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So to Speak podcast transcript: 20 years of 草莓视频APP官网 with co-founder Harvey Silverglate
Note: This is an unedited rush transcript. Please check any quotations against the audio recording.
Nico Perrino: Harvey, before we get into how 草莓视频APP官网 was first founded, I wanna know what got you interested in the issues of free speech, academic freedom, due process, individual rights broadly speaking?
Harvey Silverglate: Well, first of all, I have represented students from the very early days of my law practice. I represented the students who rioted at Harvard. The free speech movement, various campuses. I was always a free speech nut and very early in my career I was representing students.
Nico: When you say you were a free speech nut, was there something that animated that? Did that come from anywhere or was it just kinda part of who you were?
Harvey: You know, I鈥檝e been asked that before and the best that I can answer is this; I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and there was a certain culture in Brooklyn. And the culture can be summarized by the following, which we kids memorized and used all the time: 鈥淪ticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me.鈥
That is to say, don鈥檛 hit me, but you can call me anything you want and I鈥檓 okay with it, I can take it. But don鈥檛 hit me, I鈥檓 not a great boxer but I鈥檓 a pretty good talker. And you call me a name, I鈥檒l call you a name and then afterwards we鈥檒l be friends.
Nico: We鈥檒l sort out our problems, we won鈥檛 go to 鈥
Harvey: Yeah.
Nico: 鈥搒ome authority figure to figure them out.
Harvey: We do not need codes; we do not need authority figures. And we got along quite well. The neighborhood I lived in in Brooklyn was 鈥 my building, the apartment building I lived in, was all Jewish. Right next door was all Italian and we actually got along. We called each other names, of course, but we got along. And that鈥檚 when I imbibed the notion that speech is useful, but it鈥檚 not really dangerous. And letting people say what鈥檚 on their minds is one of the ways of preventing them from being violent. They can say what鈥檚 on their mind, what a wonderful method, what a wonderful device for preventing violence. So, I had an appreciation and a respect for free speech.
Nico: So, you ended up going to Princeton, correct?
Harvey: I did.
Nico: And that鈥檚 where you met Alan Charles Kors, who co-founded 草莓视频APP官网 with you.
Harvey: That鈥檚 correct.
Nico: When you were at Princeton, did you have any of these issues on campus with being able to speak out? I know that was before the free speech movement and there was a lot of, in loco parentis I鈥檓 assuming on campus, but did you have this instinct to kind of rebel against authority?
Harvey: Well, I was a fish out of water at Princeton. Here I was, a Brooklyn boy, and I ended up in Princeton. How did that happen? Believe it or not, it was the only place I could afford. Because Princeton had a fellow named Caine. C-A-I-N-E.
He made a fortune in racehorses and he left Princeton his fortune, provided that 鈥 He said that it would be used for scholarships, but before they could generally give scholarships to whoever they wanted to use the funds for something other than scholarships. They had to give scholarships to people, kids, who graduated from five high schools that he named and my high school 鈥 by then I lived in New Jersey, Jersey suburbs. But go to high school at not a great high school.
But, Bagota had one student who went to Princeton every year and the guidance counselor was the one who really selected and said. She came up to me and she said, 鈥淵ou know, apply to Princeton because I think you鈥檙e a good candidate for the Caine Scholarship.鈥 I apply, I got a full scholarship which fortunately, because I had no money. And I got to Princeton on a scholarship but, none the less, I was a bit of a fish out of water. You can imagine a Brooklyn boy at Princeton. Those days, Princeton was still more than 50 percent private school students who came from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
This was not Brooklyn Polytech, believe me. This was not anything that I was accustomed to. I met Alan Charles Kors, we were a little bit the same, he was from Jersey City. We got through it, and then we came to Cambridge. I was at the law school and he was at Harvard Graduate School. So, we had a long history together before we started 草莓视频APP官网.
We started 草莓视频APP官网 because we were getting requests by students on campus who were being penalized for things they said. They were upset being penalized for things they said because they thought that if you can鈥檛 say it on a college campus, where can you say it? The notion that there was more free speech out here in the real world than on the college campus astonished these students, astonished me. I think Kors was more accustomed to 鈥 being a faculty member, he saw this before I did.
