Latest news with #Mailman
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Meet the Harvard Law alum at the center of the White House's campaign against Harvard
To get Harvard to that point, the administration has implemented a multipronged pressure campaign that includes canceling Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mailman, a 2015 law school graduate, is the White House's senior policy strategist and a deputy assistant to the president. She is a right hand to deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, atop the nerve center of the White House on Trump's policy priorities. That includes Trump's current campaign against Harvard and other universities under the stated objective of ending diversity policies the administration considers discriminatory and combating antisemitism, particularly the protests and environment on campuses since Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Advertisement While Mailman credits other officials across the administration with coming up with many of the measures so far, she coordinates and spearheads the execution of Trump's vision and ideas. Advertisement Her role as a central player in the high-stakes confrontation has emerged from interviews, press accounts, and internal documents unearthed during legal challenges to the administration's canceling of funding. Mailman, 37, declined to discuss what the administration specifically wants from Harvard, but she pointed to other universities' settlements as a roadmap. 'There's almost a fear of [reaching an agreement] because it might be seen as too pro-Trump,' Mailman said. 'And it's like, don't be scared. Penn survived it. Columbia survived it.' Columbia University, an early target of the administration, this week Harvard has taken and has sued the government over canceled research funding and efforts to bar international students. Mailman cited the Columbia agreement as showing the administration's priorities: 'quality and fairness, a commitment to ending racial hierarchies, but an equal commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech.' Advertisement 'There is nothing in that deal that would constrain academic freedom or freedom of speech, or micromanage the university,' she continued. Harvard declined to comment on Mailman or the negotiations. Though she makes frequent media appearances, Mailman is a lesser-known member of the administration. A Trump veteran from his first term, she left Washington after he left office, eventually settling with her husband and two small children in Texas, where her family still lives. She initially resisted joining the White House again, but Miller recruited her back and she commutes between D.C. and Texas each week. She will soon be stepping down from her current role and moving back home, but she intends to continue working for the administration on issues including higher education in a more limited capacity. Interviews with eight former classmates, friends, and former colleagues describe Mailman as a smart, energetic, amiable, driven person who doesn't suffer fools. They describe her as an intellectual conservative who is passionate about effectuating change in the world, but not a longtime activist looking for a political career. Her entree into Trump's West Wing came after a Harvard Law School classmate connected her with the administration. She was working for a law firm in Denver after an appellate clerkship when a fellow Harvard Law alum reached out and notified her that his colleague, Rob Porter and Trump's new staff secretary, was hiring. 'He texted me and said, 'Do you want to work in the center of the universe?'' Mailman recalled. 'And I said, 'I hate New York,' and he said 'No, the White House.' And that was it.' Advertisement Derek Lyons, Mailman's former colleague from the first administration, said she impressed the team immediately with her résumé, interview, and readiness to move to D.C. from Denver within days of getting a job in Porter's office. 'She won people over with high competence, enormous drive, strong work ethic, and high energy,' Lyons said. 'She was often seen as somebody who could execute at a very high level under intense time constraints. She's an excellent lawyer, but also understands policy nuances and political nuances.' A Kansas native 'who came from nothing from the middle of nowhere,' as she describes it, Mailman has a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas, served two years with Teach for America, and has a master's degree in elementary education and teaching from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She entered Harvard Law School in 2012 and became president of the school's chapter of the Mailman said that during her time at Harvard, the class did not feel divided by partisanship even though students had different leanings, a sentiment shared by her classmates who spoke to the Globe. Mailman had and maintains friendships with political liberals. Advertisement In the years since, however, she said Harvard and other top institutions have lost their way, coddling students and 'glorifying victimization' to create a culture that isn't producing resilient leaders. She is particularly passionate about rooting out diversity initiatives — which some in her orbit attribute in part to her own self-made biography, strong belief in meritocracy, and distaste for elitism — as well as advocating for barring transgender people from domains historically reserved for women. Between administrations, she litigated on that issue with the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative-leaning advocacy organization. She authored She didn't seek out her role in the Harvard talks, but nevertheless embraces it. Ultimately, she said, the administration and Harvard largely want the same things. 'I think Harvard thinks that it is excellent, I think it wants to be excellent, I think it knows what excellence looks like,' Mailman said. 'I think there's some desire to not be seen as a Trump lackey or bend the knee to Trump, and like, whatever, do what you need to do to have the [messaging] that you need. 'But at the end of the day, I think it should be the case that our vision and their vision is the same, which is: How do we create the next generation of great leaders, science, and medicine.' Mike Damiano of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Tal Kopan can be reached at
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
An executive lost his job and became a mailman. It wasn't what he expected.
