The Law School's Battle of Politics

In case you didn't infer this from the subtitle, Poisoned Ivy promises a pretty big story. After all, few would believe mere mortals could ruin Harvard Law School. To make even the ivy wither from a monolith of such enormity would require divine intervention at the very least.

Yet Eleanor Kerlow suggests that the very basis of Harvard Law, namely egos, ideology and power politics, could raze it to its foundations. Ruin, then, becomes a catchy word that legitimates the book-which proves somewhat unfortunate; since the story has appeal and merit without flashy sales tactics. So never mind the sensationalist title; a real story with fascinating insights on Harvard Law emerges from behind the cover's second-rate best-seller bid.

Harvard Law, the nation's oldest, largest and most prestigious law school, found itself at the center of national attention when scandals erupted over hiring practices in the late '80s. By 1990 the Law School's faculty was still 92 percent male and 95 percent white-numbers which both students and some liberal faculty were working to change.

At stake was a great deal more than simple diversity. The nation's most elite legal establishment self consciously threw itself into debate, knowing it would set the tone for affirmative action disputes throughout the country. Battles over teaching methodology and affirmative action developed into a broader struggle between conservatives and liberals. The ripples from that debate spread throughout the community, threatening to destroy the school.

Conservative faculty members stood by the traditional case study method and Socratic lecture format while liberal agitators, hired between the late '60s and mid '80s, demanded greater freedom to implement what was known as Critical Learning Studies (CLS). Harvard's highest offices resisted a number of appointments which would have diversified campus ideology. Fueled by pre-existing animosities between liberals and conservatives, opposition on hiring practices developed into personal and divisive debate which poisoned the atmosphere, inspired student demonstrations and long sit-ins, and compelled the first Black tenured professor, Derrick Bell, to leave the school in protest.

By 1991, the scandals threatened, then temporarily dissolved the community's most important invisible commodity, trust. Partisan fighting had grown personal, often petty, projecting a somber mood on a usually eager and vibrant student body. To make matters worse, Mary Joe Frug, a law professor at the New England School of Law and the wife of a Harvard professor, was murdered on April 4, 1991, the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination.

Her husband, Professor Gerald Frug, asked the Harvard Law Review to publish Mary's last work posthumously. Due to questionable stile and a few profanities, the piece was only published after serious and heated debate.

Many saw these internal conflicts at the Review as a reflection of the political infighting that was a way of life. Conservatives who had opposed publishing the piece unedited fought back, exhibiting appalling judgement. On the anniversary of Frug's death, they published a savage parody of her article in the "Revue" issue. No student was ever disciplined--administrators cited the First Amendment. More problematic to most observers was the environment which would spawn such insensitivity. Liberals charged that teaching methods, unchanged since the past century, were to blame.

To heighten conflict at the school, liberal students protesting discriminatory hiring practices were disciplined, sending waves of animosity through the community once more. Now the administration seemed guilty of double standards, although close examination proved the two situations sufficiently different to merit a discrepancy in administrative reaction. Still, many believed the discrepancy was a convenient manipulation of school rules in keeping with a politically partisan line.

Kerlow's own political sympathies intrude on her analysis occasionally, but her overarching theme holds. Harvard's conservative establishment had no reason to relinquish their power to opposition groups.

Hiring practices showed the reluctance of many not only to abandon strict meritocratic selection, but also to grant tenure to professors whose teaching methods and views on affirmative action differed from their own.

So deep ran the rift that the traditionally conservative Dean Robert C. Clark, booed at graduation ceremonies in 1992, opened the fall of the '92-93 academic year with a call to peace and healing. Neither students nor faculty had been left entirely untouched by the bloodletting which reached its peak the previous spring. Ultimately, there was nothing to do but try to begin things anew.

Just in case anyone was wondering, though, the pillars never crumbled, the ivy never withered and Langdell Hall never collapsed. It would take considerably more than typical political scandals to "ruin" the monolithic Harvard Law School. In fact, money from slums came pouring into support their alma mater in its time of need. Today students remember the series of events, which received a great deal of press at the time, merely as a quickly passing episode. As one Harvard alum and Boston native remarked," sometimes news makes news."

Harvard Law School, as a microcosm of the nation's legal battles, continues to be closely watched as the trend-setter in decisions of law; it is tempting to assume that the school's internal scandals should be correspondingly inflated.