The Sullivan Signal: Harvard’s Failure to Educate and the Abandonment of Principle

The current Harvard disaster was clearly signaled by earlier events, most notably the 2019 firing of Dean Ronald Sullivan. Sullivan is a noted criminal defense attorney; he was the director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and he is the Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, he advised President Obama on criminal justice issues, he represented the family of Michael Brown. He and his wife were the first black Faculty Deans in the history of the college.

Controversy erupted, however, when Sullivan joined Harvey Weinstein’s legal defense team. Student protests ensued. The students argued that they couldn’t “feel safe” if a legal representative of a person accused of abusing women was also serving in a role of student support and mentorship. This is, of course, ridiculous. Defending an individual accused of murder does not imply that a criminal defense attorney condones the act of murder.

Harvard should have educated their students. Harvard should have emphasized the crucial role of criminal defense in American law and history. They should have noted that a cornerstone of the rule of law is the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial, irrespective of public opinion.

Harvard should have pointed proudly to John Adams, a Harvard alum, who defied popular opinion to defend hated British soldiers charged with murdering Americans at the Boston Massacre. (If you wish to take measure of the quality of our times it’s worth noting that Adams won the case and later became president—roughly equivalent to an attorney for accused al-Qaeda terrorists becoming President today.)

Instead of educating its students, Harvard catered to ignorance, bias and hysteria by removing both Sullivan and his wife from their deanships. Harvard in effect endorsed the idea, as Robby Soave put it, that “serving as legal counsel for a person accused of sexual misconduct is itself a form of sexual misconduct, or at the very least contributes to sexual harassment on campus.” Thus Harvard tarred Sullivan and his wife, undermined the rule of law and elevated the rule of the mob. Claudine Gay, then Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, contributed to the ignorance, bias and hysteria. (It’s also notable, that Sullivan also criticized Harvard’s handling of the investigation of Roland Fryer as being “deeply flawed and deeply unfair.” This may have been Sullivan’s real sin, as the investigation of Fryer was under Dean Claudine Gay.)

Thus, we see in the Sullivan episode disregard for free speech, unprincipled governance in which different rules are applied to different actors in similar situations, and a bending to the will of the mob, all issues which have repeated themselves under the Gay regime. Sad to say, however, that these flaws were not so much ignored at the time as lauded.

Harvard followed the mob and when the mob turned and the season changed it had left itself no defense.

Addendum: See also Tyler, My thoughts on the Harvard mess.