But we decided that all these students who were coming to us, for help. Me as a lawyer, and Kors as a professor. That they really needed more organized help, and more time and resources than we could expend. Kors had a full-time teaching schedule; I had a litigation schedule. I represented people in trouble, mostly criminal law and some First Amendment stuff, and we just couldn鈥檛 do it anymore. And so, we decided that we were going to start an organization that was going to help carry the load of students who had free speech problems on campus and due process disciplinary problems on campus.
Nico: But before that, you two wrote the book The Shadow University?
Harvey: Yes.
Nico: What was the inspiration for writing that book? Was it also students coming to you?
Harvey: Yes.
Nico: Faculty members coming to you?
Harvey: Students and faculty members coming to us, and as a result of the fact that they were coming to us, we had knowledge of these problems all over the country. On campuses all over the country, private and public colleges, from the top to the bottom, from the most elite organization and the most elite colleges to the ordinary state colleges, community colleges. It was happening everywhere, and we had the picture, the big picture of this. So, we decided what we were going to do was we were going to write a book about it as a way of helping people and as a way of calling attention to the problem.
So, we got together, mostly here in this house, we wrote The Shadow University. The Shadow University got published, and what happened was, it massively increased the number of people coming to us for help. We figured this book is a self-help book, but it didn鈥檛 turn out that way. It simply said, 鈥淥h, here are two guys who understand this problem. They know how to defend against these silly prosecutions for free speech 鈥撯 And so, it didn鈥檛 help us. We were flooded with cases and that鈥檚 when we decided we had to start 草莓视频APP官网.
Nico: What was the response from Universities to The Shadow University? Because it鈥檚 my understanding that the book got quite a bit of publicity. In the 1990s, that was the height of the political correctness movement, so to speak.
Harvey: Yep. The thing about the book that got attention was we named names. We actually named names of, not only the colleges, but the deans, the presidents, the ones who were the real cowards and the ones who were the kind of tinpot Napoleons who were terrorizing students and faculty members who were exercising free speech. And the naming of the names turned out to be a brilliant strategy, because these people were embarrassed.
So, Kors and I figured we needed an organization that will publicize these cases. You know, 草莓视频APP官网, the main weapon that 草莓视频APP官网 has, and it鈥檚 had it since day one, is it names the names of these people and shames them. We have fabulous press 鈥 always had, fabulous press relationships and we can get their names in the paper. And a dean, or a president, or a faculty member who is trying to shut students up, punish students for saying things 鈥 or deans who are trying to shut up professors and punish them, they end up with their names in newspapers, including their home town papers.
We developed the art of not only getting their names in the national press, but equally harmful to them and painful to them, in their local community newspapers. And this really aggravated them. So, we found that aggravation was a wonderful form of torture, that it really caused these bureaucrats, these tinpot Napoleons, to stop and think before taking out their power obsession on students.
Nico: What were some of the challenges in first getting 草莓视频APP官网 up and running in 1999? Well, 20 years ago.
Harvey: Well, I had a full-time job as a lawyer. Kors had a full-time job as a college professor. And here we had this organization and Kors and I ran it in the beginning. We eventually got enough money; we were able to have an executive director. But for years, 草莓视频APP官网 ran on a shoestring. And we eventually were able to get a fundraising apparatus. We got non-profit organizations that looked at what we were doing and liked it.
Because remember, we represented students and faculty members who were liberals, who were conservatives, who were libertarians, who were communists, who were socialists. And it was pretty obvious that this was a really, a truly non-partisan effort to get free speech and due process rights. Remember, Kors was a conservative and I was a liberal and so, from the beginning, 草莓视频APP官网 was non-partisan. Had to be, because the co-founders were at different ends of the political spectrum, who none the less, were friends and cohorts.
Nico: What were some of the most memorable cases from those early years? Either cases that came up around the writing of The Shadow University, or in the early years of 草莓视频APP官网.
