Harvard's educational role

Bits and Pieces 2019-03-10

Summary:

Several clear-headed pieces have appeared about the student demands that Professor Ronald Sullivan resign from—or be removed from—his position as faculty dean of Winthrop House because of his service as counsel to Harvey Weinstein. I blogged earlier about Professor Randall Kennedy’s commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education. (This link should work for readers with Harvard Library privileges.) In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer for the magazine, has an equally thoughtful piece called “In defense of Harvey Weinstein’s Harvard lawyer.” He cites the student petition, which states that Sullivan’s “defense of such a figure induces a great amount of fear and hurt in victims of the crimes that Weinstein is accused of,” and then discusses John Adams defending the British soldiers, which Kevin Cullen used as a basis for his satirical column, but puts a less comic spin on it by quoting Adams himself on the price he paid:
In the Evening I expressed to Mrs. Adams all my Apprehensions: That excellent Lady, who has always encouraged me, burst into a flood of Tears, but said she was very sensible of all the Danger to her and to our Children as well as to me, but she thought I had done as I ought, she was very willing to share in all that was to come and place her trust in Providence.
The pattern has been repeated throughout U.S. history. “Defense attorneys for Communists made many feel angry and unsafe,” Friedersdorf writes, recalling the McCarthy era, and then moving to the present, “Defense attorneys for al-Qaeda terrorists made many feel angry and unsafe.”
So people always get upset at lawyers who defend unpopular clients, and societies that value civil liberties and individual rights have to teach every new generation why lawyers should not be identified with their clients nor subjected to any guilt by association. Ever. 52 Harvard Law School professors make the point in a letter in the Boston Globe. President Drew Findling of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers made the point very bluntly in a powerful statement (in the NACDL Twitter feed):
NACDL notes with chagrin the tenor of the student protests against Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. related to his representation of Harvey Weinstein. There are few constitutionally-ordained roles in our democracy. One such role is that of the criminal defense lawyer. Indeed, the Sixth Amendment specifically provides that 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel[.]' There are no exceptions, ever, and no lawyer should ever be criticized or condemned for taking on any criminal case. Ever. This is a fundamental tenet of this nation. To the extent that there may or may not be other issues on the Harvard campus that bear on Professor Sullivan's role at Harvard, those issues should be addressed by the Harvard community without compromising or denigrating the right to counsel.
Writing for BloombergProfessor Steven Carter of Yale Law School makes similar arguments.
Judging the morality of lawyers by the morality of their clients carries echoes of the McCarthy Era, when Red-baiters would smear lawyers who represented Communists. The organized bar, rather than protect its members, joined in the condemnation. The result was predictable: Rather than take on unpopular clients, lawyers cowered in what U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas decried as a “black silence of fear.” …
More worrisome still is Harvard’s ominous promise to look into the “atmosphere” at Winthrop House. It suggests that the university believes that a faculty member’s choice of clients is a matter of administrative significance. And let’s not pretend to be naive: Nowadays, being investigated by campus authorities is tantamount to being convicted by them.
We’re a far cry from the days of Abbot Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard who developed the “house” system. Yes, Lowell had his man

Link:

http://harry-lewis.blogspot.com/2019/03/harvards-educational-role.html

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Authors:

noreply@blogger.com (Harry Lewis)

Date tagged:

03/10/2019, 22:20

Date published:

03/10/2019, 16:10