Image 01 Image 03

Harvard Law succeeds in taking down anti-Holder Fast and Furious protest website

Harvard Law succeeds in taking down anti-Holder Fast and Furious protest website

This is an update to my post yesterday regarding the protest organized against Eric Holder’s visit to Harvard Law School tomorrow, specifically his stonewalling the Fast and Furious investigations.  The protest was organized by a website using the name Harvard Law Unbound which has been operating since early April.

Despite the fact that Harvard Law Unbound used a banner which specifically alerted readers to the fact that it was not affiliatied with “Unbound – Harvard Journal of the Legal Left,” the editors of that Journal along with the HLS administration alleged that the website misled people as to the source of the opinion.  (See link above for details on the threats and the involvement of the HLS administration)

It is interesting that this action came only after the website challenged Holder’s appearance tomorrow.

I wrote to the HLS Dean of Students, as follows:

Dear Dean Cosgrove:

As you may be aware, I have been covering the protest at the website Harvard Law Unbound regarding Eric Holder.

I am aware of your letter to students in which you say, among other things,

Whoever is responsible for the wordpress site is free to disseminate his/her/their content via any number of legitimate means or channels. But I wish to make sure that no one is confused about whose speech, and whose content, is being advanced on the wordpress site, which appears to be infringing on the use-of-name rights belonging to Unbound and to Harvard Law School.

Given that Harvard Law Unbound has a disclaimer at the top in the banner which says “no affiliation with Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left,” I am wondering on what basis HLS claims likelihood of confusion as to the source of the opinion.

Additionally, since the website has been operating since early April, is this the first time HLS became aware of the website, and if not, why did HLS wait to assert the claim?

I would appreciate your response.

William A. Jacobson, HLS ’84
Legal Insurrection Blog

Now the website has been taken down.

The RSS feed still works.  And if not, here’s a pdf. of the posts, preserving the content solely for news and historical purposes.

The views expressed therein obviously in no way  reflect the “left,” much less the  “legal left,” much less the “Harvard legal left,” much less the “Harvard Journal of the Legal Left,” because none of those groups would dare challenge Eric Holder on the day he is honored by Harvard Law School over something like Fast and Furious, in which people died and the House of Representatives is trying to find out if Holder lied.

Harvard Law Unbound

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Tags:

Comments

So much for free speech on the campus!

Shame on Harvard for providing such a dictatorial solution to what many of us would consider to be a minor irritant.

I guess that Harvard is also abandoning the concept of free thought as well…

    martywd in reply to GrumpyOne. | May 22, 2012 at 7:26 pm

    As the lady@SDA is oft to title her posts on subjects such as this…

       What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?   University!
    .

Thanks a million for the letter, professor.

This country is getting scary. My late father (Harvard ’46 and HBS ’51) would be sick to his stomach at this news.

    gs in reply to raven. | May 22, 2012 at 6:08 pm

    Back in 1996 my late father expressed confidence that the US would hold together during his lifetime, but he wasn’t so sure about his children’s.

    My reply was that stagnation was a real possibility but outright disintegration was highly unlikely. That’s still my view though, obviously, the probability of disintegration has risen.

    But I keep remembering that he was a refugee. He had experienced firsthand the collapse of the high civilization in Central Europe. He was not just speculating; he was drawing on memories.

ShakesheadOften | May 22, 2012 at 5:54 pm

Once again, the liberal response to conservative thought: SHUT UP.

So no action of Fast and Furious. Also no action by Holder on Jon Corzine? With all this corporate corruption talk by the Obama Administration, you would think they would go after a guy who “lost” over a billion dollars and almost certainly committed perjury to Congress and federal officials.

What has Holder been doing?

“HLS- Free Speech For Me And Not For Thee!”

THIS is why we covet this site
You walk your talk

I am proud you went at them.

Re: Dean Cosgrove

Imagine what the HLS Students for Unbounded Law, or whatever it is they call themselves, would say if the Dean of Students ran an office with ten males and a single female.

And here is the Office of the UberDean. My, my.

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Neither is Harvard, but both are:
William A. Jacobson, HLS ’84
Legal Insurrection Blog

If you’re a conservative who wants to blog, don’t use WordPress.

Also, don’t use Blogger.

Neither will have qualms over removing your posts.

    dmacleo in reply to J. W.. | May 22, 2012 at 8:58 pm

    wordpress is a distinct application you can d/l and install on your own server, WP cannot mess with your stuff then.
    the blogs that get messed with are, if not actually hacked, run from wordpress servers themselves.
    2 entities really.

