Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
ronald sullivan a professor at harvard
law school
known for taking on difficult and
controversial cases
he was on the head legal defense team
for the patriots football player
aaron hernandez in his double murder
case
he represented one of the gina's six
defendants
and never lost the case during his years
in washington dc's
public defender services office in 2019
ronald joined the legal defense team of
harvey weinstein
a film producer facing multiple charges
of rape
and other sexual assault this decision
met with criticism from harvard
university students
including an online petition by students
seeking his removal as faculty dean
of winter pals then a letter supporting
him
signed by 52 harvard law school
professors appeared in the boston globe
on march 8 2019. following this the
harvard administration succumbed
to the pressure of a few harvard
students and announced
that they will not be renewing ronald
sullivan's dean position
this created a major backlash in the
public discourse
over the necessary role of universities
in upholding
the principles of law and freedom at the
very foundation of the united states
this conversation is brought to you by
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podcast as a side note let me say that
the free exchange of difficult ideas is
the only mechanism through which we can
make progress
truth is not a safe space truth
is humbling and being humbled can hurt
but this is the role of education not
just in the university but
in business and in life freedom
and compassion can co-exist but it
requires
work and patience it requires listening
to the voices
and to the experiences unlike our own
listening
not silencing this is the lex friedman
podcast
and here is my conversation with ronald
sullivan you were one of the
lawyers who represented the hollywood
producer harvey
weinstein in advance of a sexual assault
trial
for this harvard forced you to step down
as faculty deans
you and your wife of winter pals can you
tell the story of this
saga from first deciding to represent
harvey weinstein to the interesting
complicated events that followed
yeah sure so i got a call one morning
from a colleague at
the harvard law school who asked if
i would consent to taking a call from
from harvey uh he wanted to meet me and
and chat with me about representing him
i said yes and
one thing led to another i
drove out to connecticut uh where he was
staying and met with him and
some of his advisors and then a
day or two later i decided to to take
the case
this would have been back in uh january
of 2019
i believe so the sort of cases i i have
a
very small practice most of my time is
teaching and and writing uh but i tend
to take cases that
most uh deem to be uh impossible
uh uh i take the challenging sorts of
cases and
and this was uh fit the bill it was
quite
challenging in the sense that uh
everyone had
pre-judged the case when i say everyone
i just mean the the general sentiment
and the public
uh uh had the case pre-judged uh even
though
the specific allegations did not regard
uh
the any of the people in the um
in the new yorker that's the new yorker
article that sort of uh
uh uh exposed uh everything that was
going on
uh allegedly with with harvey so i
decided to uh
to take the case and uh i did
is there a philosophy behind you taking
on these
very difficult cases like is it a set of
principles is it just your love of the
law or is it
is there like set of principles why you
take on the cases
yeah i do i take on i'd like to take on
hard cases and i like to take on the
cases
that uh are with unpopular
uh defendants unpopular clients
um and with respect to the latter that's
where harvey
weinstein fell it's
because uh we need
lawyers and good lawyers to take the
unpopular cases
because that those sorts of cases
determine what sort of criminal justice
system we have
uh if we don't protect the rights and
the liberties of those whom the society
deems to be the least and the last
the unpopular client and that's the the
camel's nose under the tent
if we let the camel's nose under the
temp the entire tent is going to
collapse
that is to say if we short circuit
the rights of a client like harvey
weinstein
then the next thing you know someone
will be at your door
knocking it down and violating your
rights there's a there's a certain
creep there with respect to um the way
in which
the the state will respect the civil
rights and civil liberties
of people and these are the sorts of
cases that that tested
so you know for example uh there's a
there was a young man many many years
ago named ernesto miranda
by all accounts he was not a likable guy
he was a
you know three-time knife thief
and not a likable guy but lawyers
stepped up
and took his case and because of that we
now have the
miranda uh warnings you have the right
to remain silent
those those warnings that uh officers
are
are forced to give to people so it is
through these cases that we express
oftentimes the best values in our
criminal justice system so i
i proudly take on these sorts of cases
in order to vindicate not only the
individual rights of the person whom i'm
representing but the rights of citizens
writ large who most of whom
do not experience the criminal justice
system and it's
partly because of lawyers who
take on these sorts of cases and
establish
rules that protect us uh for
average everyday ordinary concrete
citizens as
from a psychological perspective just
you as a human
is there is there fear is there stress
from all the pressure because if you're
facing i mean the whole point a
difficult case
especially in the latter that you
mentioned of the going against popular
opinion
you have the eyes of millions
potentially looking at you with anger
as you try to defend uh you know this
these set of laws that this country is
built on no it doesn't stress me out
particularly
it uh you know it sort of comes with the
the territory i try not to
get uh too excited in either
direction so a big part of my practice
is
wrongful convictions and i um i've
gotten uh over 6 000 people out of
prison who've been
wrongfully incarcerated and a subset of
those people have been convicted and
you know if people have been in jail 20
30 years
who have gotten out and those are the
sorts of cases where people
uh praise you and and that sort of thing
and so look i i do
uh the work that i do i'm proud of the
work that i do
and in that sense i'm uh sort of a
part-time taoist you know the
expression reversal was the movement of
the dow uh so i don't get too high i
don't get too
low i just try to do my work and and
represent people to the best of my
ability
so one of the hardest cases of recent
history would be the harvey weinstein in
terms of popular opinion or unpopular
opinion
so well if you continue on that line
uh what was that where does that story
take you of taking on this case
yeah so i i took on the case and then
there was some
uh some a few students at the college so
let me back up i had an
administrative post at harvard college
which is a separate entity from the
harvard law school harvard college is
the undergraduate
portion of harvard university and the
law school is obviously
the law school and i um
initially was appointed as master of one
of the houses we did a name change five
or six years
into it and and were called faculty
deans
but the houses at harvard are based on
the college system of oxford in
in cambridge so when uh students go to
harvard after their first year
they're assigned to a particular house
uh or college and that's where they live
and eat and so forth these are
undergraduates these are undergraduate
students so
i was responsible for one of the the
houses that's
as its faculty dean so it's an
administrative appointment at the
college
and some students who didn't
clearly didn't like harvey weinstein
began to
protest about the representation
and from there it just
mushroomed into one of the most craven
cowardly acts by
any university in modern history it's a
just a complete
and utter repudiation of academic
freedom
uh and it is a decision
that harvard certainly will live to
regret it's frankly it's an
embarrassment
we expect students to do what students
do
and and i've encouraged students to have
their voices heard and to protest
i mean that's what students do what is
vexing are the adults
the dean of the faculty of arts and
sciences claudine gay
absolutely craven and cowardly the dean
of the college
same thing rakesh karana kraven and
cowardly
they capitulated to the loudest voice in
the room
and ran around afraid of 19 year olds oh
my 19 year olds are upset that i i need
to i need to do something
and uh it appeared to me that they so
so desired the approval of students that
they were afraid to make uh the tough
decision
and the right decision it really could
have been an important teaching
exactly moment teaching moment yeah very
important teaching moment
so they they forced you to step down
from that uh faculty dean position at
the house
it um i would push back on the
description a little bit
so so so i so i i don't write the the uh
you know the references to the op-ed i
did the new york times
harvard made a mistake by making me step
down or or something like that
so i i don't write those things uh i did
not step down
and and refused to step down uh harvard
declined to renew
my my my contract and you know and i
made it clear that i i was
not going to resign as a matter of of
principle and
and force them to um do the
the cowardly act that they in fact uh
did
and you know the the the worst thing
about this uh
they did uh the college uh uh dean gay
and dean corona
uh commission this survey they've never
done this before
survey from the students you know how do
you feel at winthrop house
yeah and the funny thing about the
survey is they never release the results
why did they never release the results
they never