Harvey: Well, there was of course the infamous water buffalo case at Penn. This is the paradigmatic case of not only suppression of 鈥 punishment free speech, but also punishment without due process. And also, it was the greatest example, it was a gift that fell from the heavens like mana into our laps because the administrators were total morons, including the president of the university. They were total morons.
Imagine that the student, Eden Jacobowitz who was leaning out his dorm window trying to study, and there were these sorority girls down below who were whooping it up and making all this noise and he couldn鈥檛 study. And he said, 鈥淪hut up, you water buffalo.鈥 Immediately, the administration and its politically correct mania assumed that he was calling them water buffalos, because water buffalo was of a black animal from Africa.
Well, first of all, just to show you how stupid these people are, water buffalo are not from Africa, they鈥檙e from India. And Eden Jacobowitz, English was not his first language, Hebrew was. And he roughly translated water buffalo in English from the Yiddish word bahama. Bahama, and I know what bahama means because my Yiddish speaking grandmother used to call me a bahama, is a very loud 鈥 it was slang for a kid who was loud and boisterous 鈥
Nico: Unruly?
Harvey: 鈥揳nd unruly. So, it all grew out of an ignorance and misunderstanding. But Eden, Eden was disciplined for calling these girls a racist term. Eden went to court, and Kors decided he was going to defend Eden. Kors called me, because I was a lawyer with experience in the First Amendment and due process area. And I joined up with Alan to help advise Alan in representing Jacobowitz. Nobody in the world thought that we had a chance in hell of winning the case, but of course we did.
Why? Because we had great press contacts and the administration was so embarrassed that they finally had to admit the obvious, that this was not a racial epithet.
Nico: People are still talking about that case. I was looking on Twitter over the weekend and somebody had referenced the case. I don鈥檛 know if this particular part of the story is true, but they said that the administration had tried to schedule Jacobowitz鈥檚 hearing during one of Kors鈥 finals. And Kors decided he was going to cancel his final in order to be there to represent 鈥 That just struck me as 鈥 it struck me that it struck Kors as it being this important, that we need to cancel a final.
Harvey: It鈥檚 absolutely true but Kors was a brilliant strategist, mind you. This was also part of the strategy. That kids were gonna have to go without their education, without their class, because the administration was so omurate, and stupid that they were going after another student for speaking freely. And under a misunderstanding, even, as to what he was saying. Mind you, our position is, even if he was using a racial epithet that it would be protected. But it didn鈥檛 even get that far. They didn鈥檛 understand Yiddish. So, that was 鈥 it鈥檚 a great story.
Nico: The early cases at 草莓视频APP官网, what type of cases were they? Were they cases dealing with over broad speech codes, harassment policies for instance? I know in 2001, was only two years after 草莓视频APP官网 was founded 鈥 three years after 草莓视频APP官网 was founded. 9/11, I imagine there was some cases surrounding that, but what were the early types of cases like, or did they run the gambit?
Harvey: They ran the gambit. But, what we discovered, although I think we knew it before we even started 草莓视频APP官网, was that administrators can latch on to any excuse for shutting people up. Either because they don鈥檛 like to hear what the people are saying, or they don鈥檛 wanna have a campus turmoil. Everybody should say nice things to each other and students 鈥 because if students started to call each other names, students start to challenge each other鈥檚 political ideologies and ways of life, that eventually, this is the imagination of the administrator, soon they鈥檒l start killing each other.
You know, the administrators jumped from speech, that was hostile and loud, to violence. They couldn鈥檛 understand, these were two very different things. And the real insight they didn鈥檛 have, was that by allowing students to shoot off their mouths, you know, release their steam by calling each other names, you reduce the chances for violence because they got it out of their systems. They were able to call someone a name, rather than punch him in the nose. Speech actually is conducive to anti-violence, something that college administrators still don鈥檛 understand.