Stephen Starring Grant became a mail carrier at age 50 for a practical reason: He needed health insurance. A longtime consultant and marketing executive, Grant lost his job when covid hit. The layoff was so abrupt that he was in an airport, halfway to a meeting in New York, when he got the call. 'At four that morning, I had been employed,' Grant writes in his new book, 'Mailman.' 'Now I was not.'
New York Times
21-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
What Does Your Mailman Know About You? More Than Your Address.
MAILMAN: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home, by Stephen Starring Grant The worst thing about delivering the mail, Stephen Starring Grant says in 'Mailman,' his warm and oddly patriotic new book about being a rural carrier in Virginia for a year during Covid, isn't dogs, although some 5,000 carriers are attacked each year and a few die each decade. To fend them off, postal workers learn to carry multiple cans of Halt! dog training, they're told to take nothing for granted: 'Spray it till the can goes dry. Get them in the T zone: eyes and nose, eyes and nose.' The worst thing isn't the seething bees and wasps (also spiders) that lurk in neglected mailboxes. It isn't the awkward and painful stretching required to drive stock vehicles from the passenger seat, which one must do when, as often happens, a rural carrier supplies his or her own car. It isn't how heavily armed people are now, so that there is a 'continuous nonzero chance of someone shooting you.' It isn't rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail nor extreme heat in un-air-conditioned postal trucks. It isn't the 69-pound packages (the U.S.P.S. declines anything over 70). It isn't the high injury rate, especially for rotator cuffs. The worst thing about delivering mail is the 'casing' that's required before you head out each morning. To case the mail is to painstakingly set everything (envelopes, boxes, magazines, postcards, parcels, you name it) in order, so that you can easily retrieve it while on the road. 'The fact is that every day, each letter carrier effectively builds a library, loads it into a truck and then disperses that library in route order,' Grant writes. Casing takes patience. Many rubber bands are involved. It's a hassle. Doing it poorly can add misery and hours to your day. Grant found himself grudgingly delivering the mail in middle age (he was 50) because he'd lost his job as a marketing consultant. He had a wife, two teenage daughters and a tiny but worrisome nugget of prostate cancer. He needed the job for health insurance and to ward off the biggest dog, depression. Several years earlier, he'd moved his family from Brooklyn back to his hometown, Blacksburg, Va., in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so that his children would grow up with grass under their feet. Until he was laid off, he still commuted regularly to New York and other major cities. Delivering the mail was harder on Grant, physically and mentally, than he'd expected, he tells us in 'Mailman.' But he offers insight and cheer about the upsides. He liked being able to check in on lonely people and do good turns. He often felt he delivered something more than just the mail: 'Continuity. Safety. Normalcy. Companionship. Civilization. You know, the stuff that a government is supposed to do for its people.' He enjoyed the rich pageant of offbeat products that flowed through his truck. 'If you think your carrier doesn't notice when you order a sex toy,' he writes, 'you're wrong.' He liked the days when orders of baby chicks came in, though delivering the heavy bags of chicken feed that followed was a bummer. People gave him cookies; he often got free coffee at Starbucks. He got a lot of steps in, often 15,000 a day. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump administration's letter of demands to Harvard that sparked standoff ‘sent without authorization'
The Trump administration's letter to Harvard University threatening financial ruin if it does not agree to a list of demands was sent by an official 'without authorization,' according to a report. Last Friday, the letter from the White House's task force on antisemitism triggered a standoff between the Trump administration and the historic institution that continues to rumble on. That letter, according to the New York Times, was reportedly sent by 'mistake' after Harvard refused to cave to the administration's demands in a powerful public statement issued Monday. 'Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely,' the newspaper reports. 'Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.' After the university refused to back down publicly, it received a 'frantic' phone call from a Trump official, according to the Times. The letter was sent by a member of the antisemitism task force, Sean Keveney, who is acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the Times, citing three people briefed on the matter. The Independent has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House for comment. The White House is standing by the letter and its sweeping demands. The administration alleges the university has failed to tackle antisemitism on campus. Other demands in the letter included cooperating with federal immigration officials, ending diversity programs, screening international students for their views, de-recognizing pro-Palestine student groups, and Harvard subjecting itself to a wide-ranging 'viewpoint diversity' audit. In a statement to the Times, May Mailman, White House senior policy strategist, blamed Harvard for going on a 'victimhood campaign.' 