300 Alums Call on HLS to Denounce Trump’s Attacks on Law Firms

More than 300 Harvard Law School alumni signed a letter asking Dean John C.P. Goldberg to speak out against the Trump administration’s efforts to penalize law firms for representing the president’s political adversaries in recent weeks.

The letter, which was signed by former Mass. Governor Deval Patrick ’78, former White House Cabinet Secretary Christopher P. Lu and City Year founder Alan A. “Al” Khazei ’83, accused the Trump administration of violating the First Amendment and asked HLS to denounce recent executive orders targeting law firms.

“We believe Harvard Law School as an institution must raise its voice in support of these principles and in denouncing the Executive Orders,” the letter reads.

In his latest round of executive orders, Trump has removed security clearances and restricted access to government offices for five high-powered law firms, accusing them of weaponizing the legal system and considering race in employment.

Several of the affected firms, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, and Harvard’s law firm WilmerHale, have taken to court to block the orders. Other firms, including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, have entered into negotiations with the Trump administration.

The alumni letter follows a similar letter by the majority of Harvard Law faculty members to students, criticizing the federal government for disrespecting the “rule of law” to target the powerful law firms. Goldberg, who is known for staying out of the public spotlight, did not sign the letter.

“We agree proudly with Harvard’s claim: ‘No law school has done more to shape law or legal education,’” they wrote, quoting the HLS website.

“Now is the time to once again show that leadership, before it is too late,” the alumni added.

HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal declined to comment on the letter’s content.

In response to Saturday’s faculty letter, HLS professor and conservative legal scholar Adrian C. Vermeule ’90 released his own open letter to HLS Students criticizing the larger faculty letter.

Vermeule argued that the faculty letter might alienate conservative students and that “thereby risks discrediting the rule of law itself,” he said.

The alumni letter was written and circulated before the faculty letter was released Friday evening, according to David M. Abromowitz, one of the organizers of the letter who graduated from HLS in 1982.

Abromowitz said it will be delivered to the Law School administration “when we hit a critical mass.”

“It seems to be growing fairly steadily as word gets around,” he added.

Other notable signatories of the alumni letter included Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, Former U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, President of the MacArthur Foundation John G. Palfrey ’94, and Noah G. Purcell, Solicitor General for Washington state.

The alumni letter praised and quoted another letter sent by a group of 79 law school deans similarly criticizing the Trump Administration. The deans of Georgetown University Law Center, University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell Law Schools signed the letter, but Goldberg did not.

Wendy E. Parmet, a professor at Northeastern Law School who signed the letter, said that Goldberg’s absence from the dean’s letter was “glaring.”

“I think a law school has to inherently have a belief in the rule of law,” Parmet said.

Harvard, however, adopted a policy discouraging administrators from commenting on controversial issues of public opinion not directly related to school administration. The institutional neutrality policy, which applies to Goldberg as a high-ranking dean, was adopted by Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 in the wake of lasting controversy over the University’s institutional response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack against Israel.

HLS Professor Holger Spamann said he believed making a statement on Trump’s threats to the legal profession — in the wake of the administration’s decision to cut $400 million in funding from Columbia University — could be justified by a law school dean under the policy.

“The Trump administration’s measures taken against Columbia and threatened against others surely matter for the University directly,” Spamann said.

“I think they could speak consistent with the policy,” he added.

He added that even though Goldberg did not sign the faculty letter, that a majority of the tenured professors chose to sign is itself significant.

Palfrey wrote in a statement that “the job is then over to all of us as faculty, staff, students, and alumni to make the case forcefully for core principles — in this case, on behalf of the American Republic.”

Marty Linsky, a former professor at Harvard Kennedy School who signed the letter, said that he did so because he felt Trump was making efforts to “exact revenge on law firms.”

“I felt that was at least a small thing that I could do — to add my name to that list,” he said.

—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.
—Staff writer Bradford D. Kimball can be reached at bradford.kimball@thecrimson.com.