released the results because i would bet
my salary that the results came back
positive for me
and it didn't fit their narrative
because most of the students were fine
yes most of the students were fine it
was the the loudest voice in the room
so they never released it and you know i
challenge them to this day
release it yes release it but no but you
know they
wanted to uh uh
create this narrative uh and
um when the data didn't support the
narrative
then they just got got silent oh we're
we're not going to release it the
students demanded it
i demanded it and they wouldn't release
it because
i am i i just i just know
in my heart of hearts that it it was um
uh it came back in my favor that most
students at winthrop house
said they were fine there was a group of
students that
weaponized the a term uh unsafe
they said we felt unsafe and they they
banted this term about uh but i'm again
i'm confident that
that the majority of students at
winthrop house said they felt
completely uh fine and the uh felt safe
and so forth
and the supermajority i am confident
either said
i feel great at winthrop or you know i
don't care one way or the other
and then there was some minority who had
had a different view
but um you know uh lessons
learned uh i um
it was a wonderful opportunity at
winthrop i met some amazing students
over the uh my 10 years
as master and then faculty dean and i'm
still in touch with a number of students
some of whom are now my students at the
at the law school
so uh in the end i thought it was a
it ended up being a great uh experience
uh
the national media was just wonderful
and it's just wonderful people wrote
such wonderful
articles and accounts and wagged their
finger appropriately
at harvard uh uh
compared me to john adams which i don't
think is an app comparison but it's
always great to read something like that
uh yeah but but anyway that that was the
harvard
uh the harvard uh versus harvey uh
situation
so that that seems like a seminal
mistake by
harvard and harvard is one of the great
universities in the world
and so sort of its successes and its
mistakes are really important for the
world
uh as a beacon of like how we make
progress
so what lessons for the bigger academia
that get
that's under fire a lot these days
uh what bigger lessons do you take away
like
how do we make harvard great how do we
make
uh other universities yale mit great
in the face of such mistakes well i
think that we have moved into a model
where we the the we have the
consumerization
of education uh that is to say
we have feckless administrators
uh who make policy based on
what the students say
now this comment is not intended to
suggest that students have
no voice in governance but it is
to suggest that the faculty are there
for a reason they are among the greatest
minds on the planet earth in their
particular fields at schools like
harvard and
yale stanford the schools that you
mentioned mit
quite literally the greatest minds on
earth they're there for
a reason things like curriculum and so
forth
uh are rightly in the province of
faculty and while you take input and
critique and so forth ultimately the
grown-ups in the room have to be
sufficiently responsible to take
uh to take charge and to
uh direct the course of a student's
education
and um you know you know my situation is
one example where it really could have
been an excellent teaching moment about
the value of the sixth amendment about
what it means to treat
um what it means to treat people who
are in the crosshairs of the criminal
justice system
but rather than having that conversation
um
it's just this consumerization model uh
well
there's a lot of noise out here so we're
going to react in this sort of way
higher education as well unfortunately
has been commodified in other
uh sorts of ways that has reduced
or or impeded hampered these schools
commitments
to uh free and robust and open
dialogue so to the degree that academic
freedom
uh doesn't sit squarely at the center of
the academic mission
uh any school is going to be in trouble
and i really hope that
that we weather
this current
political moment where um
19 year olds without degrees or running
universities
and get back to a a system
where faculty where adults
make decisions in the best interests of
the university in the best interests of
the student
even to the degree though some of those
decisions may be
unpopular and that
is going to require a certain courage
and hopefully
in time and i'm confident that in time
um administrators are going to begin to
push back on these
current trends uh harvard's been around
for a long time it's been around for a
long time for a reason and
one of the reasons is that it
understands itself not to be static so i
have
every
view that uh
harvard is is going to adapt
and get itself back on course and be
around another
400 years at least that's my goal so i
mean
what this kind of boils down to is just
having difficult conversation difficult
debates
uh when you mention sort of 19 year olds
and it's funny i've seen this even at
mit
it's not that uh they shouldn't have a
voice
they should they they do seem to i guess
you have to experience it and just
observe it
they have a strangely disproportionate
power
right right it's very interesting to uh
to basically
i mean you say yes there's great faculty
and so on
but you know it's not even just that the
faculty is smart or
wise or whatever it's that they're just
silenced so the terminology that you
mentioned
is weaponized as sort of safe spaces
or that certain conversations make
people feel unsafe
what do you think about this kind of
idea
you know is is there some things that
are
unsafe to talk about in the university
setting
is there lines to be drawn somewhere and
uh just like you said on the flip side
with a slippery slope
is it too easy for the lines to be drawn
everywhere
yeah that's a great question so this
idea of unsafe
space at least the vocabulary derives
from
some research uh academic research
about feeling psychologically uh
unsafe and so the notion here is that
there is
uh there are forms of uh
psychological disquiet that impedes
people from uh experiencing the
educational
environment to the greatest degree uh
possible and that's the uh
argument uh i
and assuming for a moment that uh people
do have these feelings of
of of disquiet at
elite universities like mit and like
harvard that's probably the safest space
people are going to be in
for their their their lives because when
they get out into the
the quote unquote real world uh they
won't have
the um the sorts of uh nets that these
schools provide safety nets that these
schools provide
uh so to the extent that research is
descriptive
of a psychological feeling i think that
the duty of the universities uh are to
challenge
people it seems to me that it's a shame
to go to a place
like harvard a place like mit yale any
of these
uh great institutions and come out
the same person that you were when you
went in
uh that seems to be a horrible waste of
four years and
and money and and resources rather we
ought to challenge
students that they grow challenge some
of the
their most deeply held assumptions
they they may continue to hold them but
the point of an education
is to rigorously interrogate um
these fundamental assumptions that have
guided you
uh thus far and to do it uh
fairly and and civilly so the extent
that there are
lines that should be drawn there's a
long tradition
in the university of civil discourse so
you should
draw a line somewhere between civil
discourse and uncivil
discourse the purpose of a university is
to talk
difficult conversations tough issues
uh talk directly and frankly
but do it civilly and you know so to
you know yell and cuss at somebody and
that sort of thing well you know
do that on your own space but observe
the
norms of civil discourse at the
university
uh so look i think that the presumption
ought to be that uh the most
difficult topics are appropriate to talk
about at a universe that that ought to
be the presumption
now you know should uh
um mit for example give its
prom imprimatur to someone who is
espousing
uh the flat earth theory you know the
earth is flat
right so there if if certain ideas
uh are are so
uh contrary to the scientific
uh and and cultural thinking of the of
the moment
yeah there's space there to draw a line
and say yeah
we're not going to uh give you this
platform to
uh tell our students that the earth is
is flat
uh but you know it's a topic that's
controversial
but contestatory that's what
universities are for if you don't like
the idea
present better ideas and articulate them
and i i think there needs to be a
mechanism
outside of the space of ideas of
humbling like i've done
martial arts for a long time i got my
ass kicked a lot
i think that's really important i mean
the in the space of ideas
i mean even just in engineering just all
the math classes
my memories of math which i love
is kind of pain is basically coming face
to face with
with the idea that i'm not special
that i'm much dumber than i thought i
was
and that anything accomplishing anything
in this world requires really hard work
that's really humbling that makes you
that
that puts you because i remember when i
was 18 and 19 and i thought
i was gonna be the smartest the best
fighter the the
nobel prize winning uh you know all
those kinds of things
and then you come with face to face with
reality and it hurts
and it feels like there needs to be
efficient mechanisms from the best
universities in the world
to without abusing you it's a very
difficult line to
to walk without like uh mentally or
physically abusing you
be able to humble you and that's what i
felt was missing in these very difficult
very important conversations
is the 19 year olds when they spoke up
the mechanism for humbling them with
ideas
was missing i got kind of gotten broken
broken down because as you say there
does
like i sensed fear
ever everything was permeated with fear
