back to indexRonald Sullivan: The Ideal of Justice in the Face of Controversy and Evil | Lex Fridman Podcast #170
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The following is a conversation with Ronald Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law School
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known for taking on difficult and controversial cases.
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He was on the head legal defense team for the Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez
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in his double murder case.
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He represented one of the Gina VI defendants and never lost the case during his years in
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Washington, D.C.'s Public Defender Services Office.
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In 2019, Ronald joined the legal defense team of Harvey Weinstein, a film producer
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facing multiple charges of rape and other sexual assault.
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This decision met with criticism from Harvard University students, including an online petition
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by students seeking his removal as faculty dean of Winthrop House.
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Then, a letter supporting him signed by 52 Harvard Law School professors appeared in
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the Boston Globe on March 8, 2019.
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Following this, the Harvard administration succumbed to the pressure of a few Harvard
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students and announced that they will not be renewing Ronald Sullivan's dean position.
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This created a major backlash in the public discourse over the necessary role of universities
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in upholding the principles of law and freedom at the very foundation of the United States.
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This conversation is brought to you by Brooklyn and Sheets, Wine Access Online Wine Store,
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Click their links to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that the free exchange of difficult ideas is the only mechanism through
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which we can make progress.
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Truth is not a safe space.
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Truth is humbling, and being humbled can hurt.
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But this is the role of education, not just in the university but in business and in life.
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Freedom and compassion can coexist, but it requires work and patience.
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It requires listening to the voices and to the experiences unlike our own.
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Listening, not silencing.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Ronald Sullivan.
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You were one of the lawyers who represented the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in
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advance of a sexual assault trial.
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For this, Harvard forced you to step down as faculty deans, you and your wife, of Winter
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Can you tell the story of this saga from first deciding to represent Harvey Weinstein to
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the interesting complicated events that followed?
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Yeah, sure, so I got a call one morning from a colleague at the Harvard Law School who
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asked if I would consent to taking a call from Harvey.
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He wanted to meet me and chat with me about representing him.
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I said, yes, and one thing led to another.
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I drove out to Connecticut where he was staying and met with him and some of his advisors and
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then a day or two later decided to take the case.
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This would have been back in January of 2019, I believe.
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So the sort of cases, I have a very small practice, most of my time is teaching and writing,
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but I tend to take cases that most deem to be impossible.
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I take the challenging sorts of cases.
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When this was fit the bill, it was quite challenging in the sense that everyone had prejudged the
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When I say everyone, I just mean the general sentiment and the public had the case prejudged.
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Even though the specific allegations did not regard any of the people in the New Yorker,
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the New Yorker article that sort of exposed everything that was going on allegedly with
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So I decided to take the case and I did.
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Is there a philosophy behind you taking on these very difficult cases?
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Is it a set of principles?
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Is it just your love of the law or is there a set of principles why you take on the cases?
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Yeah, I'd like to take on hard cases and I'd like to take on the cases that are with
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unpopular defendants, unpopular clients.
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And with respect to the latter, that's where Harvey Weinstein fell.
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It's because we need lawyers and good lawyers to take the unpopular cases because those
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sorts of cases determine what sort of criminal justice system we have.
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If we don't protect the rights and the liberties of those whom the society deems to be the
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least and the last, the unpopular client, then that's the camel's nose under the tent.
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If we let the camel's nose under the tent, the entire tent is going to collapse.
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That is to say, if we short circuit the rights of a client like Harvey Weinstein, then the
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next thing you know, someone will be at your door, knocking it down and violating your
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There's a certain creep there with respect to the way in which the state will respect
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the civil rights and civil liberties of people.
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And these are the sorts of cases that test it.
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So for example, there was a young man many, many years ago named Ernesto Miranda.
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By all accounts, he was not a likable guy.
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He was a three time knife thief and not a likable guy, but lawyer stepped up and took
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And because of that, we now have the Miranda warnings, you have the right to remain silent,
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those warnings that officers are forced to give to people.
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So it is through these cases that we express oftentimes the best values in our criminal
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And I proudly take on these sorts of cases in order to vindicate not only the individual
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rights of the person whom I'm representing, but the rights of citizens writ large, most
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of whom do not experience the criminal justice system.
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And it's partly because of lawyers who take on these sorts of cases and establish rules
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that protect us, average everyday ordinary concrete citizens.
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As from a psychological perspective, just you as a human, is there fear?
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Is there stress from all the pressure?
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Because if you're facing, I mean, the whole point, a difficult case, especially in the
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latter that you mentioned of the going against popular opinion, you have the eyes of millions
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potentially looking at you with anger as you try to defend this set of laws that this country
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No, it doesn't stress me out particularly.
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It sort of comes with the territory.
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I try not to get too excited in either direction.
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So a big part of my practice is wrongful convictions.
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And I have gotten over 6,000 people out of prison who've been wrongfully incarcerated
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and a subset of those people have been convicted and if people have been in jail 20, 30 years
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who have gotten out.
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And those are the sorts of cases where people praise you and that sort of thing.
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And so, look, I do the work that I do, I'm proud of the work that I do.
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And in that sense, I'm sort of a part time Taoist, the expression reversal was the movement
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So I don't get too high, I don't get too low.
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I just try to do my work and represent people to the best of my ability.
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So one of the hardest cases of recent history would be the Harvey Weinstein in terms of
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popular opinion or unpopular opinion.
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So if you continue on that line, what was that, where does that story take you of taking
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I took on the case and then there was some a few students at the college.
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So let me back up.
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I had an administrative post at Harvard College, which is a separate entity from the Harvard
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Harvard College is the undergraduate portion of Harvard University and the law school
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is obviously the law school.
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And I initially was appointed as master of one of the houses.
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We did a name change five or six years into it and we're called faculty deans.
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But the houses at Harvard are based on the college system of Oxford and Cambridge.
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So when students go to Harvard after their first year, they're assigned to a particular
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house or college and that's where they live and eat and so forth.
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And these are undergraduates too.
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These are undergraduate students.
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So I was responsible for one of the houses as its faculty dean.
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So it's an administrative appointment at the college and some students who didn't clearly
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didn't like Harvey Weinstein began to protest about the representation.
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And from there, it just mushroomed into one of the most craven cowardly acts by any university
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in modern history.
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It's just a complete and utter repudiation of academic freedom.
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And it is a decision that Harvard certainly will live to regret.
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It's frankly, it's an embarrassment.
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We expect students to do what students do and I encourage students to have their voices
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heard and to protest.
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I mean, that's what students do.
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What is vexing are the adults.
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The dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Claudine Gaye, absolutely craven and cowardly.
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The dean of the college, same thing, Rakesh Karana, craven and cowardly.
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They capitulated to the loudest voice in the room and ran around afraid of 19 year olds.
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Oh, 19 year olds are upset that I need to do something.
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And it appeared to me that they so, so desired the approval of students that they were afraid
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to make the tough decision and the right decision.
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It really could have been an important teaching moment at Harvard.
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A teaching moment, yeah.
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Very important teaching moment.
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So they forced you to step down from that faculty dean position at the house.
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I would push back on the description a little bit, so I don't write the references to the
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op ad I did in the New York time, Harvard made a mistake by making me step down or something
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So I don't write those things.
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I did not step down and refuse to step down.
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Harvard declined to renew my contract and I made it clear that I was not going to resign
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as a matter of principle and force them to do the cowardly act that they, in fact, did.
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And you know, the worst thing about this, they did the college Dean Gay and Dean Carana
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commission this survey.
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They've never done this before, surveyed from the students, you know, how do you feel at
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And the funny thing about the survey is they never released the results.
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Why did they never release the results?
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They never released the results because I would bet my salary that the results came
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back positive for me and it didn't fit their narrative because most of the students were
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Most of the students were fine.
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It was the loudest voice in the room.
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So they never released it.
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And you know, I challenged them to this day, release it, release it.
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But no, but you know, they wanted to create this narrative and when the data didn't support
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the narrative, then they just got silent.
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Oh, we're not going to release it.
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The students demanded it.
