Harvard Dean Joins Student Protest of Black Law Prof Representing Harvey Weinstein
“an anti-sexual assault advocacy organization — read a list of demands at the event”
This is amazing. What do people at Harvard not understand about our legal process? Read more back story here.
The College Fix reports:
Harvard dean joins student sit-in against black law professor representing Harvey Weinstein
As dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana commissioned a “climate review” of the university’s Winthrop House, an undergraduate residential community, following student activism against the house’s faculty dean and law professor, Ronald Sullivan.
Sullivan’s sin, in the eyes of #MeToo student activists, was representing the disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein in his criminal trial.
Khurana’s investigation was the first such action against a faculty dean in Harvard’s history, leading the African-American Sullivan to claim it might have something to do with his race. The Harvard Black Law Students Association made the same claim.
But the dean wasn’t done. Khurana attended a “Reclaim Winthrop” sit-in against Sullivan by activist groups on Friday, The Harvard Crimson reports.
It wasn’t clear why Khurana was there – for “part of the event,” the Crimson specified – and Harvard did not respond to a College Fix email asking for an explanation. But it will certainly be interpreted by the activists as support for their cause, to remove Sullivan as faculty dean:
Our Harvard Can Do Better — an anti-sexual assault advocacy organization — read a list of demands at the event, including calling on the College to publicize the results of a climate review of Winthrop House and to create a system to hold faculty deans accountable. They also demanded that Sullivan apologize to house affiliates and delegate his ceremonial duties during Commencement to “an alternate,” and called for an “end to intimidation tactics.” …
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Comments
I bet it made him feel good in his SJW feels to be there.
Disgraceful stuff from Harvard. It’s hard to take the place seriously these days, and I know that’s a denigration of some very distinguished faculty and some students who got admitted by being apolitical geniuses. But it’s gone seriously off the rails.
Colleges have allowed themselves to be taken hostage by relatively small coteries of radical leftist activists. It isn’t that everyone on campus has embraced the more extreme SJW positions, it is that no one wants to be seen objecting to any of them, for fear of being tagged as racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary or—worst of all—as Republican. Moreover, the very act of protesting by SJWs has taken on a quasi-sacramental status: any group of protesters, no matter how small and how out of the (already ultra-liberal) mainstream they are, must nonetheless be taken seriously, and their right to demand that others honor their subjective emotions is considered sacred. Accordingly, anyone who objects to their ‘right’ to make unreasonable demands is condemned for the thought crime of being unfeeling (i.e. rational).
As for condemning Prof. Sullivan for defending Harvey Weinstein:
In general, too many people associate (or confuse) the defense of the accused with defense of whatever crime of which they are accused. It is probably for this reason that British barristers have the Taxicab Rule. It takes a certain amount of legal sophistication to distinguish counsel from the defendant, and still more to distinguish his defense of the client from defense of the alleged criminal behavior. Where would such sophistication come from nowadays? Civics is no longer taught in most schools. Harvard students should be better educated than most, but apparently, they aren’t. It is ironic that the left, for decades associated with the defense of unpopular individuals charged with crimes against conformity, and support for those who defend them, is now on the side of the prosecutors.
But it goes deeper than that, because of the sanctity of the aggrieved. We’ve seen it again and again elsewhere, when there was contempt shown for the principle that students accused of sexual assault should have a fair chance to rebut accusations. Social justice warriors clearly believe that no one accused of certain crimes has any right of defense: accusation = guilt, because both the alleged victim, AND everyone else in society who might identify personally with the alleged victim, is entitled to emotional support and vindication, without limitation. The fact of guilt or innocence is really irrelevant; it is feelings that are essential. This is very human, it is what has always driven lynch mobs; it is also patently absurd. But logic and reason are supposed by these same SJWs to be instruments of the patriarchy, and therefore of oppression.
It is horrible that any college professor would be willing to sanction such willful obscuritanism. But this is what passes for political discourse on the campus these days. It is Dean Khurana who should be sanctioned, not Professor Sullivan. Good luck with that.