Tigerle, women of my generation did not fight the battles we did for girls at Harvard to engage in endless self-pity and victim identification. They are among the most privileged in history so a bit of perspective is in order. Enough with the histrionic self absorption and aggrandizement of every issue-perhaps they could get to work curing cancer or poverty or any of the other fine opportunities we fought so hard to provide them.
I pretty much agree with you roycroftmom on the points you make. It has been pointed out numerous times in various media that Sullivan had appointed a person, a woman I believe to handle students who felt they were sexually assaulted. And I am certain Harvard has gobs of people employed and available for counsel. This was clearly an institution capitulating to a vocal minority of students with an agenda. Many of the arguments in support of the removal were simply to obfuscate the reality. I would love to be a fly on the wall during law school hallway chatter.
I’m told the law school faculty is beyond livid.
@Tigerle I think your posts are absolutely fantastic. I dont think representing a creep is an important societal position. Let’s face it. He was doing it for the money. Between him and his wife they probably make 6 or 7 hundred thousand a year just at the law school This would have put him over a million. We all have choices. Half the Red Sox and the Warriors chose not to go to the White House My daughter graduated from Harvard She does not engage in self pity but she does fight for the metoo movement and against people who blame victims of sexual assault or who say there is such a thing as legitimate rape
“Women of my generation did not fight the battles we did for girls at Harvard to engage in endless self-pity and victim identification.”
@roycroftmom we’re in totally different times now though, and the metoo movement is going to make what Sullivan did look bad, and so that’s one of the reasons why Harvard did what they did, perception is reality as they say.
Agree that if this happened when I went to college, mid 80s, maybe none of this would have happened, but it’s 2019, times have changed (if I may quote Dylan). And Sullivan should have know he was going to get this kind of flak.
On second thought, I imagine a situation when a woman from his house accuses a man, also from his house, of sexual assault. Worse even if they are of different race. Whatever Sullivan tried to do in this situation will result in a scandal. So I kind of understand Harvard authorities, but still don’t think it’s right to remove him (unless it’s really about other issues, I haven’t been following closely).
But @roycroftmom, who are we to tell the next generation what to fight their battles about? We fought ours. Let them fight theirs. No matter how privileged these young women might be (for being able to go to Harvard a few hundred years after men could?), when they are alone in a space with a man or men, they are non more than a woman alone in a room with a man or men. Vulnerable in ways the men are not. They have been told they could go anywhere, but they are still in danger.
Edited to concede I haven’t read the arguments they are making, I am making my own.
Very interesting discussion. For those who support Harvard firing Sullivan from his position as a House Dean (because he is representing Weinstein), do you have any doubts that this is the right road to be on? People sound so sure online, but maybe their views are more moderate in their own thoughts.
Do you have any worries that this is guilt by association, or unhealthy for our civil society? I feel an understanding of both sides of this (also of the Yale Halloween incident). But I am worried about public shaming of innocent people and the power of group pressure to cost someone a job for just doing their job, or for their personal (completely legal) choices.
My husband is an MD. His patients range over the entire spectrum of human behavior. He has taken care of prisoners, gang members and drug addicts who are not in recovery. He is unfailingly patient and compassionate with all. Should he be ousted as a coach or teacher because families imagine their kids won’t be safe with him?
He also takes excellent care of many AIDS patients, transitioning Trans people, and undocumented immigrants. I’m sure there are many people who would disagree with his decision to do so.
What if the residents he teaches decide he should be fired because of whose doctor he chooses to be? What if he takes care of a priest who has abused altar boys? He could be denounced and lose his mentoring positions. Should he be thinking of those things?
Can we just clarify here, the role of the house dean versus faculty dean (formerly “house master”)? In our experience the main administrative duties fell to the dean who also interacted much more with students than the faculty dean. I can’t imagine one of my kids going to the faculty dean for a problem: they went to the dean. I would like clarification on this.
Fifty two law school professors signed a letter protesting the firing, which was published in the Boston Globe.
I think this thread has been a pretty intelligent discussion actually. I don’t think there are easy answers, but I myself feel that the firing conveyed a troubling message. Innocence until proven guilty is the foundation of law, even in the present day when media serves as judge. I might have the same opinion of Weinstein as anyone else, but he is not formally “guilty” yet. Inconsistent adherence to that principle will certainly hurt many innocent people.
Here is another question. How often do lawyers turn down a request for representation and are their conditions for refusal? Doctors have to treat. How does it work for lawyers?
So he defends the unibomber he would have trouble deciding what to do in a bomb scare.
He represents the Boston strangler and he would be have a quandary when something like that happens
Or a drunk driver and issues with alcohol abuse or rules.
He is a professional.
Did he ever not forward a sex issue to leadership. Ten years and now he can’t be trusted. Now he created a toxic environment.
Shame on them for letting it go so long or maybe there really werent any issues until they needed to manufacture a few
Latley it seems certain people in society have taken it upon themselves to be judge and juror and prefer mob rule throwing the Constitution out the window when convenient.
@3SailAway, I assume your H is legally required, as an MD, to treat the patients in need of medical attention that come his way as long as they comply with the hospital rules, or whatever institution it is he works at. I am assuming it is some generic medical care facility, surgery or hospital, and he is only in a very general way affiliated with an institution or institutions who are part of the debate how society treats sexual assault.
