https://harvardlawcoalition.wordpress.com/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889328)

December 9, 2014

Letter from Dean Martha Minow to the Harvard Law School Community

Dear HLS Community,

I want to start by thanking and commending the students who have, in the great tradition of the Harvard Law School, sought to cast a light on what we can learn from the events in Ferguson, Staten Island, and Cleveland and how we can take this opportunity to raise awareness about questions of racial justice and about reforms that will make our system more just.

I have been profoundly moved and distressed by these tragic events as I know many students, staff and faculty have been too. I have talked with many of you about what these events mean to the families and communities most affected by them, as well as our nation. I have also had many thoughtful conversations about the systemic implications of these events and how we might use Ferguson, Staten Island, and Cleveland to catalyze our efforts to make our criminal justice system better and more fair.

To that end, I hope you will join me and some members of the faculty this Wednesday, December 10, at noon in the Ames Courtroom to discuss what has happened and to begin to think together about how we might move forward and contribute to the effort. I know that it is a busy time of the year, and I apologize for the short notice. But I am convinced that this conversation and the work that flows from it should not wait until we return in January.

As lawyers and members of the HLS community, we have a special obligation to work toward social and procedural justice and to advance the deeply rooted ideals that bind us together and will give us strength in the work that lies ahead.

Warm regards,

Martha

Martha Minow

Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor

Harvard Law School

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December 8, 2014

Letter to Dean Minow and Harvard Law School Administration

December 7, 2014

Dear Dean Minow and the Harvard Law School Administration:

This campus ­­ and the nation ­­ erupted in outrage when grand juries failed to indict Officers Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo for the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively. These recent events highlight that intolerance in America continues to cost us countless lives at the hands of law enforcement. We have no faith in our justice system, which systematically oppresses black and brown people. We are afraid for our lives and for the lives of our families. We are in pain. And we are tired.

We have been visibly distressed and actively engaged throughout this public national crisis. The administration has remained silent.

We led rallies, held vigils, and published an op­ed. You were silent on this issue. We petitioned the government, served as legal observers, created spaces of solidarity, drafted model legislation, and marched through the streets of Boston and Cambridge. You remained silent on this issue. We spent countless hours leveraging our legal educations, and utilizing our platform and privilege as students of this institution. And all we have heard from the administration is deafening silence.

Your silence denies humanity to the lives lost and minimizes the gravity of the palpable anguish looming over campus. Like many across the country, we are traumatized. Just because this racial terror is systemically reproduced and normalized through repeated fidelity to the so ­called rule of law, it does not mean the disruption is any less traumatic than a tragic bombing. The fact that you refuse to openly acknowledge this adds to our distress. Your silence is a signal that Harvard Law School is indifferent to the welfare of many of its students.

We can’t breathe.

Yale Law School provided grief counselors and commended the peaceful protests taking place on campus. Stanford Law School openly supported a university ­wide email declaring that “Black lives matter.” Columbia Law School set an example ­­ one that we implore you to follow ­­ by quickly responding to its students’ requests. Our peer institutions have made efforts to stand on the right side of history. We challenge Harvard Law School to be not merely a school of law, but also a school of justice.

Because this national tragedy implicates the legal system to which we have chosen to dedicate our lives, it presents us with a fundamental crisis of conscience and demands our immediate attention. Our choice to stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams is necessary in the context of a movement fighting for the lives that have been lost and continue to be at stake. This sacrifice is small. The words of Columbia Law School student leadership illustrate our sentiments: “In being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this moment, we are being asked to perform incredible acts of disassociation that have led us to question our place in this school community and the legal community at large.” You cannot require that we forego joining the country in its demand for justice, and instead dedicate our energy in this moment to understanding and replicating “the same legal maneuvers and language on our exams . . . that w[ere] used to deny justice to so many Black and Brown bodies.”

Harvard Law School has policies and procedures in place for students experiencing a personal emergency that interferes with an exam or immediate pre-­exam preparation. This is more than a personal emergency. This is a national emergency.

Furthermore, the Harvard Law School Handbook of Academic Policies expresses the school’s commitment to providing “an environment of trust and mutual respect, free expression and inquiry, and a commitment to truth, excellence, and lifelong learning.” Your failure to prioritize the importance and value of all lives and the mental health of your students violates these policies. The presence of armed HUPD officers at our peaceful community meetings, where students were collectively grieving and supporting each other, violated our community principles.

As student leaders of diverse communities at Harvard Law School, we share the sentiments of our peers at Columbia: “[W]e have been asked to bear the burden of educating the broader community about issues that have wreaked havoc on our psyches and lives, with some support and some dehumanizing moments of dismissal by our peers and faculty. . . . We will not continue to make sacrifices in the name of informing the broader school community of our struggles without, in turn, demanding that our community care for us too.”