and fear
is uh paralyzing fear is destructive
especially in a place that's supposed to
be all about freedom of ideas
right and i mean i don't know if you
have anything um
any thoughts to say on this whole idea
of cancer culture
where people um
a lot of people use it it's become
political so saying maybe outside of the
world to politics
is this uh uh uh you have do you have
thoughts about it does it bother you
that people are sort of put in this bin
and uh labeled us something and then
thereby you can ignore everything they
say i mean stephen pinker there's a lot
of
harvard folks that are fighting against
i guess these set of ideas but
do you have do you have thoughts i think
that we as a culture
are way way way too quick to cancel
uh people and it it's become
almost reflexive now uh
you know someone uh says something or
makes an
an offhand comment uh even a mistake
uh there's there's a move to simply uh
cancel
uh folks so i think that this uh
quote-unquote council
culture uh has really
gotten out of control at this point
it's forcing people to be robotic uh in
many ways robots
i will say not now i know i'm venturing
into your uh
intellectual domain for future robots
watching this no offense
and there are minute it's discouraging a
lot of good people from
um getting into public life in any sort
of way because you know who needs the
who needs the stress uh of it well in
some sense you're an inspiration that
you're able to
withstand the the pressure the pressure
of the masses
but it is as i said it's a sad
aspect of human nature that we kind of
get into these crowds and we get
we start chanting and it's fun for some
reason and then you forget yourself
and then you sort of wake up the next
day not
not having uh anticipated the
consequences of all the chanting
yeah and we get ourselves in trouble in
that i mean there's some responsibility
on the
on social networks and the mechanisms by
which
they make it more frictionless to do the
chanting to do the canceling to do the
outrage and all that kind of stuff so
i actually on the technology side have a
hope that that's fixable but
yeah it does seem to be
you know it almost like the internet
showed to us
that we have a lot of broken ways about
which we
communicate with each other and we're
trying to figure that out same with the
university
the this mistake by harvard showed that
we need to
reinvent what the university is and i
mean all of this is
it's almost like we're finding our baby
dear legs
and trying to strengthen the
institutions that
have been very successful for for a long
time you know
the really interesting thing about
harvey weinstein and
you choosing these exceptionally
difficult cases
is also thinking about
what it means to defend evil people
what it means to defend these we could
say
unpopular and you might push back
against the word
evil but bad people in society
um first of all do you think there's
such a thing as evil
or do you think all people are good and
it's just circumstances that create evil
and also is there somebody too evil for
the law to defend
and so that's a so the first question
that's a deep uh philosophical question
whether the
category of evil uh does any work
uh for me it does for me i
i do think that i do subscribe
to that category that there is uh evil
uh in the world as conventionally uh
understood so
uh so there are many who will say yeah
that just doesn't
doesn't do any work for me uh but
the category evil in fact does
intellectual work
for me and i i understand it as as
something that
uh that exists uh is it genetic or is it
the circumstance like
what kind of work does it do for you
intellectually i think that
it's uh it's highly contingent that is
to say that
the conditions in which one
grows up and so forth uh
uh uh begins to
create this category that we may think
of as evil
now there are um studies and and whatnot
that show
that uh certain um uh brain
abnormalities and so forth are are more
prevalent in say
serial killer so there may be a
biological predisposition
to certain forms of conduct but
uh i don't i don't have the
uh biological evidence to make a
statement that someone is born
evil in and you know i i'm not a
determinist
thinker in that way so you come out the
womb evil and you're destined to be that
way
um to the extent there may be biological
uh determinants uh there still require
some um uh nurture uh as well
uh so but do you still put a
responsibility
for the on the individual of course yeah
we all make choices
and so some responsibility on the
individual
indeed
we live in a culture unfortunately where
a lot of people
have a constellation of bad choices in
front of them and that makes me very sad
yeah um that the people grow up with
with
predominantly bad choices in in front of
them and that's unfair
and that's that that's on all of us but
yes i do think we make we make choices
wow that's so powerful the constellation
of bad choices
hey
that's such a powerful way to think
about
sort of equality which is
this the set of trajectories before you
that you could take if you just roll the
dice because uh
you know life is is a kind of
optimization problem
sorry to take us into math over a set of
trajectories
under imperfect information uh
so you're gonna do a lot of stupid shit
to put it
uh in technical terms uh
but uh the
the the fraction of the trajectories
that take you into into bad places
or into good places is really important
and that's ultimately what we're talking
about
and evil might be just a little bit of a
predisposition biologically but the rest
is just trajectories that you can take
i've been studying hitler a lot recently
i've been reading probably way too much
and it's it's interesting to think about
all the possible trajectories
right that could have avoided
the this particular individual
developing the hate that he did the
following that he did
the the actual final uh
there's a few turns in him
psychologically where he went
from being a leader that just wants to
conquer and to
somebody who allowed his anger and
emotion to take over
where he started making mistakes for uh
in terms of militarily speaking but also
started
doing you know evil things
and all the possible trajectories that
could have avoided that are fascinating
including
he wasn't that bad at painting a drawing
right that's that's true from the very
beginning
and uh and his time with vienna there's
all these possible things
to think about and of course there's
millions of others like him that never
came to power and all those kinds of
things
uh so but that goes to the second
question on the
on the side of evil do you think
and and hitler is often brought up as
like an example of somebody who is
like the epitome of evil do you think
you would if you got that same phone
call
after world war ii and hitler survived
uh during war you know at the trial for
war crimes
would you take the case defending uh
adolf hitler if you don't want to answer
that one
is there a line to draw for evil for who
to not to defend
no i think i think everyone i'll do the
second one first
everyone has a right to a defense if
you're charged
criminally in in the united states of
america so
i know i do not think that there's
someone so evil that they do not deserve
a defense process matters
process helps us get to results
more accurately than we would otherwise
so
it is important and it's vitally
important and indeed more important for
someone deemed to be evil to receive the
same
quantum of process and the same
substance of process that anyone
else would it's vitally important to the
health of our criminal justice system
for that to happen so yes uh everybody
uh hitler included were he
charged in the united states for a crime
that occurred in the united states
uh uh yes um
um whether i would do it if i were
a public defender and assign the case uh
yes i started my career as a public
defender
i represent anyone who was assigned
to me i think that is our uh our duty
uh in private uh
uh practice uh i have choices
uh and i i likely based on the hypo you
gave me and i would tweak it a bit
because it would have to be a
a u.s united states yeah and so but but
i get the broader point and don't want
to
bog down in technicalities i'd likely uh
pass right right now as i i see it
unless
um it was a case where no nobody else
would
would would represent him uh you know
then
uh i i would i would think that i have
some sort of duty
and an obligation uh to
to to do it uh but yes everyone uh
absolutely deserves a right to competent
counsel
that is a beautiful idea it's difficult
to think about it
in the face of public pressure it's just
i mean um it's kind of terrifying
to watch the masses during this past
year of 2020
to wash the power of the masses to make
a decision
before any of the data is out
if the data is ever out any of the
details
any of the processes and i and
there is an anger to the justice system
there's a lot of people that feel like
even though the ideal you describe
is a beautiful one it does not always
operate justly it does not operate to
the best of its ideals
it operates unfairly can we go to the
big picture
of the criminal justice system what
do you given the ideal
works about our criminal justice system
and what is broken
well there's a lot broken uh right right
now and i usually focus on
on that uh but uh in truth a lot
uh works about our criminal justice
system so there's a there's an old joke
uh and it uh it it's funny but
it it carries a lot of truth to it
and the joke is that um in the united
states we have the
worst criminal justice
system in the world except for every
place else
yeah and uh and yes we
certainly have a number of problems uh
and a lot of problems based on race and
class
and economic station but we have a
process that privileges the liberty and
that's a
good feature of the criminal justice
system
so here's how it works the idea of the
relationship between the individual and