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I demanded it and they wouldn't release it because I am, I just know in my heart of hearts
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that it was, it came back in my favor that most students at Winthrop House said they
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There was a group of students that weaponized the term unsafe.
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They said we felt unsafe and they bantied this term about.
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But I am, again, I'm confident that the majority of students at Winthrop House said they felt
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completely fine and felt safe and so forth.
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And the super majority, I am confident, either said I feel great at Winthrop or, you know,
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I don't care one way or the other.
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And then there was some minority who had had a different view.
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But you know, lessons learned.
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It was a wonderful opportunity at Winthrop, I met some amazing students over my 10 years
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as master and then faculty dean and I'm still in touch with a number of students, some of
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whom are now my students at the law school.
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So in the end, I thought it was, it ended up being a great experience.
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The national media was just wonderful in this, just wonderful.
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People wrote such wonderful articles and accounts and wagged their finger appropriately at Harvard.
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They wrote me to John Adams, which I don't think is an apt comparison, but it's always
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great to read something like that.
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But anyway, that was the Harvard versus Harvey situation.
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So that seems like a seminal mistake by Harvard and Harvard is one of the great universities
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And so sort of its successes and its mistakes are really important for the world as a beacon
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of like how we make progress.
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So what lessons for the bigger academia that's under fire a lot these days, what bigger lessons
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How do we make Harvard great?
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How do we make other universities Yale, MIT great in the face of such mistakes?
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Well, I think that we have moved into a model where we have the consumerization of education.
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That is to say, we have feckless administrators who make policy based on what the students
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Now this comment is not intended to suggest that students have no voice in governance,
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but it is to suggest that the faculty are there for a reason.
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They are among the greatest minds on the planet Earth in their particular fields at schools
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like Harvard and Yale, Stanford, the schools that you mentioned, MIT, quite literally the
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greatest minds on Earth.
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They are there for a reason.
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Students like curriculum and so forth are rightly in the province of faculty.
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And while you take input and critique and so forth, ultimately the grownups in the room
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have to be sufficiently responsible to take charge and to direct the course of a student's
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And my situation is one example where it really could have been an excellent teaching moment
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about the value of the Sixth Amendment, about what it means to treat people who are in the
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crosshairs of the criminal justice system.
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But rather than having that conversation, it's just this consumerization model.
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Well, there's a lot of noise out here, so we're going to react in this sort of way.
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Higher education as well, unfortunately, has been commodified in other sorts of ways that
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has reduced or impeded, hampered these schools commitments to free and robust and open dialogue.
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So to the degree that academic freedom doesn't sit squarely at the center of the academic
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mission, any school is going to be in trouble.
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And I really hope that we weather this current political moment where 19 year olds without
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degrees are running universities and get back to a system where faculty, where adults make
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decisions in the best interests of the university and the best interests of the students, even
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to the degree though some of those decisions may be unpopular.
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And that is going to require a certain courage and hopefully in time, and I'm confident that
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in time administrators are going to begin to push back on these current trends.
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Harvard's been around for a long time, it's been around for a long time for a reason.
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And one of the reasons is that it understands itself not to be static.
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So I have every view that Harvard is going to adapt and get itself back on course and
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be around another 400 years, at least that's my hope.
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So I mean, what this kind of boils down to is just having difficult conversation, difficult
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When you mentioned sort of 19 year olds, and it's funny, I've seen this even at MIT, it's
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not that they shouldn't have a voice, they do seem to, I guess you have to experience
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it and just observe it.
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They have a strangely disproportionate power.
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It's very interesting to basically, I mean, you say yes, there's great faculty and so
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on, but it's not even just that the faculty is smart or wise or whatever, it's that they're
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So the terminology that you mentioned is weaponized as sort of safe spaces or that certain conversations
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make people feel unsafe.
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What do you think about this kind of idea?
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Is there some things that are unsafe to talk about in the university setting?
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Is there lines to be drawn somewhere?
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And just like you said on the flip side with the slippery slope, is it too easy for the
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lines to be drawn everywhere?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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So this idea of unsafe space, at least the vocabulary derives from some research, academic
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research about feeling psychologically unsafe.
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And so the notion here is that there are forms of psychological disquiet that impedes people
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from experiencing the educational environment to the greatest degree possible.
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And that's the argument.
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And assuming for a moment that people do have these feelings of disquiet at elite universities
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like MIT and like Harvard, that's probably the safest space people are going to be in
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for their lives because when they get out into the quote unquote real world, they won't
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have the sorts of nets that these schools provide, safety nets that these schools provide.
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So to the extent that research is descriptive of a psychological feeling, I think that the
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duty of the universities are to challenge people.
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It seems to me that it's a shame to go to a place like Harvard or a place like MIT, Yale,
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any of these great institutions and come out the same person that you were when you went
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That seems to be a horrible waste of four years and money and resources.
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However, we ought to challenge students, that they grow, challenge some of their most deeply
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They may continue to hold them, but the point of an education is to rigorously interrogate
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these fundamental assumptions that have guided you thus far and to do it fairly and civilly.
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So to the extent that there are lines that should be drawn, there's a long tradition
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in the University of Civil Discourse.
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So you should draw lines somewhere between civil discourse and uncivil discourse.
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The purpose of a university is to talk difficult conversations, tough issues, talk directly
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and frankly, but do it civilly.
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And so to yell and cuss at somebody and that sort of thing, well, do that on your own space,
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but observe the norms of civil discourse at the university.
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So look, I think that the presumption ought to be that the most difficult topics are appropriate
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to talk about at a university.
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That ought to be the presumption.
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Now, you know, should MIT, for example, give its imprimatur to someone who is espousing
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the flat earth theory, you know, the earth is flat, right?
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So if certain ideas are so contrary to the scientific and cultural thinking of the moment,
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yeah, there's space there to draw a line and say, yeah, we're not going to give you this
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platform to tell our students that the earth is flat.
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But you know, it's a topic that's controversial, but contestatory.
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That's what universities are for.
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If you don't like the idea, present better ideas and articulate them.
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And I think there needs to be a mechanism outside of the space of ideas of humbling.
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Like I've done martial arts for a long time.
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I got my ass kicked a lot.
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I think that's really important.
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I mean, in the space of ideas, I mean, even just in engineering, just all the math classes,
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my memories of math, which I love, it's kind of pain.
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It's basically coming face to face with the idea that I'm not special, that I'm much
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dumber than I thought I was, and that anything, accomplishing anything in this world requires
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That's really humbling.
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That puts you, because I remember when I was 18 and 19, and I thought I was going to be
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the smartest, the best fighter, the Nobel Prize winning, you know, all those kinds of
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And then you come face to face with reality and it hurts.
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And it feels like there needs to be efficient mechanisms from the best universities in the
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world to, without abusing you, it's a very difficult line to walk without like mentally
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or physically abusing you, be able to humble you.
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And that's what I felt was missing in these very difficult, very important conversations
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is the 19 year olds, when they spoke up, the mechanism for humbling them with ideas was
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I kind of got broken down because, as you say, there does, like, I sensed fear.
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Everything was permeated with fear, and fear is paralyzing, fear is destructive, especially
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in a place that's supposed to be all about freedom of ideas.
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And I mean, I don't know if you have anything, any thoughts to say on this whole idea of
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cancel culture, where people, a lot of people usually become political, so staying maybe
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outside of the world to politics.
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Is this, Jeff, do you have thoughts about it, does it bother you that people are sort
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of put in this bin and labeled as something and then thereby you can ignore everything
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I mean, Stephen Pinker, there's a lot of Harvard folks that are fighting against these
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set of ideas, but do you have thoughts?
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I think that we, as a culture, are way, way, way too quick to cancel people, and it's become
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almost reflexive now, you know, someone say something or makes an offhand comment, even
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a mistake, there's a move to simply cancel folks.
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So I think that this quote, unquote, cancel culture has really gotten out of control at
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It's forcing people to be robotic in many ways.
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No offense, the robots.
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I was gonna say, now I know I'm venturing into your intellectual domain.
