Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. is the faculty dean of Winthrop House, one of the 12 undergraduate dormitories in which most students live during their final three years at Harvard College. The faculty deans are mentors, guardians, and counselors — truly in loco parentis. They are responsible for their house’s overall social environment and manage a staff charged with facilitating the well-being of the students.
Sullivan, the first black faculty dean at Harvard, is also a clinical professor at Harvard Law School, where I have taught for over three decades. In addition to those roles, Sullivan engages in private legal practice. He helped win an acquittal in the double-murder prosecution of the professional football player Aaron Hernandez (a convicted murderer in a different case, who eventually committed suicide). He represented the family of Michael Brown, whose death at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. At the invitation of the Brooklyn district attorney, he designed and adopted a conviction-review program that freed scores of improperly imprisoned people. Sullivan is, in short, an imposing, deeply respected figure in the legal community.
A concerted illiberalism is menacing university life.
Recently, however, Sullivan has encountered harsh criticism. The problem stems from his recent decision to represent a person now singularly identified as the face of sexual malevolence: Harvey Weinstein. In certain precincts, anger has steadily mounted since it became public that Sullivan had joined the cadre of lawyers who will defend Weinstein in his forthcoming trial for sexual offenses. (Stoking the fury, too, are reports that Sullivan will represent Roland Fryer, a Harvard economics professor who is said to be the target of allegations of sexual harassment.) #MeToo activists, the Association of Black Harvard Women, and students who describe themselves as sexual-assault survivors are among those calling on Sullivan to resign from his position as faculty dean. Should he decline to do so, they demand that the Harvard administration oust him.
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.
“We condemn Sullivan’s decision to represent Weinstein,” The Crimson editorial board declares, highlighting what it views as “the incongruity” of “defending Weinstein in his role as defense attorney, while simultaneously working to promote a safe and comfortable environment for victims of sexual misconduct and assault in his capacity of faculty dean.” Despite the board’s assertion, however, there is no “incongruity” here. The skills, capacities, and dispositions that help to make a person a valued defense counsel are also the skills, capacities, and dispositions that help to make a person a valued faculty dean. These features include poise, close listening, mastery of relevant information, and a willingness and ability to safeguard the rights of all sorts of people, including outsiders, the ostracized and, indeed, the villainous.
The editorial board writes that “when a mentor and authority figure makes a decision to defend an individual facing allegations of sexual misconduct, he has in effect closed his doors to any student who might look to him for support or solace regarding these issues.” A faculty dean is absolutely obligated to do all that he or she reasonably can to promote an environment free of harassment or assault. And anyone in a position of authority on campus is obligated to know that victims of sexual assault have long been cruelly underserved, and that this institutional injustice urgently warrants remedy. But why is it sensible to think that fulfillment of that obligation is compromised because of service as counsel to even a notorious defendant in a prosecution for sex crimes? The position advanced by the editorial board would presumably disqualify any lawyer who represents or has represented people accused of sex offenses. Does that mean that a latter-day Bella Abzug or Thurgood Marshall would be disqualified as a prospective faculty dean? Both of them represented defendants charged with rape.
The Association of Black Harvard Women maintains that Sullivan’s involvement in the Harvey Weinstein case “will only work to embolden rape culture on this campus.” Omitted from this reckless assertion is any theory, much less evidence, supporting it. Behind the hyperbole is the outraged sense that Weinstein is unquestionably guilty of the crimes for which he is charged, and that therefore Sullivan is simply using his talents to assist a criminal in seeking to escape accountability. Absent the discipline of due process, however, such outrage leads to conviction and punishment by popular impression — without the inconvenience of a trial. Absent the discipline of respect for professional duty, such outrage also leads to a doleful situation in which despised people, including rich despised people, are relegated to untouchability, beneath even the ministration of a lawyer.
Sullivan has represented many defendants who were, in fact, guilty. That is not unusual for a defense lawyer whose role, after all, is not limited to representing the innocent. On the contrary, a defense lawyer’s work includes reminding us that even the guiltiest are still human, and that they should be punished humanely if, at the conclusion of a fair judicial process, they are found guilty. But notably, Sullivan has also come to the aid of those erroneously convicted by the legal system. The opportunity for students to have as their mentor, counselor, and friend a person with that range of experiences and skills is extraordinary. It should not be squandered.
As if anticipating these objections, the Association of Black Harvard Women told Sullivan, “Your positive contributions in the past do not have bearing on what you are doing now.” Really? When a disoriented undergraduate running down the street naked was arrested by the police in April 2018, Sullivan was among the first to leap to the student’s aid, providing him with assistance that led to a favorable outcome. That student might well have been marked by a criminal record or suffered jail time but for Sullivan’s intervention. That instance was by no means idiosyncratic. Sullivan is characteristically drawn to defending the vulnerable. A piece in The Boston Globe notes an undergraduate who described how Sullivan supported her efforts to hold to account a sexual abuser. Sullivan’s record of vigilant attentiveness to the interests of students at Harvard should, at the very least, have earned him the benefit of the doubt. Instead he is the target of impudent disdain.
What does this episode tell us about the state of affairs on campus? It displays the intensity of the anger at sexual malfeasance and the institutional indifference that has allowed such misconduct to proceed with impunity for so long. That anger is warranted. Sexual harassment and assault are all too prevalent and prohibitions against them remain all too ineffective. There needs to be more focus on how to address the very real problem of sexual wrongs on campus and elsewhere.
But that anger, untethered from principles, is sometimes woefully misguided. 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. As this controversy unfolds, one can only hope that Harvard authorities will decline to defer to expressions of noisy discomfort and instead adhere to those intellectual and moral tenets that sometimes must bear the uncomfortable burden of complexity.
Randall Kennedy is a professor of law at Harvard Law School.
Correction (3/7/2019, 4:05 p.m.): This essay originally said that The Harvard Crimson’s editorial board was among those calling on Ronald Sullivan Jr. to resign as a faculty dean at Harvard. The board has not, in fact, done so, and the text has been corrected accordingly.