the state
is such that in the united states
we privilege uh liberty over and above
very many values so much so that a
statement by
increased mather not you know terribly
far from where we're sitting
right now has gained traction uh over
all these years and it's that better
10 guilty go free than one innocent
person convicted
that is an expression of the way in
which
uh we understand liberty to operate in
our collective
consciousness we would rather a bunch of
guilty people go
free than to than to um
impact the liberty interests of any uh
individual person
so that's a guiding principle in our
criminal justice
system uh liberty and so we
set a process that makes it difficult
to convict people we have rules of
procedure
that are cumbersome and that slow down
the process
and that um exclude otherwise reliable
evidence and this is all
because we place a value on
uh liberty and i think these are good
things and it
uh and it says a lot about our criminal
justice system
some of the bad features have to do with
the way in which
uh this country sees color as a proxy
for
criminality and and treats uh people of
color in radically different ways in the
in the criminal justice system
uh from arrests to
charging decisions to sentencing
people of color are disproportionately
impacted
on all sorts of registers one example
and it's a
popular one that
although there appears to be no
uh distinguishable difference between
uh drug use by whites and blacks
in the country um uh blacks though
only 12 percent of the population
represent 40
of the uh the uh drug charges in
in the country there's there's there's
some disequities
along uh race and class and the criminal
justice system that
we really have to have to have to fix
and
they've grown to more than than bugs in
the system and
have become features unfortunately of
our system
oh to to make it more efficient to make
judgments so the racism makes it more
efficient
it uh it it efficiently uh
moves people uh from society to the
streets
uh and that's uh
and a lot of innocent people get caught
up in that
well let me ask in terms of the
innocence
so you've gotten a lot of people who are
innocent
uh you def uh i get i guess revealed
their innocence
demonstrated their innocence what's that
process like
what's it like emotionally
psychologically what's it like legally
to fight the system
in uh through the process of revealing
sort of
uh the innocence of a human being
yeah emotionally and psychologically it
can be taxing
uh i follow a model
of uh what's called empathic
representation and that is i i get to
know
my clients and their family that i get
to know their strivings their
aspirations their fears their sorrows
so that certainly
sometimes can do psychic injury uh on
one
uh if you you know you get really
invested and really sad and
and or happy and it uh it it
it does become emotionally uh taxing
but the idea of someone sitting in jail
for 20 years
completely innocent of a crime can you
imagine sitting there every day for 20
years knowing
that you factually did not do the thing
that you were convicted of
by a jury of your peers it it's got to
be the most incredible thing in the
world
what the but the people who do it and
the people who make it and come out on
the other side
as productive citizens are folks who say
they they've come to an inner peace in
their own minds and they say these bars
aren't going to define
me uh that my my humanity
is uh it is there and it's it's
immutable
and they uh are not bitter which is
amazing i i would tend to think that i'm
not that good of a person
i would be bitter for every day of 20
years if i were in
in jail for something but you know but
but people tell me that you know that
they can't survive like that one cannot
survive like that
and you have to come to terms with it
and uh
and uh the the people whom i've
exonerated i mean they they come out
uh most of them uh come out and
and they just uh really just take on
life with a vim
and and vigor without uh bitterness
and it's it's a beautiful thing to see
do you think
it's possible to eradicate racism from
the judicial system
i do i think as uh i think that race
insinuates itself in all aspects of our
lives
and the judicial system is not immune
from that so to the extent we begin to
eradicate
dangerous and deleterious race thinking
from society
generally then it will uh be
eradicated from the uh criminal justice
system i think we've got a lot of work
to do and i think it'll be
a while but uh but i think it's it's
doable i mean
you know uh the
country so historians will look back 300
years from
now and take note of the
incredible journey of uh
diasporic africans in the in in the us
an incredible journey from uh you know
slavery uh to
the the heights of politics and business
and judiciary
the academy and so forth and not a lot
of time
and actually not a lot of time and if we
can
have that sort of movement historically
uh let's think about what the next 175
years will look like i'm not saying it's
going to be
short but i'm saying that if we keep
at it keep getting to know each other
a little better keep enforcing laws
uh that prohibit uh
the the sort of race-based
discrimination that people have
experienced and
provide as a society opportunities
for people to thrive in this world then
i think we can
we can see a better world and if we see
a better world we'll see a better
judicial system so i think it's kind of
fascinating
if you look throughout history and race
is just part of that is uh
we create the other and
uh treat the other with disdain
through the legal system but just
through human nature
i tend to believe we mentioned offline
that i work with robots
it sounds absurd to say especially to
you especially because we're talking
about racism and it's so prevalent today
i do believe that there will be
almost like a civil rights movement for
robots
because uh with the i think there's a
huge
value to society of having
artificial intelligence systems that
are uh that interact with humans that
are and
are human-like and the more they become
human-like
you will they will start they will start
to ask very fundamentally human
questions about freedom
about suffering about justice and they
will will have to come face to face
like look in the mirror in asking the
question
just because we're biologically based
just because we're sort of uh
well just because we're human does that
mean we're the only ones that deserve
the rights
again giving forming another
other group which is robots and i'm sure
there could be
along that path different
versions of other that we form so racism
race is certainly a big other that we've
made
as you said a lot of progress on
throughout the history of this country
but it does feel like we always create
as we make progress
create new other groups and of course
the other
the other group that perhaps is outside
the legal system that people talk about
is the essential no i eat a lot of meat
but the torture of animals you know the
people talk about when we look back from
you know a couple centuries from now
look back at the kind of things we're
doing to animals
we might regret that we might see that
in a very different light and it's kind
of interesting to see the future
trajectory of
what we wake up to about the injustice
in our
in our ways um but the robot one is the
one i'm
especially focused on because uh but at
this moment in time it seems ridiculous
but i'm sure most civil rights movements
throughout history seem ridiculous at
first
well it's interesting sort of outside of
my uh
intellectual bailiwick uh robots as
i understand the development of
um artificial intelligence uh though
the um the aspect
that uh
still is missing is this notion of of
consciousness
uh and that it's it's consciousness
that is the the thing that uh
will uh will move um
if it were to exist and i'm not saying
that it can or will
but if it were to exist would move
robots
from uh machines to
um something different
that ex something that experienced the
world
in a way analogous to what how we
experience it um and also as i
understand the science there's a
um unlike what you see on on television
that we're not
we're not uh there yet in terms of uh
this notion of uh
the machines having uh a consciousness
um uh or a great general intelligence
all those kinds of things
yeah yeah a huge amount of progress has
been made and
there is it's fascinating to watch so
i'm on both minds as a person who's
building them
i'm realizing how sort of quote-unquote
dumb they are
but also looking at human history and
how
poor we are predicting the progress of
innovation and technology
it's obvious that we have to be humble
by our ability to predict coupled with
the fact that we
keep uh to use terminology carefully
here
we keep discriminating against the
intelligence of
artificial systems the smarter they get
the more ways we find to dismiss
the their intelligence so this this has
just been going on throughout
where i it's almost as if we're
threatened
in the most primitive human way
animalistic way we're threatened by the
power of
other creatures and we want to lessen
dismiss them
so consciousness is a really important
one but the one i think about a lot
in terms of consciousness the very
engineering question
is whether the display of consciousness
is the same
as the possession of consciousness so
if a robot tells you they are conscious
if a robot looks like they're suffering
when you torture them if a robot is
afraid of death
and says they're afraid of death and are
legitimately afraid like
for in terms of just uh everything we as
humans
use to determine the ability of somebody
to be their own
entity they're the one that loves one
that fears
one that hopes one that can suffer
if if the robot like in the dumbest of
ways
is able to display that we
it changed it starts changing things
very quickly
uh i'm not sure what it is but it does
seem that there's a huge component to