Nico: We talk about speech a lot at 草莓视频APP官网, with good reason of course, but 草莓视频APP官网 in its mission isn鈥檛 tasked with just defending free speech rights. There鈥檚 also religious liberty, if we look at our guides to student rights on campus, we are involved in orientation programs 鈥 they venture off into thought reform, due process rights, of course. Why were those other rights incorporated into the founding mission of 草莓视频APP官网?
Harvey: Because liberty 鈥 because freedom can鈥檛 be segmented into convenient capsules. Freedom covers a wide gambit of human relationships, inter-relationships, and you really can鈥檛 have one without the other. You can鈥檛 have free speech without freedom of religion. For one thing, a lot of people鈥檚 free speech right is exercised in the name of religion. And due process is essential because you can鈥檛 have free speech rights if you allow kangaroo courts for people who exercise those rights.
The beauty of the Bill of Rights is, how much of the Bill of Rights is woven together in a magnificent grand tapestry that we call freedom, or we call liberty. And you can鈥檛 break it up, you can鈥檛 break it down into constituent parts. And if you鈥檙e in favor of one aspect of liberty, you鈥檙e in favor of them all. If you鈥檙e in favor of free speech, as Nat Hentoff would say, 鈥淔or me, you have to also give free speech to thee.鈥 So, it鈥檚 a whole state of mind, it鈥檚 a whole political tapestry and we were in favor of the full monty, so to speak.
Nico: When a lot of people think about 草莓视频APP官网, they think of it as a legal organization. Perhaps because these rights are codified in the Bill of Rights. But early on in 草莓视频APP官网鈥檚 history, it didn鈥檛 litigate any cases. That鈥檚 a relatively recent phenomenon.
Harvey: That鈥檚 correct. We left the litigation to the ACLU, which back in those days was a very powerful free speech organization. It鈥檚 much less so now, I say sadly, but we left the litigation to the ACLU. We used tactics of pressure and of just exposing them. A dean could be a tinpot Napoleon privately, but when he鈥檚 suddenly on the front page of newspapers, the campus newspaper, or the town paper, or the national press, or his hometown newspaper, he鈥檚 embarrassed. And we used embarrassment to tremendous effectiveness.
Nico: Those early letters, 草莓视频APP官网 has always written letters to universities when it uncovers a problem.
Harvey: Yes, and those letters were almost always public, too.
Nico: And the responses were public.
Harvey: Yes.
Nico: Those letters featured very little, if I鈥檓 recalling correctly, legal president. It was almost always moral.
Harvey: Correct. Academic freedom, we used academic freedom more often and more effectively than we used the First Amendment.
Nico: Were universities responsive in those early years to the argument? 草莓视频APP官网, at this point just a couple years old, not even. Not many staff members, not a big budget or endowment to speak of.
Harvey: Let me tell you something. What characterized 草莓视频APP官网 back then, and characterizes 草莓视频APP官网 today, is stubbornness. Stubbornness. We never gave up. If we wrote a letter to the college president, or the dean, and we didn鈥檛 get a response we sent a follow-up letter saying, 鈥淒ear President So-and-so 鈥 You must be very busy; you鈥檝e overlooked our letter of January 8th. We鈥檙e enclosing another copy of it; we anticipate hearing from you.鈥
And if we didn鈥檛 hear from them, we would write to the Board of Trustees. We would say, 鈥淵ou know, you have a real problem on your campus. Not only has the administration violated the free speech or due process rights of this student, or this faculty member, but they don鈥檛 even answer their correspondence. So, we鈥檙e now sending this to you and we鈥檙e asking for your response.鈥 Well, the first thing that would happen was, the chairman of the board would call up the dean and say, 鈥淲hat the hell is this all about, why is this landed on our laps? You鈥檙e supposed to [inaudible] [00:21:16]鈥. And we would get a response. And why would we get a response? We never gave up.
Nico: Stubborn.
Harvey: They knew that we were gonna hound them, we were gonna play them. We were gonna send this, send news releases to their hometown newspaper. We were gonna continue to be gigantic pains in the neck, forever. And they didn鈥檛 want this forever.
