John Adams is rolling over in his grave today. One of the driving forces behind the American Revolution and the freedoms it represents, was also a lawyer who represented British troops involved in the Boston Massacre. You didn’t have to be a historian to understand that this was a very, very controversial move back then.
I write the above as a reaction to the retaliatory actions Harvard University took in not renewing the position of Faculty Dean for a lawyer representing the despicable Harvey Weinstein. Of course that is not the stated reason for his removal. But for those who believe he and his wife were not removed from their positions because of the students protests against his legal representation of Weinstein, as Harvard claims, I suggest you are as ideologically gullible as the people who believe President Trump fired the FBI leadership of Comey, McCabe and all because they treated Hillary Clinton unfairly.
We all recognize we live in a bizarre world where gaslighting reality has become sport. And many on the left will self-righteously point blame at the zealots on the right who are marching off the cliff in blind support of anything Donald Trump and his minions proclaim. And for the most part, they are right. As the GOP/conservative movement has transformed themselves into sycophants that defend the daily assaults on the Constitution and the values and norms inspired by this document, it is easy for those of us on the Left to feel smug about civic sins of the Right.
But the virus of Authoritarianism can easily jump from the right to the left with ease, especially when the “herd” has been weaken by a generation of economic turmoil and the intense fragmentation and amplification of extremes that drive the “success” of social media. (Just look at the attacks folks like Clinton, Biden and even Bernie get from those on the left, as an example.)
Punishing a lawyer for representing a despicable person is another nail in the coffin of a free and open society that John Adams and millions of Americans since our founding have fought for. (And again, claims that this punishment has nothing to do with the Weinstein representation is as absurd as all the GOP rationalizing their support for Trump’s horrid behaviors).
We as a society will never get ourselves out of this political rut (an optimistic description) if we aim our “hypocrisy outrage” only at our opponents. We all know that just heats things up, with each side digging in deeper. That’s why I have a lot of respect for the Never Trumpers that continue to speak out (and yes, continually grow smaller in size and influence). Each “side” needs to police itself and call out violations in our political norms that we have had in place for centuries. That is why I feel those on the left must call out the irresponsible behavior of those on the left and punishing a lawyer for the clients they represent is one of those times.
One bedrock norm is the right of legal counsel. Just as John Adams recognized it in 1774. Now, nearly 270 years after Adams graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in the world (and widely viewed as the most “liberal” in the country) is punishing a lawyer because of the client he represents. This kind of intolerant behavior by Harvard, and supported by many forces on the left, must be condemned for what it is: an abandonment of the basic values that this great Democratic Republic was founded on. It must be called out for what it is: It is un-American. Those who favor this move are not “creating a potential slippery slope”, they are jumping on the slippery slope already created by the Trump sycophants and they seem oblivious to where the ride ends. It ends in an authoritarian hell.
Harvard and the students who are outraged about a lawyer fulfilling their constitutional obligations as a citizen, should be ashamed of themselves and should be called out for their authoritarian and anti-American values. And the Left can’t have ugly publications like Brietbart claim the moral ground here. Brietbart is trying to convince people that the Left is authoritarian and this episode is great ammunition to convince people of that. Please fellow progressives, liberals, lefties (whatever you want to call yourself) don’t give them the ammunition. So when you see some of the left acting in a way that violates our civic norms, stand up and call them out. Let’s make sure we have the moral high ground when it comes to preserving democracy.
I agree on principle that Weinstein representation should not be the reason for firing him, but it’s not nearly as obvious to me as it seems to be to you that it was the motivation.
First the protests, then the “investigation” into unrelated matters. Then the firing. Like I said, to believe that was a coincidence, you’d have to believe Comey was fired for being to tough on Hillary Clinton.
Do you think if he was not Weinstein’s lawyer, he would have lost this position? (And this of course assumes he would not have made scores of enemies that turned over every rock to find anything they could use to punish him for representing someone.)