consciousness
that is a social creation like we
together create our consciousness like
we
believe our common humanity together
alone we wouldn't be aware of our
humanity
and the law as it protects our freedoms
seems to be a construct of the social
construct
and when you add other creatures into it
it's not obvious to me that like you
have to build
there will be a moment when you say this
thing is not conscious
i think there's going to be a lot of
fake it until you make it
and there'll be a very gray area between
fake and make
that uh is going to force us to contend
with what it means
to be an entity that deserves rights
where
all men are created equal the the men
part
might have to expand in ways that we
are not yet anticipating that's very
interesting i mean my favorite
the fundamental thing i love about
artificial intelligence is it gets
smarter and smarter it challenges to
think of
uh what is right the questions of
justice questions of freedom
it basically challenges us
to uh to understand our own mind
to understand uh what uh like
almost from an engineering first
principles perspective to understand
what it is that makes us human
that is at the core of all the rights
that we talk about and all the documents
we write
so even if we don't give rights
artificial intelligence systems we may
be able to construct
more fair legal systems to protect us
humans
well i mean interesting ontological
question uh
between the the performance of
consciousness and
and and actual consciousness to the
extent
that it's um that actual consciousness
is anything beyond some contingent
reality uh but you've posed a number of
of interesting philosophical questions
and then there's also
it strikes me that that
philosophers of religion would pose
another set of questions
uh as well when you um deal with uh
uh issues of uh of structure versus soul
body versus soul and and uh it
it would be a it will be a
complicated mix and i suspect i'll be uh
dust by the time those questions get get
worked out
and uh so yeah the soul the soul is a
fun one
there's no soul i'm i'm not sure maybe
you can correct me but
there's very few discussion of soul in
our legal system right
right correct so uh but there is a
discussion about what constitutes a
human
being and i mean you gestured at the
notion of
uh the potential of the law uh widening
the domain of uh so of of human being so
and in that sense right uh you know
people are very angry because they can't
uh
uh get uh sort of pain and suffering
damages if someone
negligently kills a pet because a pet is
not
a human being and people say well i love
my
pet but the law sees uh a pet as
chattel as property like this this water
bottle
uh so the the current legal definitions
um trade on a definition of
humanity that may not be worked out in
any sophisticated way but
certainly um there's a there's a
share broad and shared understanding of
what what it what it means
so probably doesn't uh explicitly
contain a definition of something like
soul but it's it's more robust than
you know a carbon-based organism uh
there's something
uh a little more distinct about what the
law
thinks a human being is so if we can
dive into
uh we've already been doing it but if we
can dive into
more difficult territory so uh
2020 had the tragic case of george floyd
when you reflect on the protests on the
racial tensions
over the death of george floyd how do
you make sense of it all
uh what do you take away from these
events well the george floyd
moment occurred at at an historical
moment where people were in
quarantine for covid um
and people um
have these uh cell phones
to a degree greater than we've ever had
them before
and this was a sort of the straw that
broke the camel's back
after a number of these sorts of cell
phone videos
uh surfaced people were fed up
uh they there was unimpeachable
uh evidence of um
a form of of mistreatment
whether it constitutes murder or
manslaughter there
the trial is going on now and jurors
will figure that out but
but there was widespread appreciation
that a fellow human being was
was mistreated that we were just talking
about humanity
that there was um not a sufficient
recognition of this person's uh humanity
the common humanity of this person the
common humanity of this person well
well said and people were fed up so we
were already in this covet space where
we were exercising care for one another
uh and it there was just an explosion
the likes of which this country
hasn't seen since the you know civil
rights
protests of the 1950s and 1960s and
people uh simply said enough enough
enough enough this has to stop we cannot
treat
uh fellow citizens in in this way and we
can't do it with
impunity and the young people say we're
just we're just
we're not gonna stand for it anymore
they took to the streets
but with the millions of
people protesting there is nevertheless
taking us back to the most difficult of
trials
you have the trial like you mentioned
that's going on now of derek showing
of one of the police officers involved
uh what are your thoughts what are your
predictions on this
trial where the law the process of the
law is trying to proceed
in the face of so much racial tension
yeah it's it's going to be an
interesting trial i've i've been
keeping an eye on it there in jury
selection now
today as we're we're talking uh so a
lot's going to depend on what sort of
jury
gets elected uh yeah how sorry to take
sorry to interrupt but uh so one of the
interesting
qualities of this trial maybe you can
correct me if i'm wrong
but uh the cameras are allowed in the
courtroom at least during the juror
selection
so so you get to watch some of this
stuff
and the other part is the jury selection
again i'm very inexperienced but
it seems like selecting and what is it
unbiased
jury is really difficult for this trial
it's it almost like i i
i don't know uh me as a listener like
listen you know listening to people
that are trying to talk their way into
the jury kind of thing
trying to decide is this person really
unbiased
or are they just trying to hold on to
their like
deeply held emotions and trying to get
onto the jury
i mean it's incredibly difficult process
i don't know if you can comment on
a case so difficult like the ones you've
mentioned before
how do you select a jury that represents
the people and doesn't
and and carries the sort of the ideal of
the law
yeah so a couple things so first yes it
is televised and it will be televised
as they say gavel the gavel so the
entire trial
the whole thing is going to be televised
so uh people are getting
a view of how uh laborious jury
selection can be
i think as of yesterday they had picked
six jurors and it's
it's taken a week and they have to get
to 14. uh
so they've got you know uh probably
another week or
or more to to do i've been in jury
trials where it
took a month to choose a jury so that's
the most important part you have to
you have to choose the right uh sort of
jury
so unbiased in the criminal justice
system has a
particular meaning and it it means that
um
that uh let me tell you what it doesn't
mean it doesn't mean that a person
uh is not aware of the case
it also does not mean that a person has
informed an opinion
about the case those are two popular
misconceptions
what it does mean is that
notwithstanding whether
an individual has formed an opinion
notwithstanding whether an individual
knows about the case
that individual can set aside any prior
opinions can set aside
any notions that they've developed about
the case and listen to the evidence
presented at trial
in conjunction with the judge's
instructions on how to
understand and view that evidence so if
a person can do
that then they're considered unbiased
so you know as a long-time
defense attorney i you know i would be
hesitant in a big case like this to pick
a juror who's never heard
of the case or anything going around
because i'm thinking well who is this
person and
what what what in the world do they do
uh uh
so uh or or are they lying to me i mean
how can you not have heard about
uh this case um so they may bring other
problems so i you know i don't mind so
much people who've heard about the case
or folks who've formed initial opinions
uh
but you you what you don't want is
people who
uh have tethered themselves to that
opinion
uh in a way that uh you know they can't
be
convinced uh otherwise so um
but you also have people who uh as you
suggested who just
lie because they want to get on the jury
or lie because they want to get off the
jury so
sometimes people come and say you know
the most ridiculous
outrageous offensive things uh to know
because they know that they'll get
excused for pause
and others who um you can tell
uh really badly want to get on the jury
so they're
you know they're just they pretend to be
the the most uh neutral
unbiased person in the world uh what the
law calls the reasonable person we have
in law the reasonable person standard
yeah and i would tell my class the uh
you know the the reasonable person in in
real life is the
person that you would be least likely to
want to have a drink with
the most boring uh neutral
not interesting sort of person in the
world and so a lot of jurors
engage in the performative act of
presenting themselves as the
most sort of even killed rational
reasonable
person because they really want to get
on the jury yeah there's an interesting
uh
question i apologize that i haven't
watched a lot because it is very long
i've watched it uh you know there's
there's certain questions you've asked
in the juris you asked in the jury
selection
i remember uh i think one jumped out at
me
which is uh you know something like
does the fact that this person is a
police officer
make you feel any kind of way about them
so trying to get it that you know i
don't know what that is i guess that's
bias
and that's such a difficult question to
ask like i asked myself of that question
like how much you know we all kind of
