On Monday evening, Harvard announced that embattled US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will not be coming to campus to teach a winter term Law School course.
Associate Dean and Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs Catherine Claypoole announced in an email “Today, Judge Kavanaugh indicated that he can no longer commit to teaching his course in January Term 2019, so the course will not be offered.”
According to The Crimson, the judge has taught at the university for the last decade.
There’s seems to be a bit of a question as to whether the decision was purely Kavanaugh’s, or that the university buckled to pressure from Harvard students and alumni. For example, the first sentence of this The Boston Globe report highlights the latter. In addition, a petition signed by hundreds of Harvard alumni (but not yet sent to Law School Dean John F. Manning) calls on the university to rescind Kavanaugh’s lecturing gig.
Even more, er, intriguing is a report that some Harvard undergrads came up with the brainchild of filing Title IX claims against the judge:
Jacqueline L. Kellogg ’19 — who said she has filed a complaint against Kavanaugh with the University’s Office for Dispute Resolution — came up with the idea several days ago. She began urging fellow students to follow suit over the weekend, at one point sending an email to a group of students at the College and the Law School that offered specific instructions on how to bring a formal complaint to ODR.
By the time The Crimson reported late Monday that Kavanaugh had left his teaching position at the Law School, at least 48 students had signed an online petition certifying they had filed a Title IX complaint against the nominee. …
Kellogg and Julia B. Wiener ’19 — who also signed the petition and filed a complaint against Kavanaugh — both argued the nominee’s presence on campus would create a “hostile environment” as defined in Harvard guidelines related to sexual harassment.
Kellogg said she hopes students who have previously felt reluctant to file complaints with the University — whether related to Kavanaugh or to other experiences — will see that the formal process gives them “power” and “a right to our feeling of being safe.”
“I hope that, as students file these complaints and engage with this process of singling out accusers and harassers on campus, that it actually can be seen that this process is a little less formidable than the reputation of the process is on campus,” she said.
Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen warned, however, that filing such complaints is “misplaced.”
“Such an abuse of process would undermine the legitimacy and credibility of complaints that the Title IX process is intended to deal with, as well as of the Title IX office to focus on its duties,” she said.
Nevertheless, The Crimson notes, had Kavanaugh chosen to teach his course, the school would have had no choice but to review the Title IX grievances.
Read the full Crimson articles.
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