Harvard said there was a myriad of issues and I don’t know more of the story enough to contradict them. The Comey story, OTOH was played out very much in public and IMO quite obvious, especially when Trump told Lester Holt on national television what his motive was. I reject the comparison between the stories entirely.
I share your concern about attacking lawyers because they defend reprehensible clients.
In that context, I wonder where you stand on Roy Cohn? His nascent political career was destroyed by his representation of Joseph McCarthy. Was that unfair to Mr. Cohn? He later become Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and mentor. What does that say about Mr. Cohn and Mr. Trump? My purpose in mentioning Mr. Cohn is explicitly not to compare him to or conflate him with Ronald Sullivan. It is instead to hopefully expand the discussion by spreading its envelope a bit.
My very brief read of the Harvard situation is that it has rather more to do with white privilege at Harvard than with any wider fault of the “left”. Harvard is surely a bastion of white privilege. Is it mere coincidence that Mr. Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson, are the first African-Americans to be faculty dean at Harvard?
According to a NYTimes report published yesterday, the communication from Harvard said the following (emphasis mine):
Both Mr. Sullivan and his wife have been removed as deans. Each will continue their positions as fully-tenured members of the Harvard faculty.
The same NYTimes piece notes that Mr. Weinstein is not the only controversial client of Mr. Sullivan (emphasis mine):
I’d love to know what the concerns of the staff were. I know I’m cynical, but I just don’t trust the media narrative about this. It’s all too easy for reporters on deadline to churn out formula stories about protests, #me-too, and so on. For example, have there been other tensions between these two deans and students? How about the staff? There are several other stories already casting criticism of Harvard — the university is rightly under fire because of its relationship with the Sackler family (and that family’s unsavory role in the Oxycontin debacle).
Is Harvard slipping into a batten-down-the-hatches mode? How well-connected are the students leading the protests against the two deans? What role have the two deans played in the various controversies around Harvard?
It looks to me as though the representation of Mr. Weinstein might be an example of what my German-speaking wife calls a “sachzwang” — a rationalization for something that you already wanted to do anyway, but for less defensible reasons.
I think that attempting to reduce this to a violation of a person’s right to representation perhaps distracts attention away from what is actually happening here. I suspect the actual story is more unsavory and also more specific to this situation than your thread-starter suggests.
It’s probably easier and cheaper for those running Harvard to victimize a dean while keeping the Sackler money.
I thought the problem with Roy Cohn was his own lack of ethics, and not that he represented Joe McCarthy per se.
@Christopher “the problem with Roy Cohn…”:
Indeed.
Mr. Sullivan’s critics are perhaps arguing that a lack of ethics was required to defend Mr. McCarthy, and that the same is true for Mr. Weinstein. While I disagree with that criticism, I think that’s the relevance of Mr. Cohn to the current debate.
I don’t see the comparison between Cohn and Sullivan. Cohn did not represent McCarthy, but was chief counsel to the Senate Committee that conducted the Army-McCarthy hearings. Yes, Cohn’s reputation was damaged (in most minds–but certainly not the whacko right) from his association with McCarty, but I’m not aware of any retaliation against him after the hearings that was aimed at who he represented as clients. That did not occur until he became a mob lawyer, and while I don’t know the details, was eventually disbarred by a NY Supreme Court. Again, I’m not aware of any retaliation against Cohn that sought to punish him for representing certain clients.
I agree with you that the comparison is at best a stretch. I mention it only because I’ve seen it in the complaints about Mr. Sullivan.
And yes, I think some white privilege is going on here, but it is still part and particle of the lefty authoritarian tendencies here. This whole thing is an overreaction to the #metoo movement. Why should we be surprised that a bunch of privileged white people are blinded by the (correct) outrage about sexual assault that they don’t see they are punishing a black professional couple who are simply living out their lives of responsible citizens.