want to pretend that we're not racist we
don't
uh judge we don't have we're like these
per
word the reasonable human but you know
legitimately asking
yourself like are you what are the what
are the prejudgments you have in your
mind
uh is that even impossible for
a human being like when you look at
yourself in the mirror and think about
it is it possible to actually answer
that
yeah i look i i do not believe
that people can be completely unbiased
we all have
baggage and bias and bring it
wherever we go including to court
what you want is to try to find a person
who
can at least recognize yeah when
a bias is working and actively
try to do the right thing that's the
best we can
we can ask so if a juror says yeah you
know
i grew up in a place where i tend to
believe
what police officers say that's just how
i grew up but
if the judge is telling me that i have
to listen to
every witness equally then i'll you know
i'll do my best and i won't
weigh that testimony any higher than i
would
any other testimony if you have someone
answer a question like that
that sounds more sincere to me uh sounds
more honest and if you want
a person you want a person to try to do
that and then in closing arguments right
as the lawyer
right i'd say something like ladies and
gentlemen you know we chose you
to be on this jury because you swore
that you would do your level best
to be fair that's why we chose you
and i'm confident that you're going to
do that here
so when you heard that police officer's
testimony the judge
told you you can't give more credit
to that testimony just because it's a
police officer
and i trust that you're going to do that
and that you're going to look at
witness number three you know john smith
you're going to look at john smith
john smith has a different recollection
and you're duty-bound duty bound to
look at that testimony and this person's
credibility
you know the same degree as that other
witness right and now what you have is
just a he said
she said matter and this is a criminal
case
that has to be reasonable doubt right so
you know so you
and and really someone who's trying to
do the right thing
uh it's helpful but no you're not going
to just find
14 people with no biases that's that's
absurd well that's
that's fascinating that uh especially
the way you're inspiring the way you're
speaking now is uh i mean i guess you're
calling on the jury that's kind of the
whole system is you're calling on the
jury
each individual and the jury to step up
and really think you know to step up and
be their uh most thoughtful selves
actually most introspective like
you're trying to basically ask people to
uh
be their best selves and that's and they
i i guess a lot of people step up to
that yeah that's what this system works
i'm very i'm very pro jury juries
they they get it right it works a lot of
the time
most of the time and they really work
hard to do it
so
what do you think happens i mean maybe
i'm not so much on the legal side of
things but
on the social side it's like with the
o.j simpson trial
do you think it's possible that derek
shawn does not get convicted of the what
is the second degree murder
how do you think about that how do you
think about the potential social impact
of that
the the riots the protests the either
either direction any words that are said
the tension
here could be explosive especially with
the cameras
yeah so yes there's certainly a
possibility that he
he'll be acquitted for homicide charges
for the jury to convict
they have to make a determination as to
officer chovin's
former officer chovin's state of mind
whether he intended to cause some harm
whether he was grossly reckless
in causing harm so much so that he
disregarded a known risk of death or
serious bodily injury
and as you may have read in the papers
yesterday the judge allowed a
third degree murder charge in kentucky
which is cons it's
the mindset the state of mind there
is not an intention but it's a
depraved indifference uh and what that
means is that the jury doesn't have to
find that he intended to do anything
uh rather they could find that he was
just
indifferent to a risk
uh that's dark yeah
yeah i'm not sure what's worse uh yeah
well that's that's a good point
but uh but but it's another basis for
the jury
uh to convict but but look uh you never
know what what happens when you go to a
jury trial so there could be
a um an acquittal
and if there is i imagine there would be
massive uh
uh protests uh if he's convicted i
i i don't think that would happen uh
because i just don't see
at least nothing i've seen or read
suggest that there's a
a big pro uh chauvin camp out there
ready to protest well there could be a
is there also
uh potential tensions that could arise
from the sentencing
i don't know how that exactly works sort
of not enough years kind of thing
yeah it could be like all that kind of a
lot could happen
so it depends on what he's convicted of
uh you know one count i think
is like up to 10 years another counts up
to 40 years
uh so it depends what he's convicted of
and yes it depends on how much
of the how much time the judge gives him
if he is convicted
uh that there's a lot of space for
people to be very angry
and so we will we will see what happens
i just feel like with the judge
and and the lawyers there's an
opportunity
to have really important
long-lasting speeches i don't know if
they
think of it that way especially with the
cameras
it it feels like they have the capacity
to heal
or to divide um do you ever think about
that
as a as a lawyer as a legal mind
that your words aren't just about the
case but about
the they'll reverberate through history
potentially
um that is that is certainly a
possible consequence of things you say
i don't think that most lawyers think
about that
uh in the context of the case your role
is much more
narrow you're the partisan advocate
as a defense lawyer partisan advocate
for
uh that client as a prosecutor you're a
minister of justice
um attempting to prosecute that
particular case
but the reality is you are absolutely
correct that
sometimes the things you say
will have a shelf life and you mentioned
o.j simpson before you know if the glove
doesn't fit
uh you must have quit it's gonna be you
know just in in our lexicon
for probably a long time now so so it it
happens
but that's not uh and and shouldn't be
uh foremost on your mind
right what what do you make uh what do
you make of those jason trout
do you do you have a thoughts about it
he's uh
he's out and about and on social media
now he's a public figure
is there uh lessons to be drawn from
that whole saga
well you know that was an interesting
case i was a young public defender i
want to say in my first
year as a public defender when that
verdict came out so
that case was important in so many ways
one
it was the first dna case a major
dna case and there were significant
lessons learned from that
one mistake that the prosecution
made was uh that they didn't present the
science in a way
that a lay jury could understand it
um and uh what johnny cochran did was
he understood the science and was able
to
uh uh translate that
into a into a vocabulary that he
bet that that jury understood
uh so so cochran was dismissive
of a lot of dna they say you know he
said something like oh you know they say
they found
you know uh such and such amount of dna
that's just like me
you know wiping my finger against my
nose and
and and just that little bit of dna and
uh that was effective because the
prosecution hadn't done a good job of
establishing that
yes it's microscopic you don't need that
much
yes wiping your hand on your nose and
touching something you can transfer a
lot of dna and that gives you good
information
yeah but you know it was the first time
that the public generally
and that jury maybe since high school
science had heard you know
you know nucleotide i mean it was just
all these terms getting thrown
at them and and but it was not weaved
into a
narrative so cochrane taught us
that no matter what type of case it is
no matter what science is involved it's
still about
storytelling it's still about a
narrative and he was uh
and he was great uh at that at that
uh at that narrative and was consistent
uh with his narrative all the way out um
another uh lesson that
was relearned uh it's that you know you
never ask a question to what you don't
know the answer that's like uh
trial advocacy 101 yeah and so when they
gave
uh o.j simpson the glove and it wouldn't
fit
you know you don't you don't do things
where you just don't know how it's going
to turn out it was
way way too risky and then and and i
think that's what
acquitted him because that glove the
glove just wouldn't fit and he got to
do this and ham in front of the camera
and all of that and
uh and it was big do you think about do
you think about representation of
storytelling like you
yourself and your absolutely absolutely
we
tell stories it is fundamental we
uh since time immemorial we have told
stories to help us make
sense of the world around us so
as a scientist you tell a different type
of story
but we as a public have
told stories from time immemorial to
to help us make sense of the physical
and the natural
uh world and uh we are still a
a species that is moved by storytelling
so that that's
first and and last in trial work you
have to tell
a good story um and you know the basic
introductory books about trial work uh
teach young students young students and
young lawyers to
to start in opening with this case is
about
this case is about and then you fill in
the blank and you know that's your
narrative that's the narrative you're
gonna
you're gonna tell and of course you can
do the ultra
dramatic the glove doesn't fit kind of
uh the climax and all those kinds of
things
yes but that's the best of narratives
the best of stories
yes speaking of
other really powerful stories that you
were involved with is the aaron