We need your support, and therefore, we expect the following:

1. Address the Student Body

End the deafening silence. Issue a statement to the Harvard Law School community acknowledging this national crisis.

2. Grant Exam Extensions

Give students the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion between the period of December 20th and January 15th.

Delaying exams is not without precedent. In 1970, Harvard Law School faculty voted to delay all exams in response to demands by students participating in anti­war protests.

3. Provide Student Support

Recognize our trauma as legitimate and worthy of response. We call for faculty to hold special office hours and for the administration to make culturally competent grief and trauma counselors available in the final weeks of the semester.

4. Host Ongoing Discussions, Forums, and Safe Spaces

This is a wake up call. Harvard Law School can and must do more to facilitate conversations about injustice and inequality on this campus and beyond it. We ask that these conversations take place in our classrooms, in school­sanctioned forums, and in safe spaces created by the administration.

Dean Minow and the Harvard Law School administration, we write to you from a place of crisis but also from a place of love and concern for ourselves and for our institution. We look forward to continuing to work with you to create a Harvard Law School environment in which all students feel welcomed, valued, and supported.

Signed,

Harvard Law School Affinity Group Coalition:

Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Executive Board

Harvard Black Law Students Association

Harvard Middle Eastern Law Students Association

Harvard Muslim Law Students Association

Harvard Native American Law Students Association

La Alianza

Lambda

Supero

In support:

ACLU

Harvard Law School Chapter Advocates for Human Rights

Harvard Defenders

Harvard Environmental Law Society

Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice

Harvard Law School Feminist Coalition

Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine

Harvard Law Students for Reproductive Justice

Harvard Law Students for Sustainable Investment

Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project

Harvard Student Representative Board, Executive Officers

National Lawyers Guild

Students for Inclusion

The Harvard Asia Law Society

Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left

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December 8, 2014

Response from Dean Cosgrove

December 7, 2014

In the past several days I have spoken with many students who have been struggling with the emotions brought on by the recent Grand Jury verdicts in Ferguson and Staten Island. This is a challenging moment for many who care deeply about justice and fairness.

Given the timing of these events, we understand that many of you are struggling with the challenge of focusing on academic obligations.

Mindful that we are in the exam period, we want to offer support including the following:

We are working with the Harvard Chaplains and local ministers to provide a space for reflection and support at HLS during the exam period. Specific times and locations will be forthcoming.

On Tuesday, December 9th at noon in WCC3015, one of our Harvard Educational Specialists, Dorothy Bisbee, will lead a discussion on how best to concentrate on exams when you are experiencing strong emotions that interfere with your ability to focus.

For students who prefer confidential one-on-one support, we have a few options:

The University’s Counseling and Mental Health Services https://huhs.harvard.edu/HealthServices/CounselingAndMentalHealthServices.aspx provides support for students 24/7 for issues including stress, crisis management, and grief.

The Harvard Chaplains http://chaplains.harvard.edu provide counseling and general support. They help all students regardless of whether you wish to connect along a religious/spiritual affiliation or not (they do not prostletyze)

I also encourage you to come to our office to meet with Lakshmi Clark-McClendon (lclark@law) or me to discuss ways we can support your specific needs during the exam period.

As we try to process and make sense of these tragic events, it may help to think of the special role that we as lawyers can play to shape our system—to strive always to make that system and our society better and more just. In an effort to begin the conversation, Dean Minow and Dean Post of Yale have expressed their views on the tragedies in Ferguson and Staten Island and on opportunities for legal reform in an op-ed piece forthcoming in the Boston Globe.

In the months ahead, there will be many opportunities at the Harvard Law School – and in the country at large – to examine our criminal justice system in light of the recent tragedies, to help gather and make sense of facts that will enhance understanding, and to think together about how to help bring about such change as we find necessary. This is what we do.

We will be in touch to share information about opportunities for discussion and work especially after the winter break. Please share your ideas with me (cosgrove@law or come to the Dean of Students Office).

Please take good care of yourselves and each other during this challenging time and remember that there are many people here at HLS to support you.

Ellen Cosgrove

Ellen M. Cosgrove, Associate Dean and Dean of Students, Harvard Law School

1585 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 617-495-1880 cosgrove@law.harvard.edu

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December 8, 2014

Coalition Response

December 8, 2014

Dear Dean Minow, Dean Cosgrove, and the Harvard Law School Administration:

Thank you for your replies to our letter. We appreciate your quick responses. We are pleased that you have now decided to join this ongoing conversation, and have committed to taking additional steps regarding our requests for student support and discussion about these issues on campus. However, your responses did not adequately convey your intention to timely meet all the needs of our communities.

