exclusively with other college bound students)
We are entering a time when we are getting to be a very bi-polar society. Where traditionally accepted belief systems are clashing with other traditionally accepted belief systems as well as newer social norms. In many cases those differences cannot be resolved with a “you’re both right” answer (this is not the case with Kyle’s racist texts/private messages, few thought systems would call this an accepted behavior today). In our “Outrage” and “Doxing” culture, things like this situation are bound to happen more often and we as a society will need to come up with an answer. People need to learn to respect and tolerate each other’s different thought systems, even if one’s thought system is the polar opposite to the other and they need to realize it is a two way process.
If an institution can propose that it believes in pure academic process that includes people having polar opposite views and those who participate in the process of academia play by the rules of tolerating and respecting the others thought system, would that not yield the best outcome?