Was Harvard’s Dismissal of Sullivan From Resident-Faculty Role Just? It Depends on Whom You Ask

Critics of Harvard University’s decision to dismiss a prominent law professor from his position as a residential dean say it’s a clear infringement of his academic freedom. Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. and his wife, Stephanie R. Robinson, lost the post last weekend amid controversy over Sullivan’s representing the alleged sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the famed Harvard law professor emeritus, said the university joins “the Hall of Shame” because of the ouster and called for an investigation by the American Association of University Professors.

Sullivan’s detractors, by contrast, said academic freedom is a red herring because of the nature of Sullivan’s residential role, and they cited a history of complaints about him by students, staff members, and tutors whom he and Robinson supervised.

A decade ago, Will Quinn played a small part in bringing Sullivan and Robinson to Harvard College’s Winthrop House as its presiding resident faculty members. Now Quinn is “pretty dismayed” that the messy end of the couple’s role at Winthrop is being widely misinterpreted. It’s not a case of campus snowflakes infringing on academic or professional freedom, Quinn said, but about the latest bad decision by a couple who for a long time haven’t been carrying out their residential responsibilities well.

Quinn was an undergraduate on a 2009 committee at Winthrop that interviewed candidates for the college-dean position. The post was called “house master” until 2016, when that term’s overtones of slavery led Harvard to change it to “college dean,” although it is not an academic deanship. Sullivan and Robinson, both professors at Harvard Law School, became the first African-Americans in the university’s history to be named to the prestigious and competitive position.

In January, news reports revealed that Sullivan was among lawyers representing the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of repeated sexual misconduct. That raised an uproar at Winthrop and beyond, with student protesters demanding Sullivan’s ouster from the Winthrop deanship. Some wrote or said that victims of sexual assault and harassment would not be comfortable going to, or living in, Winthrop, or reporting assault or harassment there.

Last weekend Harvard announced that the couple’s Winthrop position would not be renewed, and Weinstein’s legal team said that Sullivan had withdrawn from it.

Several commentators have condemned Harvard for giving in to what they see as students’ political correctness, and they have slammed the students as oblivious to unpopular, high-profile defendants’ need for experienced legal representation. Among Sullivan’s other clients was Aaron Hernandez, the late New England Patriots player tried for double murder.

Aloof and Distant

But Quinn said such critics miss the point. Students don’t dispute Weinstein’s right to talented representation or Sullivan’s right to take that job, he said. But they do think that it conflicts with Sullivan’s responsibilities at Winthrop.

It is an instance, said Quinn, now a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, “of someone making an irresponsible choice that didn’t put their students first, and, as a result of that, dealing with backlash.”

The question of academic freedom is a distraction, he said, because the couple aren’t losing their faculty positions but only their residential appointment.

Quinn, who described himself as a political independent and who worked for the late Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the stereotyping of student protesters and their objections as lefty hysterics is unfair. It also disregards allegations, he said, detailed in a recent Harvard Crimson article, of Sullivan’s and Robinson’s bullying of and clashing with some Winthrop House tutors, staff members, and students in recent years. The college has been reviewing those allegations.

More generally, some Winthrop students said, the couple have been aloof and distant.

“In Harvard’s unique residential system,” the university said of the houses, which were established in the 1930s, “faculty deans serve in equally important academic and pastoral roles, supporting students’ academic needs and personal well-being, setting the tone for the house in its social activities and in its function as a close-knit community.” Yale University is among other institutions that have housing systems with resident faculty members.

Sullivan and Robinson haven’t excelled in that expected community engagement, said some Winthrop students, including Charles Garcia Alver, who graduated in 2017 and is now in a scientific-research training program at the University of Miami. In an email, he wrote:

“In other houses you could see the dean at mealtimes, hopping around between tables, chatting with the residents. They’d know student names and ask questions specific to their classes. They’d show genuine interest in the affairs of their houses’ residents.” Not so at Winthrop, he said. “If you saw one of the deans, they were often seated with one of their friends on the tutor staff or the scholar in residence. If they weren’t, you didn’t get a warm and welcoming response.”

Alver said Sullivan may have been friendlier with some students, “but it still was disappointing to be asked if you were new to the house after three years of residence, three weeks before graduation.”

‘Pretext and Excuse’

Sullivan’s defenders said such complaints, however heartfelt, would not have led to Sullivan’s and Robinson’s dismissal from the Winthrop House position had it not been for his representation of Weinstein.

“It’s all pretext and excuse,” said Dershowitz in a phone interview. Whatever the complaints about the couple’s presence at Winthrop House, if Sullivan had been prosecuting Weinstein instead of defending him, students “would have been building a statue to him,” Dershowitz said.

He called the couple’s dismissal McCarthyism, “and most important, that’s the way the world sees it. Harvard is being found guilty in the court of public opinion.”

“McCarthyism was as much about attacks on lawyers who represented Communists as it was about Communists themselves,” he said.

“I think the students are lying when they say they feel unsafe” because of the Weinstein representation, said Dershowitz. Referring to the Patriots’ Hernandez, Dershowitz asked, incredulously, why the students felt unsafe when Sullivan represented Weinstein but not when he represented an alleged double murderer.

Imagine the furor students would cause, Dershowitz said, if they claimed they felt unsafe in the presence of a gay dean or a Muslim dean. “The argument is without limitations, and it should be categorically rejected.”

Asked about the Crimson’s reports of the couple’s friction with staff members and tutors at Winthrop House, Harvard replied in an email:

“While we cannot comment on confidential personnel matters, we can confirm that in the ordinary course, the college works with all houses and house staff on matters of house climate and community — and this is no different. We have heard some of these concerns before and have partnered with the house on interventions in the past, but these measures have not proved to be sufficient.”

In response to a request for comment, Sullivan and Robinson wrote in an email: “I am sorry we can’t address these topics at this time, given the ongoing nature of this situation.”

Alexander C. Kafka is a Chronicle senior editor. Follow him on Twitter @AlexanderKafka, or email him at alexander.kafka@chronicle.com.