It’s not comparable in the least. Imagine he were, out of his own volition, because he wants the money or the publicity, to seek out the most notorious, high ranking alleged offender among the many in the Catholic Church, one of those around whom the scandals centered, the one most in the news, to join his private medical team, and be widely publicised as part of that team, in order to prove that for medical reasons, this person should not be punished.
If he were to show up bleeding st the hospital? By all means treat him. That’s the law. But voluntarily join his private team to keep him out of jail?
Sorry, but I would not want him to be in charge of catholic youth any more.
In an emergency. But there is no obligation to take on a doctor patient relationship. My DH chose to work in a prison because no one else in a rural area could/would do it. He can turn down patients or “fire” them from his practice at will. He does not generally do this because he feels a moral obligation to treat. Maybe he should feel a moral obligation to refuse whomever has been determined to be a bad person by those in our community.
If a university has to cater to the most sensitive of its students to create a “safe” space, where does it stop? And then are you also catering to the most vocal students – are their feelings of comfort/discomfort any more important than students who are less vocal? Let’s say we have a professor who teaches bioethics or philosophy who has written extensively about when “life” either or both as a biological or philosophical matter begins. His/her position is going to be uncomfortable with a large number of students, potentially in a real world personal situation, no matter what position he or she takes. Are we going to preclude this professor, or any professor, who is a scholar of any controversial issue from taking any position that involves social interaction with students for fear of endangering their “safe space”? Are we further going to extend safe spaces to the classroom, as it is already being done at a lot of schools (see recent controversies at Duke and Villanova https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-mole-hunt-for-diversity-bias-at-villanova-11553898400?shareToken=st329a0cc3cc5e4084875db38de5a1287c) . Or sillier yet, are we going to allow students to run off a professor who made comments about a silly holiday involving silly costumes and telling kids to have fun and not take everything so seriously in that context? Oh, forgot, we are already there.
How is defending a client choosing a side? Is an attorney defending a drunk driver presumed to be on the side of drunk driving? Is an attorney defending a terrorist presumed to be on the side of ISIS? Is an attorney defending a murder presumed to be on the side of murderers? Or do you believe being a criminal defense attorney with active clients is incompatible with being a house dean?
There was a time when women undergrads at Ivies saw themselves as strong, smart, and brave. When Prof. Sullivan’s actions might have led to women volunteering for research for the prosecution, or at the sex victims office, or wherever. You know, the kinds of actions efficacious adults cognizant of their own skills and power could bring to counter the legal defense team. I am glad I raised my own kids to act that way and not whimper about safe places.
Why not just throw all accused citizens of a crime in jail and close our courts? Doesn’t matter if they are innocent or guilty because you think he or she is based on second hand information. So when your neighbor down the street accuses you of something everybody should believe them and toss you in prison? Or better yet your child is falsely accused of rape so not only does your son or daughter automatically go to prison the rest of your family is fired from their jobs. Dangerous ideology.
No, I do not believe being a criminal defense lawyer it is incompatible with being a house dean.
[And no ones is stopping him from being a lawyer.)
Which is why it wasn’t a criterion stopping him from being a house dean when he was made one, and apparently hasn’t been a problem for many years. (I know absolutely nothing about the man apart from his profession as a criminal defense lawyer and his position as a house dean, or about other issues which allegedly have come up during that time).
I think that getting involved in such a highly publicised case, that has come to symbolise the debate about sexual harassment and assault, is incompatible with being a house dean in an institution which is charged with adjudicating such cases and has as such, like any college, become part of the controversy.
I think Weinstein is the one case that he should have, quietly, refused.
I have been trying so many times to explain why this entirely voluntary association with this case is different from just defending any other criminal accused of any other crime, no matter how bad, or treating the inmates of a jail in your community who can’t very well go somewhere else for their treatment. How many people exactly have been the targeted victims, as part of a specific group, of terrorists or unabombers on college campuses, and how many of those victims of terrorism or bombings on college campuses have been accused of making the acts of terrorism or bombing up or even have entirely brought them upon themselves, and how fierce has been the debate about it?
If you still can’t see the difference I will stop explaining, there is no point.
I reiterate that I haven’t read the arguments put forward by the students, or by the university. But I would have removed him from the position, too, for the reasons I have stated.
We are lucky the lawyers for the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr were not scared of taking on such a highly publicized case symbolic of social debate and certain to alienate and offend large numbers of undergrads on any campus at the time. Maybe today they would need to be.
Oh but there is no different Tigerle. People are innocent until proven guilty. Full stop. Unless Sullivan’s contract with Harvard precluded being on a defense team he had every right to pick and choose his cases. Unless there was a recorded history of malfeasance by him at his job managing the house it is easy to decide “why” he was relieved of those duties. The scarier thing to me is to see where these crazy actions are happening - at supposedly our premier institutions of higher learning. This is what is scary to me. The Sullivans will survive. Those leading the protest who have been named will be on every HR director’s “watch out for” list and life will go on. But is this really what our elite institutions have come to – cow-towing to use an old expression to a minority of self serving vocal minorities over some very, very basic liberties and rights? There is some dangerous ideology happening at those institutions.