EDITORS' CORNER
The Harvard Institute of Politics, which bills itself as nonpartisan, recently co-hosted a get-out-the-vote drag show with performers who put on an explicit and vulgar act largely focused on bashing capitalism, the Harvard Salient reported.
It featured a first-person monologue by a drag artist who told the eight people in the audience: “I am capitalism. Racism is my son. Gentrification is this sister. The jail system is my illegitimate daughter, and public schools are my badass grandkids.”
The Salient reported the performer also said capitalism “gave birth to slavery,” put “drug dealers on corners,” and worked to make sure “them colored kids never go to college [sic],” and that capitalism intends to “pull out [its] penis and piss in your mouth,” to “rape the rich” and “ejaculate on the poor.”
“The audience was then instructed to ‘bow down’ and ‘sell your soul,'” reported the conservative news outlet, which added that the cost to put on the event was $1,000, meaning the institute “paid over $100 per attendee.”
The Oct. 28 show, co-hosted by the institute’s Harvard Votes program, was titled “Drag Out The Vote,” according to an Instagram post advertising the event. It is at least the second time such an event has occurred at the Ivy League institution. It also took place in 2024, and is co-sponsored by the Queer Students Association and similar student groups.
At the event last week, the drag performers vaguely mentioned politics and voting, the Salient reported: “the voting part of the voting event was notably brief: the first two performers recited a minute or two of boilerplate phrases about the importance of elections before their acts.”
The piece also questioned the “theoretically nonpartisan” nature of the Harvard Votes effort, especially pertaining to its drag event:
The eight students who attended “Drag Out the Vote” spent an evening at Lowell House learning that capitalism is responsible for slavery, racism, and the prison system, that the American economy sexually desires the rich and the poor alike, and that drag promotes “public health.” Notably, the Salient did not observe any student attendees pick up a voter registration form or ask questions about voting.
The organizers somewhat disavowed the event at the end of the performance.
“Perhaps, at this point, the IOP regretted what they had facilitated. As the program ended, a member of the organizing team assured the room that the performers’ statements were not necessarily endorsed by the hosts,” the Salient reported, adding: “But this was too little too late.”