'It was malpractice on the side of Harvard's lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks,' Mailman said. 'Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.' Mailman added that the conflict could be resolved if Harvard follows through on President Donald Trump's demands. The antisemitism task force told the newspaper that they are in 'lock step' with the Trump administration on 'ensuring that entities who receive taxpayer dollars are following all civil rights laws.' Harvard pushed back on the White House's statement that they were at fault for 'not picking up the phone.' 'It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government's recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say,' the university said in a statement to the Times. 'But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences.' The White House has accused Harvard of failing to counter campus antisemitism amid widespread pro-Palestine protests over the last two years. 'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Harvard president Alan Garber pushed back this week. Harvard has maintained that it has worked diligently to stop antisemitism on campus. It is the first of the many Ivy League universities targeted by the administration to affirmatively commit to resisting the administration's demands. Trump has also threatened to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status.
The Independent
19-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump administration's letter of demands to Harvard that sparked standoff ‘sent without authorization'
The Trump administration's letter to Harvard University threatening financial ruin if it does not agree to a list of demands was sent by an official 'without authorization,' according to a report. Last Friday, the letter from the White House 's task force on antisemitism triggered a standoff between the Trump administration and the historic institution that continues to rumble on. That letter, according to the New York Times, was reportedly sent by 'mistake' after Harvard refused to cave to the administration's demands in a powerful public statement issued Monday. 'Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely,' the newspaper reports. 'Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.' After the university refused to back down publicly, it received a 'frantic' phone call from a Trump official, according to the Times. The letter was sent by a member of the antisemitism task force, Sean Keveney, who is acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the Times, citing three people briefed on the matter. The Independent has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House for comment. The White House is standing by the letter and its sweeping demands. The administration alleges the university has failed to tackle antisemitism on campus. Other demands in the letter included cooperating with federal immigration officials, ending diversity programs, screening international students for their views, de-recognizing pro-Palestine student groups, and Harvard subjecting itself to a wide-ranging 'viewpoint diversity' audit. In a statement to the Times, May Mailman, White House senior policy strategist, blamed Harvard for going on a 'victimhood campaign.' 'It was malpractice on the side of Harvard's lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks,' Mailman said. 'Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.' Mailman added that the conflict could be resolved if Harvard follows through on President Donald Trump 's demands. The antisemitism task force told the newspaper that they are in 'lock step' with the Trump administration on 'ensuring that entities who receive taxpayer dollars are following all civil rights laws.' Harvard pushed back on the White House's statement that they were at fault for 'not picking up the phone.' 'It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government's recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say,' the university said in a statement to the Times. 'But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences.' The White House has accused Harvard of failing to counter campus antisemitism amid widespread pro-Palestine protests over the last two years. 'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Harvard president Alan Garber pushed back this week. Harvard has maintained that it has worked diligently to stop antisemitism on campus. It is the first of the many Ivy League universities targeted by the administration to affirmatively commit to resisting the administration's demands.
