David Hogg: Parkland shooting survivor taunted by Fox News host wins place at Harvard

Last laugh for gun control activist after jibes by Laura Ingraham over 'college rejections'

In mid-December, Harvard’s early-entry candidates began logging onto the application status portal to learn whether they’d been accepted to one of the world’s most prestigious universities. But for one particularly famous member of the class of 2023, entry into Harvard brought a bit more than congratulations.

For David Hogg, it was the last laugh.

“Thank you all for the well wishes,” Mr Hogg tweeted Saturday morning. “I’ll be attending Harvard in the fall with a planned major in Political Science.”

Mr Hogg is one of the survivors of the 14 February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead. After the shooting, he became a founding member of Never Again MSD, a group that advocates for stiffer gun control laws. He helped organise The March for Our Lives for stronger gun violence prevention measures, which drew nearly 800,000 people to the nation’s capital.

But the 18-year-old’s very public stance on gun control turned him into a target himself. His home was swatted. He’s been accused of being a crisis actor. And even typical teenager ups and downs have made national news.

Mr Hogg and Harvard didn’t immediately return messages on Saturday.

In March, he told TMZ about his rejection letters he’d received from four California colleges, even as he organised a movement that was “changing the world.”

Mocking Mr Hogg's comments, Fox News Host Laura Ingraham tweeted a story from a conservative news website that described the teen as a “Gun Rights Provocateur” – and said Mr Hogg was whining.

“David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it,” Ms Ingraham tweeted. “(Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA . . . totally predictable given acceptance rates.)”

Mr Hogg took to Twitter, where his number of followers has surpassed 900,000. He compiled a list of 12 companies that advertise on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

In a matter of days, Ms Ingraham lost more than a dozen advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Hulu, Jenny Craig, Ruby Tuesday and Miracle-Ear.

The move showed the influence that Mr Hogg and the other survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting have gained – and companies fears about becoming collateral damage in polarising controversies.

Ingraham later apologised, but Mr Hogg blasted the move as an insincere “effort just to save your advertisers.”

“The apology . . . was kind of expected, especially after so many of her advertisers dropped out,” Mr Hogg said on CNN. “I’m glad to see corporate America standing with me and the other students of Parkland and everybody else. Because when we work together, we can accomplish anything.”

In rejecting Ms Ingraham’s apology, Mr Hogg accused her of being a perpetual “bully,” who should apologise to other people she’d wronged.

That didn’t happen, but Mr Hogg made no mention of it on Saturday.

Instead, he tweeted his response to an overwhelming sea of congratulations.

The Washington Post