Ms. Manning was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses in 2013, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. (My organization helped raise money for her legal defense.) In January, President Barack Obama, in one of his last acts in office, commuted her sentence. Altogether, she spent seven years in prison — more time behind bars than any other leaker in American history. She was also subject to deplorable treatment while in custody that the United Nations special rapporteur on torture said at the time constituted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and that more than 250 law professors said amounted to unconstitutional torture. Whatever your opinion on the value of her disclosures, it should be clear to everyone that Ms. Manning was unduly punished for her supposed crime, and she deserves the opportunity to re-enter the public debate without worrying about the C.I.A. bullying private institutions to disavow her at every turn.

Mr. Morrell, in his resignation letter, quoted unnamed officials claiming Ms. Manning “put the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk,” without citing any specific examples. This is a common charge against her, and an unfounded one: The evidence of “damage” from Ms. Manning’s leaks has been grossly exaggerated from the start. During her trial, the government could not point to anyone, soldier or otherwise, who was physically harmed by WikiLeaks’ publications. Even at the time of the leaks, State Department officials were privately admitting that administration officials were exaggerating the harm the leaks caused to bolster their case.

Harvard’s decision to rescind Ms. Manning’s invitation is about more than academic spinelessness. In his statement defending the decision, Douglas W. Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy School, said, “I think we should weigh, for each potential visitor, what members of the Kennedy School community could learn from that person’s visit against the extent to which that person’s conduct fulfills the values of public service to which we aspire.”