He teaches criminal law and runs a legal clinic. Try to find a good crim law prof who hasn’t been around a lot of criminal.
Most criminal law profs at ABAschools don’t practice a lot of criminal defense in the courtroom. If S was to really get into the HW case he would have to advocate that women in these types of situations are often making up accusations. Are some of the posters saying S would be lying in those cases or should he be allowed to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.
@collegedad13 “If S was to really get into the HW case he would have to advocate that women in these types of situations are often making up accusations.” Only if he was a cheap crappy lawyer. That defense is a glaring logical fallacy, which can be ripped to shreds in a couple of seconds by any half competent lawyer, and can be used against them in so many ways.
@MWolf so what would S advocate since he is obviously not a cheap crappy lawyer. I dont know there is anything he can say that wouldn’t put him in conflict with his role as a house dean.
As pointed out above, Sullivan’s role on the HW defense team was not clear to the public. Jury selection expert? Judicial rules expert? Researcher? Evidence or motions expert?
Not only can attorneys argue out of both sides of their mouths, they can do it on the same piece of evidence at the same time. Happens all the time. That’s the job. And then they go home and talk to their spouses and neighbors and children about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with what happened ‘at the office’ that day. Just like all kinds of other professionals do. If the Dean of another house was a psychologist treating a rapist or wife beater, I’d assume he wouldn’t come ‘home’ and discuss that client either.
While Sullivan was a Dean, he represented Aaron Hernandez on one of the murder cases. Big deal in Boston at the time. Do you think the students felt uncomfortable that Sullivan was representing a popular sports figure or that he was representing a murderer? Do you think Sullivan went ‘home’ and talked about it? No, he probably couldn’t talk about it because of confidentiality limits.
I have to wonder whether the students would have objected to Sullivan if he were a woman attorney hired by HW. Would they label ‘her’ a traitor to all women. Kobe Bryant’s attorney in the sex assault was a woman and she is still highly regarded among women lawyers (and ALL lawyers) in town. No one says “Oh, she demeaned all women when she took that case.” She had a job and she did it. She’s still invited to speak at women’s groups, to mentor women lawyers.
In response to @skieurope’s suggestion of starting a new thread to talk about sexual assault statistics at college, I started this: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2144349-department-of-justice-study-4-of-college-women-raped-each-year-10-sexually-assaulted.html
Anyone interested in discussing that subject please go to that thread.
@collegedad13 What puts him in conflict is his role as a defense lawyer. However, as I wrote at the beginning, that is Harvard’s problem. They hired him knowing that he was a defense lawyer and has, or will potentially be, defending all sorts of people accused of all sorts of crimes. Any of these can create conflict, not only rape. There are relatives of murder victims, victims of battery and muggings, etc.
Should Harvard have placed him in that position? Probably not. Is it anyway Sullivan’s fault or his responsibility to solve the dilemma? Definitely not. Unfortunately for Sullivan, he messed up on other fronts, which gave Harvard an excuse to remove him from his position as dean.
I think when he was hired as a Dean, Harvard (the undergrad school) thought Sullivan’s ‘baggage’ was a positive and not a negative.
Maybe, having worked defending criminals, Harvard thought he’d have some empathy toward students who weren’t perfect, who may have made a mistake or two in their lives, that Sullivan could help them see that a criminal record wasn’t the end of their lives.
@twoinanddone Are you implying that Harvard has students who are not perfect? Oh my.
M ?
I know. Crazy talk.
Twoinanddone the criminal record of HW will be the end of his life as he knows it. My D and her friends who went to Harvard dont have criminal records and dont need empathy from an individual like S. S choose to represent a scumbag for money and no other reasons. Not all money is good money. Does S represent the homeless for free against trumped up criminal charges?
@collegedad13 You are accurate in substance and entitled to your position.
However, that’s different than making this public admonishment, he did nothing that is inconsistent with a tenured law professional’s perfectly legal and consistent work within the scope of their career.
It’s your opinion. It shouldn’t turn into actionable data for removal.
