MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--DEFINITELY WORTH READING!
Sullivan is a clinical law professor at Harvard and a very accomplished criminal defense attorney, who, among his many cases, recently joined the defense team for Harvey Weinstein; he is also the faculty member in charge of one of Harvard's undergraduate dorms. Benighted Harvard students have launched a smear campaign against him, claiming this work disqualifies him from discharging his duties. Their arguments are as irrational as one has come to expect in such cases, but we are all indebted to Randall Kennedy, also a Harvard law professor, for dissecting them with precision. Of more general interest is this observation about the student attack on Prof. Sullivan:
These events are emblematic of a crisis besetting all strata of higher education, as activists of various stripes perceive cannily the temptation of administrators to mollify zealots in return for quiet — regardless of the merits of competing arguments or the importance of the values in question....
Those calling for Sullivan’s resignation or dismissal as a faculty dean solely because he is serving as Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer in a rape prosecution are displaying an array of disturbingly widespread tendencies. One is impatience with drawing essential distinctions such as that between a lawyer and his client. Another is a willingness to minimize or dispense with important safeguards like fair trials. Yet another is a tendency to resort to demonization.
That “progressive” activists could denounce so bitterly a person who has demonstrated so clearly a commitment to inclusive, humane, liberal values and practices is indicative of a concerted illiberalism that is menacing university life.
All this is, of course, familiar from events covered extensively on this blog: from the mobbing of Rebecca Tuvel, to the campaign by faculty and students on both sides of the Atlantic to shut down critical discussion of the gender ID law in the UK, to the attack on academic freedom at Marquette under the guise of protecting the "vulnerable."
Everyone who cares about academic life needs to speak up about these issues and the bad behavior of the illiberal perpetrators, including when the perpetrators are students (just as Prof. Kennedy has done correctly in this instance, since it is almost entirely students running the smear campaign against Prof. Sullivan).
(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer.)
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