hernandez trial
and the whole story the whole legal case
can you maybe
overview the big picture uh story and
legal case of aaron hernandez
yeah so aaron whom i missed a lot
so he was charged with a double murder
in in
in the case that i tried and this was a
unique case in one of those impossible
cases
uh in part because aaron had already
been
uh convicted of a murder and so we had a
client
who was on trial for a double murder
after having already been convicted of
uh a separate
murder and we had a jury pool uh
just about all of whom uh knew
that he had been convicted of a murder
because he was a very popular football
player in boston
uh which is a big football town with the
with the patriots
uh so you know so everyone knew that he
was a convicted murderer and here we are
uh defending for uh in a double murder
case
um so that was the that was the context
it was not a case in the sense that the
this murder had gone
gone unsolved for a couple of years
and then a nightclub bouncer
uh said something to a cop who was
working at a club
uh that uh aaron hernandez was somehow
involved in that
in that murder that happened in the
theater district that's the district
where all the clubs are in boston and
where the
the homicide occurred and once
the police heard aaron hernandez's name
then
it was you know they went uh all out in
order to
to to do this and they found a guy named
alexander bradley
uh who uh was a
a very significant uh
uh uh a drug dealer in the
uh sort of uh connecticut area
uh ver very significant very powerful
um and uh he essentially
in exchange for a deal uh
pointed to aaron said yeah i was with
aaron and
uh and aaron was the
uh was the murderer uh so that's how the
case came came to court
okay so that that says the context what
was your involvement in this case
like legally intellectually
psychologically
win this particular uh second charge of
murder
so a friend uh called me jose baez
who is the defense attorney and he comes
to
a class that i teach every year at
harvard the trial advocacy workshop
as one of my teaching faculty
members it's a class where we teach
students how to try
cases so jose called me
and said hey uh
i got a call from massachusetts aaron
hernandez
uh you want to go and and talk to him uh
with me
so i said sure so we went up to the to
the prison
and um uh and met
uh aaron and uh spoke with him for two
or three hours that first time and
before we left he said he he wanted to
uh retain us
uh he wanted to work with us and and
that started the representation
what was he like uh what would in that
time
what was he worn down by the whole
process was there still
he wasn't light in that he was not he he
had
i mean more than just the light he was
luminous almost uh
he had a radiant million dollar smile
uh whenever you walked in uh my
first impression i distinctly remember
was
wow this is what a professional athlete
looks like and he walked in and he's
just
just bigger and more fit than you know
than
anyone you know anywhere and it's like
wow this
and you know when you saw him on
television he looked kind of little
and i was like so i remember thinking
well what what do those other guys look
like
in person and
and he's extraordinarily polite uh
young uh is that i
was surprised by how young uh he
was both in mind and uh on body
but chronologically i was you know
thinking he was in his you know in his
early 20s i believe
uh but there seemed to be like an
innocent stone uh in terms of
just the way he saw the world uh i think
that's right they picked that up from
the from the documentary just taking
that in
i think that's right yeah yeah uh so
there is a netflix documentary titled
killer inside the mind of aaron
hernandez
what are your thoughts on this
documentary i know if you've gotten a
chance to see it
i i did not i have not seen it i did not
participate in it i know i was in it
because
of uh there was news footage uh that but
i did not participate in it i had not
talked to aaron about uh
about uh press or anything uh before
he he died uh my strong view is that the
attorney-client privilege survives
death and so i was not inclined to talk
about anything that aaron and i talked
about so i just didn't
uh participate and and and never watched
not even
watch huh is that does that apply to
most of your work do you try to stay
away from the way the press perceives
stuff
um during uh yes i try to stay away from
it
i will view it afterwards i just hadn't
gotten around to watching uh
aaron because it's kind of it's kind of
sad yeah so i just
haven't watched it but i definitely stay
away from
the press during trial uh and
you know there are some lawyers who
watch it religiously to see what's going
on
but you know i'm i'm confident in my
years of
training and so forth that and that
i can uh actively sense
what's going on in the courtroom and and
that i really don't need advice from
joe 476 at gmail
uh you know some random guy on the
internet
telling me how to try cases so yeah it's
just to me it's just
confusing and i just i keep it out of my
mind and even if you think you can
ignore it just reading it will have a
a little bit of an effect on your mind i
think that's oh i think that's right
over time i might uh accumulate
uh so the the documentary but in general
it mentioned or kind of
emphasized and talked about aaron's
sexuality
or sort of they were discussing
basically
the idea that he was a homosexual
and some of the trauma
some of the suffering that he endured in
his life had to do with sort of fear
given the society of of what his father
would think
of what others around him sort of
especially
in sport culture and football and so on
so
i don't know in your interaction with
him
was do you think that maybe even leading
up to a suicide do you think
his uh struggle with
coming to terms with the sexuality had a
role to play in much of his difficulties
well i'm not gonna talk about my
interactions
with them and anything i derive from
from that um
but you know what i will say is that um
a story broke on the on the radio
uh at some point
uh during the the trial that aaron had
been in the same sex
relationship with someone and some sport
local sportscasters local boston
sports casters or we really mushroomed
uh the the the story so um
he and everyone was aware of it
you'll you also may know from the court
record that
the uh prosecutors floated a
uh specious theory um
for a minute but then backed off of it
that you know that aaron was
um that there was some sort of uh i
guess
gay rage at work with him and that might
be a cause
a motive for the killing and
uh luckily they they really backed off
for that that was quite an offensive
uh claim in in in theory so um
but um to answer your question more
directly i mean i have no idea
why he he killed himself it was a a
surprise and a shock
um i was scheduled to go see him
like a couple days after it happened i
mean he was anxious
uh for um jose and i to come in and do
the appeal
from the murder which he was convicted
for he wanted us to take over that
appeal
um he was talking about going back to
football i mean he said
well you talk about this or you earlier
you talked about the sort of
innocent aspect of him he said you know
well ron maybe not maybe not the
patriots but you know i want to get back
in the league and i was like you know
aaron that's that's going to be tough
man
but he really but you know he really
believed it and uh
and then you know for a few days later
that to happen it was just it was
a real shock to me like when you look
back at that
at his story
does it make you sad very very
uh i i thought uh so
so one i i believe he he he absolutely
did not
uh commit the the the crimes that we
acquitted him on
uh i think that was the right answer uh
for for for that um uh
i don't know enough about bradley the
first case i'm sorry to make uh
make an opinion on but but in our case
uh
you know uh it was just he had the
misfortune of having a famous name
and the police department just really
just
just just really got got on him there
so um uh yes it's
it's i miss him a lot it was very very
sad surprising
yeah and and i mean just on the human
side of course we don't know the full
story but
just everything that led up to suicide
everything led up to
an incredible professional football
player you know
that whole story if uh remarkably
talented
athlete remarkably talented athlete and
it has to do with all the
all the possible trajectories right that
we can take through life
as we were talking about before and some
of them lead
to uh to suicide sadly enough
and it's it's always tragic when you
have absolutely yeah
some you know somebody with uh with
great potential
uh resulting in the things that happen
right people love it when i ask about
books i don't know if
uh uh whether technical like
legal or fiction non-fiction books
throughout your life
have had an impact on you if there's
something you could recommend
or something you could speak to about
something that inspired ideas
insights about this world complicated
world of ours
oh wow uh yeah so uh
i i'll give you a a couple uh
so one is uh contingency irony and
solidarity by richard wardy he's a he's
passed away now but was a
philosopher at some of our major
institutions princeton
harvard stanford
um contingency irony and solidarity at
least that's a book that really helped
me
work through um
a series of thoughts so it stands for
the proposition that
uh that our most deeply held beliefs
uh are contingent that there
there's nothing uh beyond history or
prior to socialization
that's definatory of the the the human
being that's rory
um and he says that uh our most deeply
held beliefs
are received wisdom and highly
contingent along
an uh a number of registers
and he does that uh but then goes on to
say that uh
he nonetheless uh can hold
strongly held beliefs recognizing their
contingency
but still believes them to be true and
accurate it helps you to work through