If it’s not what you agree with next time you have to support that too, it’s too much of a slippery slope.
it’s just better to keep value judgments outside of clear illegality or misconduct. None of that occurred here. You just dont like the client. I don’t either. I do like professors being able to proceed with perfectly legal work unimpeded by an overly politically correct administration.
If he was a therapist would you feel the same way? A doctor should let him die?
You might agree, doesn’t make it right.
Absolutely. He was a public defender in DC and now runs the Harvard clinic. He gets paid by Harvard but not by the defendants.
One of his most famous cases was the Jena 6 where 6 black defendants beat a white student. The black students did the crime, and I don’t think that was an issue. The issue was whether they were treated that same as white defendants would have been treated/charged/sentenced. Sullivan was defending criminals, not innocent boys or homeless on trumped up charges. I do not think Sullivan was paid by the boys’ families but perhaps by another group?
“Seven years ago, he’d achieved this and more, but seven years later, he has clearly established himself as a history-making social engineer (of course Charles Hamilton Houston reminds us that “a lawyer’s either a social engineer or a parasite on society”). Not only has he just completed a $300-million capital campaign to completely renovate Winthrop House, enabling New Winthrop to open to its 500-plus students, (historically diverse) faculty and staff next month (a year ahead of schedule), but he was also recently invited to give a TED Talk in Washington, DC on the news that he’d won the release of more wrongfully incarcerated individuals — over 6,000 — than arguably anyone in U.S. history.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-unsung-hero-in-our-midst-ronald-s-sullivan-jr_b_59769731e4b0940189700c36
That was in 2017, when he was loved. Before HW.
article in the New Yorker is an interesting read. Sullivan tries all kinds of cases and, as Director of the HLS Criminal Justice Institute, has been for years. From murder, to sexual assault to terrorists’ families.
I can forgive a bunch of college kids for enacting a smear campaign as I don’t view college kids as fully formed and vulnerable to suggestion. It is Harvard by taking the action they did as being particularly narrow minded and firmly in the camp of what the kids want the kids get. You would think someone on that administration team would raise a hand and say “ wait a minute is this really the lens we want to be seen through.”
Twoinanddone in the Jenna 6 case all defendants were either convicted or pled out so I am not sure what S did Further over 500k was raised for their defense. That’s over 80k for each Defendant for a battery charge. Those fees border on the unconscionable. Further I am not sure what you are claiming S did in regards to the house renovation. That money came from capital expenditure endowments and has been in the planning stage for a long time. He did live offsite while the building was going on. Hopefully that was not too much of an inconvenience for him . I have no knowledge of his skill level but I doubt it is anything close to that of racehorse Haines in criminal matters. I am proud of Harvard for standing up for its core principles in this case
Can you explain what core principles were adhered to? The only one I see is aversion to bad publicity.
Core principals? I really hope these aren’t reflective of Harvard’s core principals.
Politicizing the legal practice of law under the constitution?
Selective client and subject matter police?
Singing your praises one day and throwing you under the bus the next when expedient?
Mob rule over reasoned academic liberty and legal professional pursuits of its tenured professors?
Undermining the public record of a law professor with a history of even handedness based on one unpopular client?
Besmirching a lifetime of achievement?
Undermining a Black scholar’s right to earn an income as greedy, once you ran out of excuses out of the blue?
Quoting salaries as though he should just be happy with that?
Answers cleverly avoided in posts.
If he were a therapist and he was a client. Any problem there?
Or is just we don’t respect the law as a profession - is that another core value of Harvard. If as @collegedad13 states these are truly the core principals of Harvard.
They better shut down their most prestigious grad school. Harvard Law.
I would agree with the above, if he were removed as a professor of HLS, but he wasn’t. His naivete that he thought nothing would happen if he defended HW is really the startling thing about this, especially for a Harvard Law Professor. Maybe he didn’t think he’d lose the dean role, but he should have known protests were going to come for a defending what many people perceive as a serial sexual predator.