We have included below this email our assessment of how your emails addressed our stated needs (Appendix A). We are particularly concerned with the lack of direct response to two of our requests:

(1) Our request for the HLS Administration to properly address the entire student body in a manner that recognizes students’ trauma as legitimate; and

(2) Our request for exam extensions for students who are traumatized by this tragedy and who have felt duty­bound to dedicate their time mobilizing for justice.

In response to our concerns, we request that:

(1) Dean Minow and Dean Cosgrove meet the example set by our peer institutions by sending an email that directly addresses our concerns. Attached are examples of emails Dean Minow and Dean Cosgrove sent to the student body following other national tragedies (Appendix B). National events call for an official Law School response. This is an important movement in the history of race relations in the United States. In light of that, we request that you send an email addressing the student body that reflects the seriousness of the situation. An email that reflects that students’ feelings are legitimate. An email that communicates that you support students, and that their possible inability to concentrate on studying is not their fault.

(2) The administration immediately provide a transparent and sensitive process for affected students to delay their exams. Based on the gravity of this event, we believe a process other than asking individual students to go through the time­-consuming and incredibly stressful process of explaining their individual trauma. Unless you act now, you will allow the systematic under performance of a great many students of color and allies on this campus on their exams. We cannot walk away from our pain, and we cannot ignore our call to act against the injustice that threatens our families and our commitment to the justice system. Without this accommodation, we worry that this injustice will create more injustice, as our constituent communities have been placed at a disadvantage compared to their peers. We write also as upperclassmen leaders of our communities, who are particularly worried for our 1Ls, whose grades are so important to their future careers. We do not want to see an entire class of our students walk away from this traumatic time in their lives with any more life­long scars.

We look forward to working with you in the future on this and other issues important to our communities, and we appreciate that you are so willing to hear us and work with us. However, because exam period is rapidly approaching, we ask that you respond to us, and to the school community, as quickly as possible. Please respond by 5 pm today (Monday, December 8).

We need your support. We need it now.

Sincerely,

HLS Affinity Group Coalition

APPENDIX A

Requests and Administrative Responses

1. Address the Student Body: End the deafening silence. Issue a statement to the Harvard Law

School community acknowledging this national crisis.

Administrative response: prompt email from Dean Cosgrove to students; a forthcoming op­ed by Dean Minow co­authored with Dean Post of Yale Law School.

Remaining needs: official communication from Dean Minow, in her capacity as Dean, to students as a community recognizing our action and the immediacy of our pain; acknowledgement that this is a campus­ and nation­wide crisis, not a problem in individual students’ minds.

Assessment: Not met.

2. Grant Exam Extensions: Give students the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion between the period of December 20th and January 15th. Delaying exams is not without precedent. In 1970, Harvard Law School faculty voted to delay all exams in response to demands by students participating in anti­​war protests.

Administrative response: invitation to speak with Lakshmi Clark­McClendon about individual needs; session on how to focus on finals preparation.

Remaining needs: assurance that extensions are a real possibility for students, that they are forthcoming in a significant number of cases, and that there will be a process that bypasses the time­consuming and personally draining individualized extension process.

Assessment: Not met.

3. Provide Student Support: Recognize our trauma as legitimate and worthy of response. We call for faculty to hold special office hours and for the administration to make culturally competent grief and trauma counselors available in the final weeks of the semester.

Administrative response: session on how to focus on finals preparation; affirming emails in response to individual student leaders; offers to talk with student leaders further; advertisement of existing counseling resources.

Remaining needs: culturally competent counseling; staffing for extra individual counseling on this issue; acknowledgment that this is a legitimately traumatic moment and not a “challenge [] focusing on academic obligations.”

Assessment: Not met.

4. Host Ongoing Discussions, Forums, and Safe Spaces: This is a wake up call. Harvard Law School can and must do more to facilitate conversations about injustice and inequality on this campus and beyond it. We ask that these conversations take place in our classrooms, in school­​sanctioned forums, and in safe spaces created by the administration.

Administrative response: session on focusing on exams; offer to arrange campus­wide conversations in Winter or Spring terms; offer to continue working with the HLS Affinity Group Coalition going forward.

Assessment: In progress.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889348)

Supposing I were at HLS, what would that mean, breh?

Hie to tinychat.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889364)

trainandpuppetshow@gmail.com

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889425)

(nodoobz)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889499)

jfc

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889351)

not disappointed

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2751028&forum_id=2#26889361)