Nico: So, as a staffer at 草莓视频APP官网, I鈥檓 sometimes asked the question, 鈥淒id the acronym become the full name? Or did Foundation for Individual Rights and Education come first, and it just so happened to have the acronym 草莓视频APP官网?鈥
Harvey: Well, when we 鈥
Nico: Because it鈥檚 a great acronym.
Harvey: When we named 草莓视频APP官网, it was helpful that there was this acronym, 草莓视频APP官网, and we were able to have out symbol as a torch. That got the campuses very nervous, you know, the administrators very nervous. But 草莓视频APP官网 was a very convenient name, however, it was very important the we had in the title; Individual Rights. Because, we were interested in the rights of the individual. Not the rights of the institution, we were interested in the rights of the individual.
There were plenty of people who fought for rights of institutions, academic freedom. Professors have an enormous amount of rights. Institutions, they have tax exemption. But we were interested in the individual student, and so the I, Individual Rights, the I-R was very important in the name of the organization.
Nico: When you first founded 草莓视频APP官网, Laura tells us that you didn鈥檛 think it would be around for very long. Why is that?
Harvey: Well, this is 鈥 I suppose I should be embarrassed at this. I told Alan Kors and I told our board, and everybody who would ask, that I was anticipating that this 鈥 I would consider myself an organization man. But I thought surely this problem was so absurd. The fact that you can鈥檛 say something on a college campus? This is the place where you should be able to say everything. That there was more freedom of speech, as I would put it, outside of the college gate than inside? It was absurd.
This is such an absurd problem, the speech codes were so inappropriate on campus, surely that if we bring attention, call attention to what鈥檚 going on on the campus, that this problem would disappear in 10 years. It couldn鈥檛 possibly last more than 10 years because of the absurdity of it. And as soon as the world sees what these campuses are like and the idiocy of these administrators, surely the problem will go away and free speech and due process will be restored to the campuses.
So, I assumed 草莓视频APP官网 was gonna be around only for 10 years. I was in shock when 10 years came around and the problem had actually grown worse. I was in shock at the 15th year, and here I am facing the 20th. Unbelievable that 20 years after we started to call attention to this dysfunctionality of the campuses with regard to fee speech, and academic freedom, and due process, the need for 草莓视频APP官网 is worse than ever, stronger than ever. That is not a happy 鈥 I mean, I鈥檓 happy that 草莓视频APP官网 is doing this job. I鈥檓 happy that we have the resources, I鈥檓 happy that we have the staff. But I鈥檓 very unhappy that we鈥檙e still around, we shouldn鈥檛 be. This is an organization that should鈥檝e gone out of business 10 years ago.
Nico: In some ways though, 草莓视频APP官网 has won. The battle has made a lot of progress, I should say, in some of the battles that were set out for it early on. With regard to speech codes, when we first started tracking those in what, 2007? 80 percent of colleges had red-light speech codes. Now we鈥檙e below 30 percent, I believe. 28 percent is the last report. The Federal Government has gotten better, in 2011 of course, they had the Dear Colleague Letter and just a couple months from now we鈥檙e gonna get revised regulations that should hopefully institute greater due process protections for a student in the Title IX context. Administrators, in certain regards and at certain schools have gotten a little bit better.
We鈥檙e starting to see orientation programs at schools that educate students about free speech and academic freedom. I鈥檓 thinking about University of Chicago, Perdue, even Princeton. One of its first reads that it gives its students over the course of summer was Keith Whittington鈥檚 book about free speech on campus which is very solid on these issues. But at the same time, you鈥檙e seeing new challenges. You鈥檙e seeing rising intolerance among certain students on campus that calls for disinvitations of speakers, calls for microaggression policing and bias response teams are a new sort of institution built on campus to police speech. Literally, in some cases with actual police.
So, as old problems go away, or are ameliorated so to speak, new problems come up. Do you think we鈥檙e in a worse position now than we were 20 years ago, or do you think it鈥檚 just a different challenge?
Harvey: We鈥檙e not in a worse position, but it is a different but related challenge. The fact is, that there are so many college administrators right now. There are more college administrators than there are faculty members.