@”a black professional couple who are simply living out there lives of responsible citizens”
That is one scenario. There are others. For example, so far as I know we have no information about how this black professional couple is viewed by their colleagues on the staff. In particular, we don’t know how much china they are breaking inside the organization about controversies like Harvard’s relationship to the Sackler family. We also don’t know anything about the dynamics between this couple and the past and present residents of Winthrop House.
I think an equally likely scenario is that Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Robinson might also be viewed as ideologues pursuing a private agenda at the extreme expense of the staff, students, and donors of Harvard (I’m overstating this for the sake of clarity). There might well be a long list of student complaints about the couple regarding things like perceived hostility of the couple towards Winthrop House residents. The protests about Mr. Weinstein might be the excuse that Harvard feels they can finally make stick (hence my “sachzwang” comment above).
I agree with you that something unsavory is happening here. I don’t think we have enough information to get too worked up about a particular scenario. This strikes me as a classic case where the truth is likely to be different from what is currently being reported.
A Harvard Crimson piece published Friday strong suggests (at least to me) that the issues with Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Robinson that led to the termination of their role as dean have very little to do with Mr. Sullivan’s representation of Mr. Weinstein.
From the above piece (emphasis mine):
Unless this piece is totally fabricated, the removal of Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Robinson was a result of long-standing conflicts that have little or nothing to do with Mr. Sullivan’s representation of Harvery Weinstein.
The Globe story I linked to referenced this story and used reporting from the Crimson story. I’m sorry, but I doubt any of this “culture of fear” smear campaign would have been been charged, had it not been for the Weinstein issue. As I said above, firing them for a “culture of fear” is like Trump claiming he fired Comey for being to tough on Hillary.
Where they were tough to deal with as House Deans or not, would not have become an issue if it were not for Weinstein and I hope people don’t fall for the fig leaf designed to justify leftwing retributions.
I guess we just disagree. You’ve cited no facts to support your assertions, and you dismiss the reporting that does exist.
Sounds to me like “I’ve already made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts”.
Yes, I have made up my mind. These complaints I believe were a direct result of the Weinstein issue I believe. In situations like this, I’m very skeptical about coincidences. And by the way, Comey did treat Hillary Clinton badly. And I have no doubt the Sullivan and his wife could be difficult people.
But I feel, without proof, that Comey was not fired for being to tough on Hillary. Do you? Just as I do not believe Sullivan was fired because of his actions as a House Dean, but because of his legal representation of a bad person.
Like I said, I guess we just disagree.
I have some limited experience in academic settings. I was on the staff of a research institute at Brown for a few years, I’ve taught courses as an adjunct professor from time to time, that sort of thing.
My experience with academia is that university administrators and administrations are FAR more concerned with unhappy donors, unhappy legacy students, and pretty much anything that creates local drama than any abstract big-picture concern like the right of a defendant to competent defense counsel.
I think we just have different biases about what happened here. It appears to me that the department has been looking for an excuse to terminate the roles of Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Robinson at Winthrop House since 2016. I suspect that there might well be a strong racial aspect to the animosity — it wouldn’t surprise me if the two deans had little patience with the attitudes of the privileged whites they were in charge of, and vice versa.
The 2016 allegations that a student was asked to perform inappropriately personal services, together with the allegations that said student was disciplined for raising the issue with the administration, sound real and legitimate to me. They sound very much like similar tempests that have embroiled most of the academic settings I’ve been involved with.
I think our society is just beginning to understand how to confront and deal with the deep-rooted issues of racism and sexism. My gut tells me that the Crimson piece comes closest to nailing the real dynamics of the several accounts I read.
After making my above comment “Yes I made up my mind” I realized that the “reason” why they were fired is not at the heart of my point (and neither one of us can definitively know why they were fired.)
My basic point still stands: People criticizing Sullivan for representing a despicable client are wrong to do so. In this case the attacks are coming from the left. For the students protesting his legal representation of Weinstein, this should have been a teaching moment to explain why they are wrong. Why it is agains the fundamental values of our political system. And for members of the staff and faculty, shame on them. They should have known better.