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For future robots watching us, no offense.
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And there are many, and it's discouraging a lot of good people from getting into public
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life in any sort of way because, you know, who needs the, who needs the stress of it?
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Well, in some sense, you're an inspiration that you're able to withstand the pressure,
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the pressure of the masses.
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But it is, it's a sad, it's a sad aspect of human nature that we kind of get into these
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crowds and we get, we start chanting and it's fun for some reason, and then you forget yourself
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and then you sort of wake up the next day not, not having anticipated the consequences
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of all the chanting and we would get ourselves in trouble in that.
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I mean, there's some responsibility on the, on social networks and the mechanisms by which
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they make it more frictionless to do the chanting, to do the canceling, to do the outrage and
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all that kind of stuff.
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So I actually on the technology side have a hope that that's fixable, but yeah, it does
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seem to be, you know, it almost like the internet showed to us that we have a lot of broken
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ways about which we communicate with each other and we're trying to figure that out.
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Same with the university, the, this mistake by Harvard showed that we need to reinvent
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what the university is and I mean, all of this is, it's almost like we're finding our
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baby dear likes and trying to strengthen the institutions that have been very successful
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for, for, for a long time.
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You know, the really interesting thing about Harvey Weinstein and you choosing these exceptionally
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difficult cases is also thinking about what it means to defend evil people, what it means
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to defend these, we could say unpopular and you might push back against the word evil,
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but bad people in society.
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First of all, do you think there's such a thing as evil or do you think all people
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are good and it's just circumstances that create evil and also is there somebody too
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evil for the law to defend?
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And so that's a, so the first question, that's a deep philosophical question, whether the
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category of evil does any work for me, it does for me.
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I do think that I do subscribe to that category that there is evil in the world as conventionally
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So, so there are many who will say, yeah, that just doesn't, doesn't do any work for
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me, but the category evil, in fact, does intellectual work for me and I understand
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it as something that, that exists.
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Is it genetic or is it the circumstance like, what kind of work does it do for you intellectually?
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I think that it's tightly contingent, that is to say that the conditions in which one
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grows up and so forth, begins to create this category that we may think of as evil.
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Now there are studies and whatnot that show that certain brain abnormalities and so forth
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are more prevalent in say, serial killer.
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So there may be a biological predisposition to certain forms of conduct, but I don't,
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I don't have the biological evidence to make a statement that someone is born evil in and
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you know, I'm not a determinist thinker in that way.
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So you come out the womb evil and you're destined to be that way.
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To the extent there may be biological determinants, there still require some nurture as well.
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So but do you still put a responsibility for the, on the individual?
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We all make choices.
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And so some responsibility on the individual indeed.
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We live in a culture, unfortunately, where a lot of people have a constellation of bad
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choices in front of them.
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And that makes me very sad that the people grow up with predominantly bad choices in
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And that's unfair.
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And that's, that's on all of us.
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But yes, I do think we make, we make choices.
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That's so powerful.
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The constellation of bad choices.
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That's such a powerful way to think about sort of equality, which is the set of trajectories
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before you that you could take if you just roll the dice is a, you know, life is a kind
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of optimization problem, sorry to take us into math over a set of trajectories under
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imperfect information.
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So you're going to do a lot of stupid shit to put it in technical terms.
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But the, the, the fraction of the trajectories that take you into, into bad places or into
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good places is really important.
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And that's ultimately what we're talking about.
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Even evil might be just a little bit of a predisposition biologically, but the rest
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is just trajectories that you can take.
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I've been studying Hitler a lot recently.
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I've been reading probably way too much and it's, it's interesting to think about all
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the possible trajectories that could have avoided the, this particular individual developing
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the hate that he did, the following that he did, the, the actual final, there's a few
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turns in him psychologically where he went from being a leader that just wants to conquer
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and to somebody who allowed his anger and emotion to take over to where he started making mistakes
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for in terms of militarily speaking, but also started doing, you know, evil things.
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And all the possible trajectories that could have avoided that are fascinating, including
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he wasn't that bad at painting and drawing from the very beginning.
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And, and it's time in Vienna, there's all these possible things to think about.
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And of course, there's millions of others like him that never came to power and all
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those kinds of things.
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So, but that goes to the second question on the, on the side of evil.
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Do you think, and, and Hitler's often brought up as like an example of somebody who is like
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the epitome of evil.
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Do you think you would, if you got that same phone call after World War II and Hitler survived
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during war, you know, the trial for war crimes, would you take the case defending Adolf Hitler?
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If you don't want to answer that one, is there a line to draw for evil for who to not to
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No, I think, I think everyone, I'll do the second one first.
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Everyone has a right to a defense if you're charged criminally in the United States of
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So, no, I do not think that there's someone so evil that they do not deserve a defense.
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Process helps us get to results more accurately than we would otherwise.
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So it is important and it's vitally important and indeed more important for someone deemed
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to be evil to receive the same quantum of process and the same substance of process
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that anyone else would.
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It's vitally important to the health of our criminal justice system for that to happen.
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So yes, everybody, Hitler included, were he charged in the United States for a crime that
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occurred in the United States?
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Whether I would do it, if I were a public defender and assign the case, yes, I started
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my career as a public defender.
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I represent anyone who was assigned to me.
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I think that is our duty.
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In private practice, I have choices and I likely, based on the hypo you gave me, and
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I would tweak it a bit because it would have to be a U.S. crime.
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But I get the broader point and don't want to bog down in technicalities.
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I'd likely pass right now as I see it unless it was a case where nobody else would represent
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Then I would think that I have some sort of duty and obligation to do it.
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But yes, everyone absolutely deserves a right to competent counsel.
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That is a beautiful idea.
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It's difficult to think about it in the face of public pressure.
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It's just, I mean, it's kind of terrifying to watch the masses during this past year
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of 2020 to watch the power of the masses to make a decision before any of the data is
link |
out, if the data is ever out, any of the details, any of the processes.
link |
There's an anger to the justice system.
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There's a lot of people that feel like, even though the ideal you describe is a beautiful
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one, it does not always operate justly.
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It does not operate to the best of its ideals.
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It operates unfairly.
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Can we go to the big picture of the criminal justice system?
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What do you, given the ideal, works about our criminal justice system and what is broken?
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Well, there's a lot broken right now and I usually focus on that.
link |
But in truth, a lot works about our criminal justice system.
link |
So there's an old joke and it's funny, but it carries a lot of truth to it.
link |
And the joke is that in the United States, we have the worst criminal justice system
link |
in the world except for every place else.
link |
And yes, we certainly have a number of problems and a lot of problems based on race and class.
link |
And economic station, but we have a process that privileges the liberty.
link |
And that's a good feature of the criminal justice system.
link |
So here's how it works.
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The idea of the relationship between the individual and the state is such that in the United
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States, we privilege liberty over and above very many values, so much so that a statement
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by increased matter, not terribly far from where we're sitting right now, has gained
link |
traction over all these years and it's that better, 10 guilty go free than one innocent
link |
That is an expression of the way in which we understand liberty to operate in our collective
link |
We would rather a bunch of guilty people go free than to impact the liberty interests
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of any individual person.
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So that's a guiding principle in our criminal justice system, liberty.
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So we set a process that makes it difficult to convict people.
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We have rules of procedure that are cumbersome and that slow down the process and that exclude
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otherwise reliable evidence and this is all because we place a value on liberty and I
link |
think these are good things and it says a lot about our criminal justice system.
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Some of the bad features have to do with the way in which this country sees color as a
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proxy for criminality and treats people of color in radically different ways in the criminal
link |
justice system from arrests to charging decisions to sentencing.
link |
People of color are disproportionately impacted on all sorts of registers.
link |
One example and it's a popular one that although there appears to be no distinguishable difference
link |
between drug use by whites and blacks in the country, blacks though only 12% of the population
link |
represent 40% of the drug charges in the country.
link |
There's some inequities along race and class in the criminal justice system that we really
link |
have to fix and they've grown to more than bugs in the system and have become features
link |
unfortunately of our system.
