Harvard’s Fake Guide to Fake News by Fake Professor from Fake University

Merrimack College Assistant Professor Melissa Zimdars, a 30-something thumbuscker who hates all things Trump, has  only actually held her teaching position at the private college in North Andover, Massachusetts, for about 19 months.

Robert Spencer here, “Harvard University has picked up on a Merrimack College professor’s list of “fake news” sites, including the Daily Caller, the Drudge Report, Breitbart News, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Free Beacon, Independent Journal Review (IJR), and even Bill Kristol’s relentlessly Never-Trump The Weekly Standard. FrontPage Mag, Jihad Watch, and Truth Revolt also make the list. It sure is great to have our intellectual betters at Harvard explain to us what are “illegitimate” sources of news, but there’s just one catch: the “fake news” list doesn’t contain even a single site that is the slightest bit Left of center.

That’s right: BuzzFeed, with its fake dossier on Donald Trump, didn’t make the list. Nor did the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN, despite all their no-there-there hysteria about Russia “hacking” the 2016 presidential election. Nor does the Huffington Post or Salon or Slate or Glenn Greenwald’s fact-free Intercept. Harvard’s list is clearly intended not to warn people away from hoax news sources and stories, but to demonize, stigmatize and marginalize the perspective of the half of the American electorate that American electorate that voted for Donald Trump.

It’s a clever presentation: there are actual fake news sites on the Harvard list, sites that publish wholly false or unsubstantiated stories simply as clickbait in order to generate revenue. But to add to them some of the most prominent conservative sites on the web makes the agenda clear: Harvard, and the Leftist intelligentsia in general, is trying to stigmatize and marginalize every point of view except its own. Merrimack College’s Melissa Zimdars and those who take her list seriously at Harvard and elsewhere apparently think that if they call every perspective they dislike “fake news,” they will be able to destroy the influence of such perspectives, and attain the hegemony of their own point of view.

New hit list of alleged ‘fake news’ sites targets Drudge, WND

Harvard University cites blacklist by Trump-basher specializing in ‘fat studies’

WND, March 15, 2016:

A leftist, Trump-bashing assistant professor in Massachusetts who specialized in “fat studies” is declaring a “fake news” war on conservative and established news sites – labeling sites such as the Drudge Report, WND, Breitbart, Red State, the Daily Wire and Project Veritas as “not credible.”

And now even Harvard University has reportedly linked to the assistant professor’s “huge list of fake news sites” in its new research guide, called “Fake News, Misinformation, and Propaganda.”

As WND reported, Merrimack College Assistant Professor Melissa Zimdars, a 30-something self-identified feminist and activist who has expressed great dislike for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, has been behind the effort to target and discredit legitimate news organizations.

She’s only actually held her teaching position at the private college in North Andover, Massachusetts, for about 19 months.

Now she’s also running OpenSources.co, which Merrimack College describes as “a project that navigates fake and otherwise misleading ‘news’ websites.”

“Our database is maintained by professionals who have analyzed each source, looking for overall inaccuracy, extreme biases, lack of transparency, and other kinds of misinformation,” the website states.

But nearly none of them considered Zimdars’ political leanings or questioned her criteria or qualifications for determining which news sources should be included on her list.

Zimdars teaches courses in radio production, mass communication, feminist media studies, television criticism and new media and digital communication. She received her doctorate in communication and media studies in 2015.

Zimdars has not responded to WND’s request for clarification on her expertise or criteria for deciding which news sources to include on her list. Harvard University President Dew Gilpin Faust has not returned WND’s request for comment concerning the school’s inclusion of Zimdars’ list in its research guide.

However, on Monday Zimdars tweeted: “I wish my skin could grow 3 inches thicker so I could better ignore the recent influx of mostly false and misleading ‘news’ stories about me,” and “Again and again ‘news’ websites prove my criticisms to be warranted and true. The only defense they have is to try [sic] discredit me.”

In November, WND asked Merrimack College President Christopher Hopey if he stands by Zimdars’ decision to publish the list and use it as teaching material for her classes. However. Merrimack Vice President of Communications Jim Chiavelli replied: “Thanks for your question to the president about professor Zimdars [sic] pedagogy. The college has no comment for this story.”

Concerned individuals may contact Melissa Zimdars and Harvard University President Dew Gilpin Faust. 

Sean Hannity’s website warned that Zimdars’ list includes “mainstream conservative sources” and “is giving us insight into just what kind of websites the left plans on targeting for censorship.”

In addition to her new job as an assistant professor, Zimdars is also a columnist and contributor for Little Village Magazine – a left-leaning magazine that says it’s focused on issues such as “racial justice,” “gender equity,” “critical culture,” “economic and labor justice” and “environmental sustainability.”

Her Twitter profile describes her as a “feminist” and “activist.”

Newsbusters found tweets from Zimdars harshly criticizing Trump and Mike Pence during the vice-presidential debate in October.

“Undocumented workers contribute more to this country (beyond taxes) than Drumpf ever has or ever will,” she tweeted on Oct. 4.

The same day, she tweeted to Pence that Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” comment does not equal “Trump’s constant sexist, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic comments.”