Standing in a courtroom before his fellow Bostonians on Dec. 3, 1770, John Adams began his closing argument in defense of the eight British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. He declared, “I am for the prisoners at the bar, and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis Beccaria: ‘If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessings and tears of transport shall be a sufficient consolation for me for the contempt of all mankind.’”
Adams continued, explaining that regardless of the Redcoats’ unpopularity, the presumption of innocence, and concomitant legal defense under that presumption, is the sine qua non of justice. “When innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned,” Adams warned, facts and behavior can become immaterial, “for virtue itself is no security. … And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security whatsoever.”
Unfortunately, Adams’ alma mater, Harvard University, just minutes from Boston, seems to have forgotten this lesson.
Harvard Law Professor Ronald Sullivan has come under fire recently for his decision to join the legal defense team of alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein. Sullivan, a practicing criminal defense attorney and celebrated former public defender, serves as faculty director for Harvard Law’s Criminal Justice Institute as well as faculty dean for Harvard College’s Winthrop House, the university’s first African-American faculty dean.
Yet, his sterling legal experience and social justice bona fides have not saved him from the ire of the campus mob, which apparently considers a belief in due process and legal presumption of innocence to be disqualifying. Students have protested, demanding his ouster from Winthrop House; the building itself has been vandalized with anti-Sullivan graffiti. A Change.org petition urging his removal asks house members if they want to receive their diploma from someone who “believes it is okay to defend such a prominent figure at the centre of the #MeToo movement?”
Shamefully, administrators have joined in calls for Sullivan’s removal. Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana publicly expressed sympathy with concerns over “the impact of Prof. Sullivan’s choice … on the House community.” The university has now officially launched a “climate review,” which will collect anonymous feedback from the university community and be used to take “actions, as appropriate,” to address concerns over Sullivan.
“By legitimizing the absurd demands for Sullivan’s removal with official university action,” writes Samantha Harris of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Harvard is giving in to the prevailing “witch-hunt atmosphere” that is “testing our national commitment to the most basic principles undergirding our system of justice.”
Sullivan, at least, understands this. Echoing the truth that Adams enunciated so stirringly nearly 2 ½ centuries ago, he affirmed in a missive to Winthrop affiliates that “every citizen charged with a crime is cloaked with the presumption of innocence,” regardless of unpopularity, adding, “To the degree we deny unpopular defendants basic due process rights we cease to be the country we imagine ourselves to be.”
Harvard has apparently already made this choice. And the rest of America, looking at it squarely in the face, also must decide what kind of a country it is.