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Features to make it more efficient to make judgments so the racism makes it more efficient.
link |
It really efficiently moves people from society to the streets and that's and a lot of innocent
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people get caught up in that.
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Well, let me ask in terms of the innocence.
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So you've gotten a lot of people who are innocent, I guess revealed their innocence, demonstrated
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What's that process like?
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What's it like emotionally, psychologically?
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What's it like legally to fight the system in through the process of revealing sort of
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the innocence of a human being?
link |
Yeah, emotionally and psychologically it can be taxing.
link |
I follow a model of what's called empathic representation and that is I get to know my
link |
clients and their family that I get to know their strivings, their aspirations, their
link |
fears, their sorrows.
link |
So that certainly sometimes can do psychic injury on one if you get really invested and
link |
really sad and or happy and it does become emotionally taxing.
link |
With the idea of someone sitting in jail for 20 years, completely innocent of a crime,
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can you imagine sitting there every day for 20 years knowing that you factually did not
link |
do the thing that you were convicted of by a jury of your peers?
link |
It's got to be the most incredible thing in the world.
link |
But the people who do it and the people who make it and come out on the other side as
link |
productive citizens are folks who say they've come to an inner peace in their own minds
link |
and they say these bars aren't going to define me, that my humanity is there and it's immutable
link |
and they are not bitter, which is amazing.
link |
I would tend to think that I'm not that good of a person.
link |
I would be bitter for every day of 20 years if I were in jail for something, but people
link |
tell me that they can't survive, like the one cannot survive like that and you have
link |
to come to terms with it and the people whom I've exonerated, I mean, they come out, most
link |
of them come out and they just really just take on life with a vim and vigor without
link |
And it's a beautiful thing to see.
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Do you think it's possible to eradicate racism from the judicial system?
link |
I think that race insinuates itself in all aspects of our lives and the judicial system
link |
is not immune from that.
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So to the extent we begin to eradicate dangerous and deleterious race thinking from society
link |
generally, then it will be eradicated from the criminal justice system.
link |
I think we've got a lot of work to do and I think it'll be a while, but I think it's
link |
I mean, you know, the country, so historians will look back 300 years from now and take
link |
note of the incredible journey of diasporic Africans in the US, an incredible journey
link |
from slavery to the heights of politics and business and judiciary and the academy and
link |
It's not a lot of time and actually not a lot of time and if we can have that sort
link |
of movement historically, let's think about what the next 175 years will look like.
link |
I'm not saying it's going to be short, but I'm saying that if we keep at it, keep getting
link |
to know each other a little better, keep enforcing laws that prohibit the sort of race based
link |
discrimination that people have experienced and provide as a society opportunities for
link |
people to thrive in this world, then I think we can see a better world and if we see a
link |
better world, we'll see a better judicial system.
link |
So I think it's kind of fascinating if you look throughout history and race is just part
link |
of that is we create the other and treat the other with disdain through the legal system
link |
but just through human nature.
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I tend to believe we mentioned offline that I work with robots.
link |
It sounds absurd to say, especially to you, especially because we're talking about racism
link |
and it's so prevalent today.
link |
I do believe that there will be almost like a civil rights movement for robots because
link |
with I think there's a huge value to society of having artificial intelligence systems
link |
that interact with humans and are human like.
link |
And the more they become human like, they will start to ask very fundamentally human
link |
questions about freedom, about suffering, about justice.
link |
And they will have to come face to face like look in the mirror and ask in the question
link |
just because we're biologically based, just because we're sort of, well, just because
link |
we're human, does that mean we're the only ones that deserve the rights?
link |
Again, forming another group which is robots and I'm sure there could be along that path
link |
different versions of other that we form.
link |
So racism, race is certainly a big other that we've made, as you said, a lot of progress
link |
on throughout the history of this country.
link |
But it does feel like we always create, as we make progress, create new other groups.
link |
And of course, the other group that perhaps is outside the legal system that people talk
link |
about is the essential, no, I eat a lot of meat, but the torture of animals that people
link |
talk about when we look back from, you know, a couple centuries from now, look back at
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the kind of things we're doing to animals, we might regret that, we might see that in
link |
a very different light.
link |
And it's kind of interesting to see the future trajectory of what we wake up to about the
link |
injustice in our, in our ways.
link |
But the robot one is the one I'm especially focused on because, but at this moment in
link |
time, it seems ridiculous, but I'm sure most civil rights movements throughout history
link |
seem ridiculous at first.
link |
Well, it's interesting, sort of outside of my intellectual Bailey Wick robots.
link |
As I understand the development of artificial intelligence, though, the, the aspect that
link |
still is missing is this notion of consciousness and that it's, it's consciousness.
link |
That is the thing that will, will move if it were to exist, and I'm not saying that
link |
it can or will, but if it were to exist would move robots from machines to something different
link |
and that it's something that experienced the world in a way analogous to what, how we experience
link |
And also as I understand the science, there's a, unlike what you see on, on television that
link |
we're not, we're not there yet in terms of this notion of the machines having a consciousness.
link |
Or, or a great general intelligence, all those kinds of things, a huge amount of progress
link |
has been made and there, it's fascinating to watch.
link |
So I'm on both minds as a person who's building them, I'm realizing how sort of quote unquote
link |
dumb they are, but also looking at human history and how poor we are predicting the progress
link |
of innovation and technology, it's obvious that we have to be humble by our ability to
link |
predict coupled with the fact that we keep, to use terminology carefully here, we keep
link |
discriminating against the intelligence of artificial systems.
link |
The smarter they get, the more ways we find to dismiss the, their intelligence.
link |
So this, this has just been going on throughout where I, it's almost as if we're threatened
link |
in the most primitive human way, not animalistic way.
link |
We're threatened by the power of other creatures and we want to lessen, dismiss them.
link |
So consciousness is a really important one.
link |
But the one I think about a lot in terms of consciousness, the very engineering question
link |
is whether the display of consciousness is the same as the possession of consciousness.
link |
So if a robot tells you they are conscious, if a robot looks like they're suffering when
link |
you torture them, if a robot is afraid of death and says they're afraid of death and
link |
are legitimately afraid, like for, in terms of just everything we as humans use to determine
link |
the ability of somebody to be their own entity, they're the one that loves, one that fears,
link |
one that hopes, one that can suffer.
link |
If a robot like in the dumbest of ways is able to display that, we, it change, it starts
link |
changing things very quickly.
link |
I'm not sure what it is, but it does seem that there's a huge component to consciousness
link |
that is a social creation.
link |
We together create our consciousness.
link |
We believe our common humanity together.
link |
Alone, we wouldn't be aware of our humanity.
link |
And the law, as it protects our freedoms, seems to be a construct of the social construct.
link |
And when you add other creatures into it, it's not obvious to me that you have to build,
link |
there'll be a moment when you say, this thing is now conscious.
link |
I think there's going to be a lot of fake it until you make it, and there'll be a very
link |
gray area between fake and make that is going to force us to contend with what it means
link |
to be an entity that deserves rights.
link |
Where all men are created equal, the men part might have to expand in ways that we are not
link |
It's very interesting.
link |
I mean, my favorite, the fundamentals thing I love about artificial intelligence is to
link |
get smarter and smarter.
link |
It challenges to think of what is right, the questions of justice, questions of freedom.
link |
It basically challenges us to understand our own mind, to understand what like almost from
link |
an engineering first principles perspective to understand what it is that makes us human
link |
that is at the core of all the rights that we talk about and all the documents we write.
link |
So even if we don't give rights to artificial intelligence systems, we may be able to construct
link |
more fair legal systems to protect us humans.
link |
Well, I mean, interesting ontological question between the performance of consciousness and
link |
actual consciousness to the extent that it's, that actual consciousness is anything beyond
link |
some contingent reality.
link |
But you've posed a number of interesting philosophical questions and then there's also, it strikes
link |
me that the philosophers of religion would pose another set of questions as well when
link |
you deal with issues of structure versus soul, body versus soul and it would be a, it will
link |
be a complicated mix and I suspect I'll be dust by the time those questions get worked
link |
And so yeah, the soul, the soul is a fun one.
