The Harvard Undergraduate Council has demanded — demanded — that the university begin an investigation into US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh before his scheduled coming Law School lecture gig.
Kavanaugh is due to teach “The Supreme Court since 2005” in the winter term. The vote by the council was 25 in favor, 13 opposed.
“The Undergraduate Council stands in solidarity with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, and all survivors of sexual violence,” the UC stated in a letter. “We also stand with members of Harvard Law School who request a full and fair investigation into allegations against Judge Kavanaugh before he is allowed back on campus to teach.”
Based on that wording, would even a “full and fair” investigation that exonerated Kavanaugh sway UC members? Via The Crimson, the letter also stated
Repeated attempts to silence survivors like Dr. Ford cast into doubt time and time again the reliability of institutions that are meant to uphold justice and our civil rights as students […] At times like these, when survivors’ stories are called into question, we must come together to build collective power and hold our university accountable for supporting survivors, sanctioning perpetrators, and fighting the culture of sexual harassment.
Note the conspicuous absence of any concern regarding due process.
The Council argued in its letter that an “institutional failure” on the part of the University to combat sexual assault has bred a “ sense of mistrust” among students. The letter specifically mentions sexual harassment allegations made against Government Professor Jorge I. Dominguez last semester. Dominguez remained a Harvard faculty member for decades — and rose through the ranks to ever-higher positions of power — even after multiple women publicly accused him of harassment in the 1980s, prompting the University to sanction him at the time. …
Some Council members debated the merits of the letter at Sunday’s meeting. Oak Yard Representative A. Blake Barclay ’22 said he is concerned by parts of the statement, arguing that the Council should not “politicize” sexual assault prevention.
“I think it would make some students who might not share the same political views as the people who wrote the statement feel isolated and uncomfortable,” he said. “Sexual assault reform shouldn’t have to be political, but when we make explicit attacks on prominent members of political parties, it just divides us and that’s unnecessary to addressing these issues.”
Lowell House Representative Julia M. Huesa ’20 disagreed with Barclay, countering that sexual assault is always a touchy subject, but that campus leaders must still work to address it because the issue directly impacts many Harvard students.
“The personal is often political, and a lot of these things that happen on the national stage actually affect people’s lives on like a personal level,” she said.
Harvard has been particularly busy during the whole Kavanaugh imbroglio; last week the campus socialists held an anti-Kavanaugh rally at which a couple of students had a microphone taken from them and were booed for daring to ask attendees to remember due process rights.
Speaking of due process, The Crimson editors opined last week they’re “tired of giving powerful men the benefit of the doubt,” and noted that with their support, President Trump and others “now stand behind a man accused by at least two women of sexual misconduct.”
And let’s not forget Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe who in August analyzed the SCOTUS nominee’s college sports reporting: “Kavanaugh’s seeming fascination with single-player domination might be a muscular view of executive power,” he wrote among other, er, analogies.
Read the full Crimson article.
MORE: Harvard Law prof ‘has lost his mind’ over SCOTUS nominee
MORE: The Crimson shows why we should be VERY worried about due process
IMAGE: YouTube
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.