Harvey Weinstein trial is causing a legal drama at Harvard - Boston Globe
by Stephanie Gilbert // Boston
In the tumultuous few months since students began objecting to Harvard Law professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.’s decision to defend Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein at his rape trial, the college has been reviewing the living climate at Winthrop House, the residential community he leads as faculty dean.
But, suffice it to say, the climate is anything but copacetic.
On Friday, students dressed in red occupied the Winthrop House dining hall to “reclaim it as a safe space” for survivors of sexual assault. In recent weeks, the house was spray-painted with #MeToo graffiti and papered with illustrated fliers that Sullivan called “racially offensive.” It was also the site of a tense dining hall interaction between a student who started the protests against Sullivan and an adult tutor perceived to be loyal to him. (Each called police, alleging harassment by the other.)And now — as may have been inevitable all along — a dispute rooted in the campus controversy over Weinstein’s high-powered legal representation is headed to court. Two tutors who live in Winthrop House are suing another faculty member for defamation connected to the Sullivan controversy, and their lawyer — Sullivan’s sometime legal partner — has subpoenaed the student newspaper for all communications concerning Sullivan.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Amelia Y. Goldberg, a Harvard senior and an activist with a group called Our Harvard Can Do Better, which has pushed for Sullivan’s removal as faculty dean. She called the steps taken against student activists and their supporters “intimidation and retaliation tactics.” KEEP READING
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