link |
I'm not sure maybe you can correct me, but there's very few discussion of soul in our
link |
legal system, right?
link |
But there is a discussion about what constitutes a human being and I mean, you gestured at
link |
the notion of the potential of the law widening the domain of, so of human being, so in that
link |
sense, right, you know, people are very angry because they can't get a sort of pain and
link |
suffering damages if someone negligently kills a pet because a pet is not a human being
link |
and people say, well, I love my pet, but the law sees a pet as chattel, as property like
link |
this water bottle.
link |
So the current legal definitions trade on a definition of humanity that may not be worked
link |
out in any sophisticated way, but certainly there's a broad and shared understanding of
link |
what it means, so probably doesn't explicitly contain a definition of something like soul,
link |
but it's more robust than, you know, a carbon based organism, that there's something a little
link |
more distinct about what the law thinks a human being is.
link |
So if we can dive into, we've already been doing it, but if we can dive into more difficult
link |
territory, so 2020 had the tragic case of George Floyd.
link |
When you reflect on the protests, on the racial tensions over the death of George Floyd, how
link |
do you make sense of it all?
link |
What do you take away from these events?
link |
The George Floyd moment occurred at an historical moment where people were quarantined for COVID
link |
and people have these cell phones to a degree greater than we've ever had them before and
link |
this was a sort of the straw that broke the camel's back after a number of these sorts
link |
of cell phone videos surfaced, people were fed up.
link |
There was unimpeachable evidence of a form of mistreatment, whether it constitutes murder
link |
or manslaughter, the trial is going on now and jurors will figure that out, but there
link |
was widespread appreciation that a fellow human being was mistreated, that we were just
link |
talking about humanity, that there was not a sufficient recognition of this person's
link |
The common humanity of this person.
link |
The common humanity of this person, well said, and people were fed up.
link |
So we were already in this COVID space where we were exercising care for one another and
link |
there was just an explosion, the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the civil
link |
rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s and people simply said enough, enough, enough,
link |
We cannot treat fellow citizens in this way and we can't do it with impunity.
link |
And the young people say, we're just, we're not going to stand for it anymore and they
link |
took to the streets.
link |
But with millions of people protesting, there is nevertheless taken us back to the most
link |
difficult of trials.
link |
You have the trial, like you mentioned, that's going on now of Derek Chauvin of one of the
link |
police officers involved.
link |
What are your thoughts?
link |
What are your predictions on this trial where the law, the process of the law is trying
link |
to proceed in the face of so much racial tension?
link |
Yeah, it's going to be an interesting trial.
link |
I've been keeping an eye on it there in jury selection now today as we're talking.
link |
So that's going to depend on what sort of jury gets selected.
link |
Yeah, how the, sorry to take, sorry to interrupt, but so one of the interesting qualities of
link |
this trial, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the cameras are allowed in the
link |
courtroom, at least during the jury selection.
link |
So you get to watch some of this stuff.
link |
And the other part is the jury selection, again, I'm very inexperienced, but it seems
link |
like selecting and what is it, unbiased jury is really difficult for this trial.
link |
It almost like, I don't know, me as a listener, listening to people that are trying to talk
link |
their way into the jury kind of thing, trying to decide, is this person really unbiased
link |
or are they just trying to hold on to their deeply held emotions and trying to get onto
link |
I mean, it's incredibly difficult process.
link |
I don't know if you can comment on a case so difficult, like the ones you've mentioned
link |
before, how do you select a jury that represents the people and doesn't, and carries the sort
link |
of the ideal of the law?
link |
Yeah, so a couple of things.
link |
So first, yes, it is televised and it will be televised as they say, gavel to gavel.
link |
So the entire trial, the whole thing is going to be televised.
link |
So people are getting a view of how laborious jury selection can be.
link |
I think as of yesterday, they had picked six jurors and it's taken a week and they have
link |
So they've got, you know, probably another week or more to do.
link |
I've been in jury trials where it took a month to choose a jury.
link |
So that's the most important part, you have to choose the right sort of jury.
link |
So unbiased in the criminal justice system has a particular meaning.
link |
It means that, let me tell you what it doesn't mean.
link |
It doesn't mean that a person is not aware of the case.
link |
It also does not mean that a person hasn't formed an opinion about the case.
link |
Those are two popular misconceptions.
link |
What it does mean is that notwithstanding whether an individual has formed an opinion,
link |
notwithstanding whether an individual knows about the case.
link |
That individual can set aside any prior opinions, can set aside any notions that they've developed
link |
about the case and listen to the evidence presented at trial in conjunction with the
link |
judges instructions on how to understand and view that evidence.
link |
So if a person can do that, then they're considered unbiased.
link |
So as a long time defense attorney, I would be hesitant in a big case like this to pick
link |
a juror who's never heard of a case or anything going around because I'm thinking, well, who
link |
is this person and what in the world do they do?
link |
Or are they lying to me?
link |
How can you not have heard about this case?
link |
So they may bring other problems.
link |
So I don't mind so much people who've heard about the case or folks who've formed initial
link |
opinions, but what you don't want is people who have tethered themselves to that opinion
link |
in a way that they can't be convinced otherwise.
link |
But you also have people who, as you suggested, who just lie because they want to get on the
link |
jury or lie because they want to get off the jury.
link |
So sometimes people come and say the most ridiculous, outrageous, offensive things because they
link |
know that they'll get excused for cause.
link |
And others who you can tell really badly want to get on the jury.
link |
So they pretend to be the most neutral, unbiased person in the world.
link |
What the law calls the reasonable person.
link |
We have in law the reasonable person standard.
link |
And I would tell my class the reasonable person in real life is the person that you would
link |
be least likely to want to have a drink with.
link |
They're the most boring, neutral, not interesting sort of person in the world.
link |
And so a lot of jurors engage in the performative act of presenting themselves as the most
link |
sort of even killed, rational, reasonable person because they really want to get on
link |
That's an interesting question.
link |
I haven't watched the lot because it is very long I watched it.
link |
You know, there's certain questions you've asked in the jury, you ask in the jury selection.
link |
I remember, I think one jumped out at me, which is, you know, something like, does the
link |
fact that this person is a police officer make you feel any kind of way about them?
link |
So trying to get at that, you know, I don't know what that is, I guess that's bias.
link |
And it's such a difficult question to ask, like I asked myself for that question.
link |
Like how much, you know, we all kind of want to pretend that we're not racist and we don't
link |
judge, we don't have, we're like these, we're the reasonable human.
link |
But you know, legitimately asking yourself, like, are you, what are the, what are the
link |
prejudgments you have in your mind?
link |
Is that even possible for a human being?
link |
Like when you look at yourself in the mirror and think about it, is it possible to actually
link |
I look, I do not believe that people can be completely unbiased.
link |
We all have baggage and bias and bring it wherever we go, including to court.
link |
What you want is to try to find a person who can at least recognize when a bias is working
link |
and actively try to do the right thing.
link |
That's the best we can ask.
link |
So if a juror says, yeah, you know, I grew up in a place where I tend to believe what
link |
police officers say, that's just how I grew up.
link |
But if the judge is telling me that I have to listen to every witness equally, then I'll,
link |
you know, I'll do my best and I won't weigh that testimony any higher than I would any
link |
If you have someone answer a question like that, that sounds more sincere to me, sounds
link |
And if you want a person, you want a person to try to do that.
link |
And then in closing arguments, right, as the lawyer, where I'd say something like, ladies
link |
and gentlemen, you know, we chose you to be on this jury because you swore that you would
link |
do your level best to be fair.
link |
That's why we chose you.
link |
And I'm confident that you're going to do that here.
link |
So when you heard that police officer's testimony, the judge told you, you can't give more credit
link |
to that testimony just because it's a police officer.
link |
And I trust that you're going to do that and that you're going to look at witness number
link |
three, you know, John Smith, you're going to look at John Smith.