Beyond that fundamental point, comes the issue of why they were fired. I doubt we’ll learn the full truth. But from my stand point that optics suck and creates the impression the firings were more retribution. Whether that is the case of not, what is the case is the liberal community should be ashamed of themselves for not defending the basic concept that everyone desires legal representation.
I agree with you that effective and competent legal representation is a fundamental right of every defendant. We Democrats should lead the way in defending that right.
And calling it out, especially when your political side is doing it. If “each side” were more self policing (instead of policing the other), our political system would be in better shape.
BTW, I wasn’t able to read the Boston Globe story you posted because it is behind the Boston Globe paywall and I cancelled my subscription last April. The straw that broke the camel’s back was yet another dark-and-stormy-night novella that was nothing more than a lurid and voyeuristic intrusion into the private grief of a family and community.
Since you didn’t lift any quotes from the piece in your thread-starter, I had no way of knowing what was and wasn’t reported and what the Globe’s sources were. I will say that with the exception of a handful of Boston Globe veterans (like Andrea Estes), most Globe stories have much less credibility with me now than they did before the John Henry acquisition. Unlike you, I take the Harvard Crimson reporting at face value in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
Just going to say: Everyone should subscribe to the Globe, warts and all. We need it. Most of it is still a good paper.
I tried it. It’s twice as expensive as the New York Times, more than twice as expensive as the Washington Post, and provides less than a tenth of the value to me of either. When you write that “most of it is still a good paper”, I just don’t see that. I tried it earlier this year, and dutifully read through it each day. To me, it’s virtually indistinguishable from the Herald. I read MassLive and most of the hyper-local sites I can find.
I don’t believe that buying a terrible product at an inflated price helps anybody.
it appears #MeToo was only the latest issue, and perhaps a “last straw” surrounding the couple.’s profile.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/5/10/winthrop-climate/
And look at the the ambulance chaser representing them. We know George Leontire quite well down here.
https://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/04/27/land_deal_in_new_bedford_called_sham/
Wow, there maybe a opening for someone like you at Brietbart. Now Sullivan is smeared because he has a lawyer representing him who was accused of something shady 13 years ago! The tactics of destroying people is a bipartisan art.
My sense is people here are trying everything they can to justify this firing…even as they recognize it goes against the very fabric of our values.
Please don’t group my commentary with that of southcoast. I join you in dismissing his relentlessly ad hominem commentary.
The warp and weft of the fabric of my values is comprised of actual fact and actual truth. I’ve seen no actual fact or actual truth reported that supports your assertions about “leftwing authoritarianism”.
BothSidesDoItists are the sophist progeny of Nixon apologists who defended THAT crook by crying that BOTH sides did dirty tricks during the Watergate scandal. Sound familiar?
The Democratic party has also seen an erosion of its anti-war elements. If anything, the party has been pushing Trump to be more militaristic. Except for war with Iran… that would be going too far. Democrats have a sort of Goldilocks Militarism, where Venezuelan chaos and 5 million dead Syrians are considered “just right.”
A Harvard Law Professor shares his viewpoint in the NYT.
Indeed, that’s a good piece. I suppose it’s confirmation bias, but I came away even more convinced that the public issue of Mr. Sullivan’s defense of Mr. Weinstein is a Sachszwang. It looks to me as though the administration has been looking for an excuse to take this step for some time, and the issue with Mr. Weinstein provided that excuse.
I agree that the optics are terrible. The premise that defending Mr. Weinstein disqualifies Mr. Sullivan for anything is indefensible. If anything, that defense provides a positive role model of what being a Harvard-educated lawyer should imply.
I don’t think authoritarianism is the right word. Purity is. It’s a problem in many political groups, and the Left is no different. I think part of the appeal of Bernie Sanders in the primary was his apparent ideological purity. He said things we agree with, even if they weren’t “prudent” to say. He was pure. Hillary, whom I supported, was definitely not pure. Ideological purity, however, doesn’t always make good policy.