what could be an intellectual tension
uh other words so so you don't delve
into
one doesn't delve into relativism
everything is okay
but he gives you a vocabulary to think
about uh
uh uh how to negotiate these these these
realities uh
do you share this tension i mean there
there is a real tension
it seems like even like the law the
legal system is all just the construct
of our
human ideas and yet it seems to be
uh almost feels fundamental
to what a uh what a just society is yeah
i i definitely share the tension and and
love
the the uh uh his his vocabulary in the
way he's
uh helped me resolve the the the tension
so
right i mean yeah yeah so like you know
uh
infanticide for example perhaps it's uh
socially contingent perhaps it's
received
wisdom perhaps it's anthropological uh
you know we need to propagate the
species
and i still think it's wrong yeah and uh
and and
and rorty uh has helped me develop a
category to say
to to say that no i can't provide
any in rorty's words non-circular
theoretical
backup for this proposition at some
point it's going to run
me into in a circularity problem but
that's okay i'm i i i hold this
nonetheless and full recognition
of its contingency but what it does is
is is
is makes you humble and
and when you're humble that's good
because
you know this notion that ideas are
always already in
progress never fully formed uh i think
is is is the sort of intellectual i
strive
to be and if i have a a
a sufficient degree of humility that i
don't have the
final answer capital a
then that's going to help me to get to
better answers lowercase a and
and and rorty does that and he talks
about
uh uh in in the solidarity part of the
book he has this concept of
imaginative uh the imaginative ability
to see other different people as we
instead of they and i just think it's a
beautiful concept but he talks about
this imaginative ability and it's this
active
process so i mean so that's a book
that's done a lot of work
uh for me uh over the
the years um uh souls of black folk by
w.b
du bois uh was absolutely pivotal
pivotal in my intellectual development
uh
one of the uh premier
uh set of essays in
the western literary tradition and it's
a
deep and profound sociological uh
philosophical
and historical analysis of
the predicament of blacks in america
from
um one of our country's greatest
polymaths
it it's just a it's a beautiful text
and uh and i go to it uh yearly
um so for somebody like me
so growing up in the soviet union the
struggle
the civil rights movement the struggle
of race and all those kinds of things
that that is you know this universal but
it's also very much
a journey of the united states it was
kind of a foreign thing that i stepped
into
um is that something you would recommend
somebody like me to read
or is there other uh things about race
that are good to connect because my my
my flavor of suffering and just i'm a
jew as well
my flavor has to do with world war ii
and the studies of that
you know all the injustice is there so
i'm now stepping into a new set of
injustices
and trying to learn the the landscape i
would
i would say anyone is
is a better person for having read uh du
bois
it's just uh he's just a remarkable
writer
uh and thinker and it uh i mean and
to the extent you're interested in
learning another history he does it in a
way
that is uh quite sophisticated so it's a
uh
so um uh i it's interesting i was going
to give you
uh three books uh i i
noted the accent when i met you but i
didn't know exactly where you're from
but the the other book i was going to
say is dostoevsky's
crime and punishment and uh i mean i've
always wanted to go to saint pete's
uh just to sort of see with my own eyes
what the word pictures that dostoevsky
created
in crime and punishment and you know i
love others of this stuff
too the brothers care and myself and so
forth but crime and punishment i first
read
in high school as a junior or senior and
it is a
deep and profound meditation
on uh the the both the meaning and the
measure
of our lives and uh uh
dostoevsky uh obviously in in
in conversation with other uh thinkers
um uh really gets at the
uh the the crux of
a fundamental philosophical problem what
does it mean to be a human being
and um and uh
for that uh crime and punishment
captured me as a teenager and that's
another text
that i returned to uh often
we've talked about young people a little
bit at the beginning of our conversation
is there advice that you could give
to a young person today thinking about
their career thinking about their
life thinking about uh making their way
in this world
yeah sure i'll share some advice it
actually picks up on a question we
talked about
earlier with in in the academy in
schools
but it's some advice that a professor
gave to
me when i got to harvard and
it is this that uh you have to be
willing to come face to face with your
intellectual limitations
and keep going and that's it and it's
hard for people i mean you mentioned
this earlier
to to face really difficult tasks to
uh and particularly in these sort of
elite spaces where you've excelled all
your life
and you come to mit and you're like wait
a minute i don't understand this
yeah wait this is hard i've never had
something really hard before and there
are couple options and a lot of people
will
pull back and take the gentleman or just
a woman's b
and and just go on or risk
going out there giving it your all and
still not quite getting it
and that that that's a risk but it's a
risk well worth it
uh because you're just going to be the
better person the better student for it
and
you know and even outside of the academy
i mean come come face to face
with your uh fears and keep going
and keep going in in life and you're
going to be the better
person the better human being yeah it
does seem to be
i don't know what it is but it does seem
to be that fear
is a good indicator of something you
should
probably face
yes like fear kind of shows the way a
little bit
uh not always you might not want to go
into the cage with a lion but
uh but maybe you should
maybe uh let me ask sort of a darker
question
because we're talking about dostoevsky
we might as well
do you uh do you
and connected to the uh
freeing innocent people do you think
about mortality
do you think about your own death are
you afraid of death
i'm i'm not afraid of of death i do
think about it
more now uh because i'm now in my mid
50s
so i used to not think about it much at
all but
the harsh reality is that
i've got more time behind me now that i
do in front of me
and it kind of happens all of a sudden
too you realize wait a minute i'm
i'm i'm actually on the back nine now
uh so uh yeah my mind moves to it from
time to time i don't
uh dwell on it i'm not afraid of it uh
my own personal religious commitments
i'm i'm i'm christian and my
religious uh uh commitments uh buoy me
uh that uh you know that that death
and i i believe this death is not not
not the end
so i'm not afraid of it now this is not
to say that i want to
i want to i want to rush to the
afterlife i'm i'm good right here
for a long time i hope i've got you know
35 40 more years to go uh but
um but uh but no i don't i don't really
i don't fear death though we're we're
we're finite
creatures we're all gonna we're all
gonna die well the mystery of it
uh you know for for somebody
at least for me we human beings want to
figure everything out
uh whatever the afterlife is there's
still a mystery to it
that that uncertainty it can be
terrifying
if you ponder it but maybe uh what
you're saying is
uh you haven't pondered it too deeply so
far and it's worked out pretty good
it's worked out yeah no no no complaints
so you said uh again the sayevsky kind
of
was exceptionally good at getting to the
core of what it means to be human
do you think about like the why of why
we're here the the meaning of this whole
uh existence yeah no i i do i think uh
and actually think that's the purpose of
an education what does it mean to be a
human being and in one way or another
we set out to answer those questions and
we do it in a different way
i mean some may look to
philosophy to answer uh these
questions why is it in one's personal
interest
to um to do good to do just
uh to do justice uh some may uh
look at it through the economists lens
uh
some may look at it through the
microscope in the laboratory that the
phenomenal
world is uh is is the meaning
uh of life uh others may say
that that's one uh vocabulary that's one
description but the poet describes
a reality to the same degree as a
physicist
but that's the purpose of an education
it's to
sort of work through these issues what
does it mean to be
a uh what does it mean to be a human
being and i think it's a fascinating
journey and i think it's a lifelong
uh endeavor to figure out what is the
thing that nugget
that makes us uh human do you still see
yourself
as a student of course not yes i mean
that's
uh that's the best part about going into
into
university teaching you're you're a
lifelong student
i'm always learning i learn from my
students and with my students and
my colleagues and your you continue to
read and
and and learn and and modify
opinions and i i think it's just a
wonderful thing well
ron uh i'm so glad
i that uh somebody like you
is uh carrying the fire of what uh is
the best of harvard so
it's a huge honor that you will spend so
much time waste so much of your valuable
time with me i really appreciate that
not a waste at all
i think a lot of people love it thank
you so much for talking today thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with ronald sullivan and
thank you
to brooklyn sheets wine access online
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and now let me leave you with some words
from nelson mandela
when a man is denied the right to live
the life he believes in
he has no choice but to become an outlaw
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time