link |
John Smith has a different recollection and you're duty bound, duty bound to look at that
link |
testimony and this person's credibility, you know, the same degree as that other witness,
link |
And now what you have is just a he said, she said, matter, and this is a criminal case.
link |
That has to be reasonable doubt, right?
link |
So you know, and really someone who's trying to do the right thing, it's helpful, but no,
link |
you're not going to just fine 14 people with no biases.
link |
Well, that's fascinating that especially the way you're inspiring the way you're speaking
link |
now is, I mean, I guess you're calling on the jury.
link |
That's kind of the whole system is you're calling on the jury, each individual on the
link |
jury to step up and really think, you know, to step up and be their most thoughtful,
link |
thoughtful selves, actually, most introspective, like you're trying to basically ask people
link |
to be their best selves.
link |
And that's, and they, I guess a lot of people step up to that, that's why the system works.
link |
I'm very, I'm very pro jury of juries.
link |
They get it right.
link |
A lot of the time, most of the time, and they really work hard to do it.
link |
So what do you think happens?
link |
I mean, maybe, I'm not so much on the legal side of things, but on the social side, it's
link |
like with OJ Simpson trial.
link |
Do you think it's possible that Derek Chauvin does not get convicted of the, what is it,
link |
second degree murder?
link |
How do you think about that?
link |
How do you think about the potential social impact of that?
link |
The riots, the protests, the either, either direction, any words that are said, the tension
link |
here could be explosive, especially with the cameras.
link |
So yes, there's certainly a possibility that he'll be acquitted for homicide charges for
link |
the jury to convict.
link |
They have to make a determination as to officer Chauvin's, former officer Chauvin's state
link |
of mind, whether he intended to cause some harm, whether he was grossly reckless in causing
link |
harm so much so that he disregarded a known risk of death or serious bodily injury.
link |
And as you may have read in the papers yesterday, the judge allowed a third degree murder charge
link |
in Kentucky, which is, it's the mindset, the state of mind there is not an intention,
link |
but it's a depraved indifference.
link |
And what that means is that the jury doesn't have to find that he intended to do anything.
link |
Rather, they could find that he was just indifferent to a risk.
link |
I'm not sure what's worse.
link |
Well, that's a good point, but it's another basis for the jury to convict.
link |
But look, you never know what happens when you go to a jury trial.
link |
So there could be an acquittal.
link |
And if there is, I imagine there would be massive protests.
link |
If he's convicted, I don't think that would happen because I just don't see at least nothing
link |
I've seen or read suggest that there's a big pro Chauvin camp out there ready to protest.
link |
Well, there could be a, is there also potential tensions that could arise from the sentencing?
link |
I don't know how that exactly works.
link |
Sort of not enough years kind of thing.
link |
Yeah, it could be.
link |
All that kind of stuff.
link |
I mean, it's a lot could happen.
link |
So it depends on what he's convicted of.
link |
You know, one count I think is like up to 10 years, another counts up to 40 years.
link |
So it depends what he's convicted of.
link |
And yes, it depends on how much of the, how much time the judge gives him if he is convicted.
link |
There's a lot of space for people to be very angry in.
link |
So we will see what happens.
link |
I just feel like with the judge and the lawyers, there's an opportunity to have really important
link |
long lasting speeches.
link |
I don't know if they think of it that way, especially with the cameras.
link |
It feels like they have the capacity to heal or to divide.
link |
Do you ever think about that as a lawyer, as a legal mind that your words aren't just
link |
about the case, but they'll reverberate through history potentially?
link |
That is certainly a possible consequence of things you say.
link |
I don't think that most lawyers think about that in the context of the case.
link |
Your role is much more narrow.
link |
You're the partisan advocate, as a defense lawyer, partisan advocate for that client
link |
You're a minister of justice attempting to prosecute that particular case.
link |
But the reality is you are absolutely correct that sometimes the things you say will have
link |
You mentioned OJ Simpson before, you know, if the glove doesn't fit, you must have quit.
link |
It's going to be in our lexicon for probably a long time now, so it happens.
link |
But that's not, and shouldn't be foremost on your mind.
link |
What do you make of the OJ Simpson trial?
link |
Do you have thoughts about it?
link |
He's out and about on social media now, he's a public figure.
link |
Is there lessons to be drawn from that whole saga?
link |
Well, you know, that was an interesting case.
link |
That was a young public defender, I want to say, in my first year as a public defender
link |
when that verdict came out.
link |
So that case was important in so many ways.
link |
One, it was the first DNA case, major DNA case, and there were significant lessons learned
link |
One mistake that the prosecution made was that they didn't present the science in a
link |
way that a lay jury could understand it.
link |
And what Johnny Cochran did was he understood the science and was able to translate that
link |
into a vocabulary that he bet that that jury understood.
link |
So Cochran was dismissive of a lot of DNA.
link |
They say they found such and such amount of DNA, that's just like me wiping my finger
link |
against my nose and just that little bit of DNA, and that was effective because the prosecution
link |
hadn't done a good job of establishing that, yes, it's microscopic, you don't need that
link |
Yes, wiping your hand on your nose and touching something, you can transfer a lot of DNA and
link |
that gives you good information.
link |
But it was the first time that the public generally, and that jury maybe since high
link |
school science had heard nucleotide, I mean, it was just all these terms getting thrown
link |
at them, but it was not weaved into a narrative.
link |
So Cochran taught us that no matter what type of case it is, no matter what science is involved,
link |
it's still about storytelling, it's still about a narrative and he was great at that
link |
narrative and was consistent with his narrative all the way out.
link |
Another lesson that was relearned is that you never ask a question to which you don't
link |
know the answer, that's like trial advocacy 101.
link |
And so when they gave O.J. Simpson the glove and it wouldn't fit, you know, you don't do
link |
things where you just don't know how it's going to turn out, it was way, way too risky
link |
and then, and I think that's what acquitted him, because that glove, the glove just wouldn't
link |
fit and he got to do this and ham in front of the camera and all of that and it was big.
link |
Do you think about representation as storytelling, like you, yourself and your role?
link |
We tell stories, it is fundamental, we, since time immemorial, we have told stories to help
link |
us make sense of the world around us.
link |
So as a scientist, you tell a different type of story, but we as a public have told stories
link |
from time immemorial to help us make sense of the physical and the natural world and
link |
we are still a species that is moved by storytelling.
link |
So that's first and last in trial work, you have to tell a good story.
link |
And you know, the basic introductory books about trial work teach young students, young
link |
students and young lawyers to start an opening with this case is about, this case is about
link |
and then you fill in the blank and you know, that's your narrative, that's the narrative
link |
you're going to, you're going to tell.
link |
And of course, you can do the ultra dramatic, the glove doesn't fit kind of the climax
link |
and all those kinds of things, but that's the best of narratives, the best of stories.
link |
Anything of other really powerful stories that you were involved with is the Aaron Hernandez
link |
trial and the whole story, the whole legal case.
link |
Can you maybe overview the big picture story and legal case of Aaron Hernandez?
link |
So Aaron, whom I missed a lot.
link |
So he was charged with a double murder in the case that I tried.
link |
And this was a unique case and one of those impossible cases in part because Aaron had
link |
already been convicted of a murder.
link |
And so we had a client who was on trial for a double murder after having already been
link |
convicted of a separate murder.
link |
And we had a jury pool just about all of whom knew that he had been convicted of a murder
link |
because he was a very popular football player in Boston, which is a big football town with
link |
So everyone knew that he was a convicted murderer and here we are defending for in a double
link |
So that was the context.
link |
It was not a case in the sense that this murder had gone unsolved for a couple of years and
link |
then a nightclub bouncer said something to a cop who was working at a club that Aaron
link |
Hernandez was somehow involved in that murder that happened in the theater district.
link |
That's a district where all the clubs are in Boston and where the homicide occurred.
link |
And once the police heard Aaron Hernandez's name, then it was, you know, they went all
link |
out in order to do this.
link |
They found a guy named Alexander Bradley who was a very significant drug dealer in the
link |
sort of Connecticut area, very significant, very powerful and he essentially in exchange
link |
for a deal, point it to Aaron said, yeah, I was with Aaron and Aaron was the murderer.
