Harvard Decides Not Everyone Has a Right to a Lawyer
It's an interesting decision.
Until around a month ago, the liberal position was that working as a lawyer for a bad person, a serial killer, an Al Qaeda terrorist or a pedophile, didn't mean you were a bad person. Giving a terrible person the best possible legal defense was upholding the constitution.
When Hillary Clinton faced criticism for defending a rapist who beat a young girl into a coma by accusing her of being a mentally ill slut, feminists gathered to cheer her for doing her job. There was no higher tribute to the constitution than sliming a young girl and then laughing about it. On tape.
Fast forward to #MeToo and if you're a lawyer for a bad person, you're a bad person.
And thus, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced that Ronald Sullivan, employed by Harvey Weinstein as his lawyer, will no longer be a faculty dean at the Winthrop House for undergraduate students.
The announcement isn't a surprise.
Khurana, a tedious careerist leftist, had joined a protest against Sullivan. When your boss joins a protest against you, it doesn't make for job security.
For all the campus politics black hole drama and cries of, "I feel unsafe", the basic accusation is that Ronald Sullivan represents Harvey Weinstein. This makes him a bad person. I'm not unsympathetic to this point of view. But that's because it's illiberal. It's telling that this is the new normal.
Or is it?
Something tells me that if Sullivan were on better terms with the activists who came for his head, this would not have been an issue.
It's why nobody shows up to remind Hillary Clinton that she laughed when recalling how she got a child rapist off the hook. Nobody claims that makes them feel unsafe.
And Al Qaeda and ISIS lawyers will still be 'heroes'.