      J. W. in reply to dmacleo. | May 22, 2012 at 9:11 pm

      Oh, thanks for the correction. I didn’t know that.

        dmacleo in reply to J. W.. | May 23, 2012 at 7:48 am

        lot of people never knew that.
        you are on target over blogger though, owned by google. their motto should be don’t be conservative here instead of don’t be evil.

Doug Wright | May 22, 2012 at 6:45 pm

Does Dean Cosgrove have his teaching certificate issued by North Carolina?

Remember, according to some, you can go to jail or worse for speaking against this Federal Administration!

We will bail you out and hide you from the authorities if it comes to that.

Of course, if there is a shoot out and you’re gunned down, we shall memorialize you forever.

Professor, perhaps someone at the defunct Harvard Law Unbound should contact FIRE. They seem to have a good record of fighting for free speech rights on campus.

http://thefire.org/

    Taxpayer1234 in reply to ecosse. | May 23, 2012 at 9:53 am

    Exactly. I’ve been a FIRE supporter for several years now, and they do excellent work.

It’s easier to set up a new site on another hosting service. Heck, I’d help ’em make the tech arrangements; I’m local.

So what’s the problem? Anyone who started out confused and was thinking this website was somehow affiliated with Harvard would have realized quickly that anything even the slightest conservative couldn’t possibly be associated with that bastion of free thinkers.

Just change the name to Harvard Law Unplugged and keep going.
It’s not rocket surgery.

[…] it was infringing upon the official journal’s use-of-name rights, seemingly false allegations alleged to have also been spread by Harvard Law School Dean of Students, Ellen […]

I just checked: the domain name harvardlawunbound.com is available. And so is harvardunbound.com

They’d have a much harder time taking it down if the WordPress blog is hosted outside of the wordpress.com domain.

Seems the name is likely to confuse, disclaimer or not. Whether there is any legal basis to force it down depends on whether Harvard Unbound is trademarked or not, but you can’t open a MacDonald’s and serve burgers, either.

The 1st Amendment protects content, not trademark infringement. I have no doubt their intent is to stifle the content, but that’s a matter of opinion.

Our future lawyers. We are in deep, deep doodoo.

teapartydoc | May 23, 2012 at 7:16 am

Is that a civil rights lawsuit I smell?

[…] At his Legal Insurrection blog Professor William Jacobson reports the Harvard School of Law has succeeded in having an anti-Eric ‘GunWalker’ Holder website taken down. […]

Harvard is guilty of perpetrating intellectual frauds against the United States. As a consequence, Harvard owes reparations to the United States. During the hearings on reparations, Harvard will be required to produce Barack Obama’s application to Harvard Law and transcripts. If anything in those documents demonstrates a cover up or another fraud perpetrated by Harvard, damages will automatically double.
(Crazy fantasy? Dunno. I once heard a slogan that went something like: “Yes we can.” The candidate wanted to change the foundational basis of the law. Thus, if time honored law can be changed on a whim, it can change in a manner to suit my whim.)

[…] have suggested disaster for a long time. Cripes the whole Stacy McCain Brett Kimberlin business, Holder and Harvard and even the Dylan Ratigan and Tamron Hall shutting off the mike add up to just one thing. Ride […]

Perhaps change the name to Harvard Law Unchained or Unshackled?

I can only shrug at news like this and think “Is this surprising?”. It’s Harvard, after all; it’s where morally superior political leftists can find happiness and riches (hello Elizabeth Warren) lecturing to the bourgeoisie about their shortcomings.

As a longtime reader here, Cornell graduate, and grandchild of a former Cornell Law professor, I am proud of Cornell for publishing, linking to and even sometimes celebrating conservative thought. Keep it up, professor!

What an embarassment Harvard has become. It’s only cache among reasonable people should be the fact that it is hard to get in (that is, unless you are an affirmative action applicant or someone buys your way in).

[…] of law professor William A. Jacobson, of “Legal Insurrection.” In posts on May 22 and  May 23, he gave detailed attention to Harvard Law School’s bogus assertion, made pursuant to the […]

[…] website, the bogus DMCA claim was made at 11:34 a.m. on May 22, and our blog was deleted less than six hours later.  The only difference is that this time our blog did not vanish down a “memory hole” […]