link |
So that's how the case came to court.
link |
So that says the context.
link |
What was your involvement in this case?
link |
Like legally, intellectually, psychologically, when this particular second charge of murder?
link |
So a friend called me, Jose Baez, who is the defense attorney and he comes to a class that
link |
I teach every year at Harvard, the trial advocacy workshop as one of my teaching faculty members.
link |
It's a class where we teach students how to try cases.
link |
So Jose called me and said, hey, I got a call from Massachusetts, Aaron Hernandez.
link |
You want to go and talk to him with me.
link |
So we went up to the prison and met Aaron and spoke with him for two or three hours at
link |
first time and before we left, he said he wanted to retain us.
link |
He wanted to work with us and that started the representation.
link |
In that time, what was he worn down by the whole process?
link |
Was there still a light in that?
link |
He had, I mean, more than just a light, he was luminous almost.
link |
He had a radiant million dollar smile whenever you walked in.
link |
My first impression I distinctly remember was, wow, this is what a professional athlete
link |
He walked in and he's just bigger and more fit than anyone anywhere and it's like, wow,
link |
and when you saw him on television, he looked kind of little and I was like, so I remember
link |
thinking, well, what do those other guys look like in person?
link |
And he's extraordinarily polite, young, I was surprised by how young he was.
link |
Both in mind and body.
link |
Chronologically, I was thinking, he was in his early 20s, I believe.
link |
But there seemed to be like an innocence to him in terms of just the way he saw the world.
link |
I think that's right.
link |
They picked that up from the documentary, just taking that in.
link |
I think that's right.
link |
So there is a Netflix documentary titled Killer Inside the Mind of Aaron Hernandez.
link |
What are your thoughts on this documentary?
link |
I don't know if you've gotten a chance to see it.
link |
I did not participate in it.
link |
I know I was in it because of there was news footage, but I did not participate in it.
link |
I had not talked to Aaron about press or anything before he died.
link |
My strong view is that the attorney client privilege survives death.
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And so I was not inclined to talk about anything that Aaron and I talked about.
link |
So I just didn't participate and have never watched.
link |
Not even watch, huh?
link |
Does that apply to most of your work?
link |
Do you try to stay away from the way the press perceives stuff?
link |
During, yes, I try to stay away from it.
link |
I will view it afterwards.
link |
I just hadn't gotten around to watching Aaron because it's kind of sad.
link |
So I just haven't watched it, but I definitely stay away from the press during trial.
link |
And there are some lawyers who watch it religiously to see what's going on, but I'm confident
link |
in my years of training and so forth that I can actively sense what's going on in the
link |
courtroom and that I really don't need advice from Joe476 at Gmail, some random guy on the
link |
Internet telling me how to try cases.
link |
So it's just, to me, it's just confusing and I just keep it out of my mind.
link |
And even if you think you can ignore it, just reading it will have a little bit of an effect
link |
I think that's right.
link |
Over time might accumulate.
link |
So the documentary, but in general, it mentioned or kind of emphasized and talked about Aaron's
link |
sexuality or sort of, they were discussing basically the idea that he was a homosexual
link |
and some of the trauma, some of the suffering that he endured in his life had to do with
link |
sort of fear given the society of what his father would think, of what others around
link |
him, sort of especially in sport culture and football and so on.
link |
So I don't know in your interaction with him was, do you think that maybe even leaning
link |
up to a suicide, do you think his struggle with coming to terms with the sexuality had
link |
a role to play in much of his difficulties?
link |
Well, I'm not going to talk about my interactions with him and anything I derived from that.
link |
But what I will say is that a story broke on the radio at some point during the trial
link |
that Aaron had been in the same sex relationship with someone and some local sports casters,
link |
local Boston sports casters would be really mushroomed the story.
link |
So he and everyone was aware of it, you also may know from the court record that the prosecutors
link |
floated a specious theory for a minute but then backed off of it that, you know, that
link |
Aaron was, that there was some sort of, I guess, gay rage at work with him and that
link |
might be a cause, a motive for the killing and luckily they really backed off of that.
link |
That was quite an offensive claim in theory.
link |
So but to answer your question more directly, I mean, I have no idea why he killed himself.
link |
It was a surprise and a shock.
link |
I was scheduled to go see him like a couple days after it happened.
link |
I mean, he was anxious for Jose and I to come in and do the appeal from the murder which
link |
he was convicted for.
link |
He wanted us to take over that appeal.
link |
He was talking about going back to football.
link |
I mean, he said, well, you talked about this earlier, you talked about the sort of innocent
link |
He said, you know, well, Ron, maybe not, maybe not the Patriots, but, you know, get back
link |
in the league and I was like, you know, Aaron, that's, that's going to be tough, man.
link |
But he really, you know, he really believed it and and then, you know, for a few days
link |
later that to happen, it was just, it was a real shock to me.
link |
Like when you look back at that, at his story, does it make you sad?
link |
I thought, so one, I believe he, he absolutely did not commit the crimes that we acquitted
link |
I think that was the right answer for, for, for that.
link |
I don't know enough about Bradley, the first case, I'm sorry, to make a make an opinion
link |
But in our case, you know, it was just, he had the misfortune of having a famous name
link |
and the police department just really, just, just, just really got, got on him there.
link |
So yes, it's, it's, I miss him a lot.
link |
It was very, very sad, surprising.
link |
And, and I mean, just on the human side, of course, we don't know the full story, but
link |
just everything that led up to suicide.
link |
Everything led up to an incredible professional football player, you know, that whole story.
link |
It was a remarkably talented athlete, remarkably talented athlete.
link |
And it's, it has to do with all the, all the possible trajectories, right, that we can
link |
take through the life as we were talking about before.
link |
And some of them lead to, to suicide, sadly enough.
link |
And it's, it's always tragic when you have some, you know, somebody with, you know,
link |
with great potential result in, in the things that happen, right.
link |
When I ask about books, I don't know if, whether technical, like legal or fiction, nonfiction
link |
books throughout your life have had an impact on you.
link |
If there's something you could recommend or something you could speak to about something
link |
that inspired ideas, insights about this world, complicated world of ours.
link |
So, I'll give you a couple.
link |
So one is Contingency, Irony and Solidarity by Richard Wardy.
link |
He's passed away now, but was a philosopher at some of our major institutions, Princeton,
link |
Harvard, Stanford.
link |
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, at least that's a book that really helped me work
link |
through a series of thoughts.
link |
So it stands for the proposition that, that our most deeply held beliefs are contingent,
link |
that there, there's nothing beyond history or prior to socialization that's the finatory
link |
of the, of the human being that's Wardy.
link |
And he says that our most deeply held beliefs are received wisdom and highly contingent
link |
along a number of registers.
link |
And he does that, but then goes on to say that he nonetheless can hold strongly held
link |
beliefs, recognizing their contingency, but still believes them to be true and accurate.
link |
And it helps you to work through what could be an intellectual tension, other words.
link |
So, so you don't delve into, one doesn't delve into relativism, everything is okay.
link |
But it gives you a vocabulary to think about how to negotiate these, these, these realities.
link |
Do you share this tension?
link |
I mean, there, there is a real tension that it seems like even like the law, the legal
link |
system is all just a construct of our human ideas.
link |
And yet it seems to be almost feels fundamental to what a, what a just society is.
link |
Yeah, I definitely share the tension and love the, his, his vocabulary and the way he's
link |
helped me resolve the tension.
link |
So right, I mean, yeah, yeah, so like, you know, infanticide, for example, perhaps it's
link |
socially contingent, perhaps it's received wisdom, perhaps it's anthropological, you
link |
know, we need to propagate the species, and I still think it's wrong.
link |
And, and, and, and Rory has helped me develop a category to say, to say that, no, I can't
link |
provide any, in Rory's words, noncircular theoretical backup for this proposition.
link |
At some point, it's going to run me in this, in a circularity problem.
link |
I, I, I, I hold this nonetheless and for recognition of its contingency.
link |
But what it does is, is, is, is makes you humble and, and when you're humble, that's
link |
good because, you know, this notion that ideas are always already in progress.
link |
They're fully formed, I think is, is, is the sort of intellectual I strive to be.
link |
And if I have a, a, a sufficient degree of humility that I don't have the final answer,
link |
capital A, then that's going to help me to get to better answers, lowercase A. And,
link |
and, and Rory does, and he talks about, in the solidarity part of the book, he has this
link |
concept of imaginative, I, the imaginative ability to see other different people as we
link |
And I just think it's a beautiful concept, but he talks about this imaginative ability
link |
and it's this active process.
link |
So I mean, so that's a book that's done a lot of work for me over the, the years.
link |
Souls of Black Folk by W.B. Du Bois was absolutely pivotal, pivotal in my intellectual development.
link |
One of the premier set of essays in the Western literary tradition and it's a deep and profound
link |
sociological, philosophical and historical analysis of the predicament of blacks in
link |
America from one of our country's greatest polymaths.
link |
It, it's just a, it's a beautiful text and, and I go to it yearly.
link |
So for somebody like me, so growing up in the Soviet Union, the struggle, the civil rights
link |
movement, the struggle of race and all those kinds of things that, that is, you know, this
link |
universal, but it's also very much a journey of the United States.
link |
It was kind of a foreign thing that I stepped into.
link |
Is that something you would recommend somebody like me to read?
link |
Or is there other things about race that are good to connect?
link |
Because my, my, my flavor of suffering in just I'm a Jew as well.
link |
My flavor has to do with World War II and the studies of that, you know, all the injustices
link |
And now stepping into a new set of injustices and trying to learn the, the landscape.
link |
I would, I would say anyone is, is a better person for having read Du Bois.
link |
It's just, he's just a remarkable writer and thinker and it, I mean, and to the extent
link |
you're interested in learning another history, he does it in a way that is quite sophisticated.
link |
So it's, so it's interesting, I was going to give you three books.
link |
I noted the accent when I met you, but I didn't know exactly where you're from.
link |
But the other book I was going to say is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
link |
And I mean, I've always wanted to go to St. Pete's just to, to sort of see with my own
link |
eyes what the word pictures that Dostoevsky created in Crime and Punishment.
link |
And you know, I love others of his stuff too, the Brothers Care, Masov and so forth.
link |
But Crime and Punishment, I first read in high school as a junior or a senior.
link |
And it is a deep and profound meditation on the, the, both the meaning and the measure
link |
And Dostoevsky, obviously in, in conversation with other thinkers, really gets at the, the
link |
crux of a fundamental philosophical problem.
link |
What does it mean to be a human being?
link |
And, and for that Crime and Punishment captured me as a teenager, and that's another text
link |
that I return to often.
link |
We've talked about young people a little bit at the beginning of our conversation.
link |
Is there advice that you could give to a young person today, thinking about their career,
link |
thinking about their life, thinking about making their way in this world?
link |
I'll share some advice.
link |
It actually picks up on a question we talked about earlier with in the academy and schools.
link |
But it's an, it's some advice that a professor gave to me when I got to Harvard.
link |
And it is this, that you have to be willing to come face to face with your intellectual
link |
limitations and keep going.
link |
And it's hard for people.
link |
I mean, you mentioned this earlier to, to face really difficult tasks to, and particularly
link |
in these sort of elite spaces where you've excelled all your life and you come to MIT
link |
and you're like, wait a minute, I don't understand this.
link |
Wait, this is hard.
link |
I've never had something really hard before.
link |
And there, there are a couple options and a lot of people will pull back and take the
link |
gentleman or just a woman's B and, and just go on or risk going out there, giving it your
link |
all and still not quite getting it and that, that, that's a risk, but it's a risk well
link |
worth it because you're just going to be the better person, the better student for it.
link |
And you know, and even outside of the academy, I mean, come, come face to face with your
link |
fears and keep going and keep going in, in, in life and you're going to be the better
link |
person, the better human being.
link |
And it does seem to be, I don't know what it is, but it does seem to be that fear is
link |
a good indicator of something you should probably face.
link |
Like fear kind of shows the way a little bit.
link |
You might not want to go into the cage with a lion, but, but it's, maybe you should.
link |
Let me ask sort of a darker question because we're talking about Dostoyevsky, who might
link |
Do you, do you, and connected to the freeing innocent people, do you think about mortality?
link |
Do you think about your own death?
link |
Are you afraid of death?
link |
I'm not afraid of, of death.
link |
I do think about it more now because I'm now in my mid fifties.
link |
So I used to not think about it much at all, but the harsh reality is that I've got more
link |
time behind me now that I do in front of me and it kind of happens all of a sudden to
link |
realize, wait a minute, I'm, I'm, I'm actually on the back nine now.
link |
So yeah, my mind moves to it from time to time.
link |
I don't dwell on it.
link |
I'm not afraid of it.
link |
My own personal religious commitments, I'm, I'm, I'm Christian and my religious commitments
link |
buoy me that, you know, that, that death and I, I believe this death is not, not, not
link |
So I'm not afraid of it now.
link |
This is not to say that I want to, I want to, I want to rush to the afterlife.
link |
I'm good right here for a long time and I hope I've got, you know, 30, 35, 40 more years
link |
Uh, but, um, but, um, but no, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't fear death though.
link |
We're, we're, we're, we're finite creatures.
link |
We're all going to, we're all going to die.
link |
Well, the mystery of it, uh, you know, for, for somebody, at least for me, we human beings
link |
want to figure everything out.
link |
Uh, whatever the afterlife is, there's still a mystery to it.
link |
That uncertainty, it can be terrifying if you ponder it, but maybe, uh, what you're
link |
saying is, uh, you haven't pondered it too deeply so far and it's worked out pretty good.
link |
No, no, no complaints.
link |
So you said, uh, again, the Sejewski kind of was exceptionally good at getting to the
link |
core of what it means to be human.
link |
Do you think about like the why of why we're here, the, the meaning of this whole, uh,
link |
I think, uh, and I actually think that's the purpose of an education.
link |
Uh, what does it mean to be a human being?
link |
And in one way or another, uh, we set out to answer those questions and we do it in a different
link |
Uh, I mean, some, uh, may look to, uh, philosophy to answer, uh, these questions.
link |
Why is it in one's personal interest to, to, uh, to do good, to do just, uh, to do justice?
link |
Some may, uh, look at it through the economist's lens, uh, some may, uh, look at it through
link |
the, uh, microscope in the laboratory that the phenomenal world is, uh, is, is the meaning,
link |
Uh, others may say that that's one, uh, vocabulary, that's one description, but the poet describes
link |
a reality to the same degree as a physicist.
link |
Uh, but that's the purpose of, uh, of, of an education.
link |
Just to sort of work through these issues, what does it mean to be a, uh, uh, what does
link |
it mean to be a human being?
link |
And I think it's a fascinating journey and I think it's a lifelong, uh, endeavor to
link |
figure out what is the thing that nugget that makes us, uh, human.
link |
Do you still see yourself as a student?
link |
I mean, that's, uh, that's the best part about going into, into university teaching.
link |
You're, you're a lifelong student.
link |
I'm always learning.
link |
I learned from my students and with my students and, uh, my colleagues and you're, you continue
link |
to read and, and, and learn and, and modify opinions.
link |
And I think it's just a wonderful thing.
link |
Well, Ron, um, I'm so glad that, uh, somebody like you is, uh, carrying the fire of what
link |
is the best of Harvard.
link |
So it's a huge honor that you will spend so much time, waste so much of your valuable
link |
I really appreciate that.
link |
Not a waste at all.
link |
I think a lot of people love it.
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Thank you so much for talking today.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ronald Sullivan and thank you to Brooklyn
link |
and Sheets, Wine Access Online Wine Store, MonkPak Low Carb Snacks and Blinkist app that
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Click their links to support this podcast.
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And now let me leave you with some words from Nelson Mandela, when a man is denied the right
link |
to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.