Nico: Yeah, I think that inflection point was something like 2008?
Harvey: Yes. And they are not 鈥 The administrators, the bureaucrats, are not about to give up the need for their services. They鈥檙e not about to go to the unemployment line. And so, they invent new needs for themselves. They manage to establish new rules, new procedures, new orientation, a need for orientation. How many administrators are busy just dealing with orientation? So that gives them employment, it gives them power, it gives them a sense that they鈥檙e needed.
So, the problem changes. The problem that 草莓视频APP官网 originally jumped in to solve, we鈥檝e had tremendous success. But, you know, the bubble 鈥 the balloon balloons somewhere else. And so, we haven鈥檛 yet conquered the endless thirst of administrators for power and for running other people鈥檚 lives.
Nico: The students 鈥 Now, I haven鈥檛 been at this nearly as long as you have, but I started in 2010 as an intern at 草莓视频APP官网 and then of course became a full-time staffer in 2012. But the years between 2015 and 2017, perhaps kicked off with the protests at the University of Missouri, and then the famous protest against Nicholas and Erika Christakis at Yale kicked off, it seemed like, a period of intense focus on these issues.
I would be approached by people who had no interest in these issues asking me about them, no previous interest in these issues asking me about them. Then you started to of course see the violence on campus. The attacks when Charles Murray went to Middlebury or the attacks, the fire-bombing at Berkeley. Was that something that had ever been seen on campus in the last 50 years, or was that a new phenomenon?
Harvey: Well, there was some violence during the anti 鈥
Nico: 70s, yeah.
Harvey: And then the anti-draft, and anti-Vietnam War era. When I was a young lawyer, it was my first year of law practice, there was the situation at Harvard where the president called in the police and the National Guard to violently oust the students who took over University Hall at Harvard.
Nico: Was that a protest of the draft or the war?
Harvey: Yeah, it was protesting the Vietnam War.
Nico: But that seems fundamentally different, protesting a war than protesting speech or a speaker appearing on campus, right?
Harvey: Yeah, but what I was suggesting is that the students protesting against the war was very unpopular with the administrators of colleges. They didn鈥檛 like to have the campuses frozen, tied up with protestors protesting a war. The Vietnam War posed a real problem for college administrators and they thought that they had to exercise some real strength and real power, including the police power, throw students out of school 鈥 So, there was a lot of turbulence over the Vietnam War and I was, as a lawyer, I was involved in representing students who were billy-clubbed, who were expelled for symbolic speech or actual speech.
So, I got into it 鈥 it was a period that called for lawyers鈥 involvement in protecting student鈥檚 rights and, to some extent, faculty member鈥檚 rights. And so, I was in it from the beginning.
Nico: Yeah, now 草莓视频APP官网 is a lot bigger than it was when you first founded it, of course. You have almost 50 staff members now. In your wildest dreams, did you ever anticipate that 草莓视频APP官网 would become a 50 person staff with offices in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia?
Harvey: Of course not, Kors and I handled everything ourselves in the beginning and ultimately, we got a lawyer and an executive director, and the organization grew like topsy. And I have to say, in contrary to the reason other college鈥檚 and university鈥檚 administrative staffs have grown, is not because the bureaucrats at 草莓视频APP官网 wanna make more work for themselves. It鈥檚 because the need, there was this genuine need and the small staff couldn鈥檛 handle it. And the bourgeoning, the bourgeoning violations of student鈥檚 rights and faculty member鈥檚 rights, both due process and free speech, was such that we constantly had to add staff. We had to constantly fund raise.
Fundraising became crucial, because without the funds the organization just couldn鈥檛 handle the volume of violations and the core of the problem.
Nico: Looking forward, what do you hope to see? And what do you expect to see? Two separate questions.
Harvey: I hope to see the same thing that I expect to see. We are going to win, and the reason we are going to win is the absurdity of the position taken by our opponents. The notion that on a college campus, people have the power, and the right, and the prerogative to say to somebody else, 鈥淪hut up.鈥 It is so absurd that ultimately, we will prevail, but I no longer make predictions as to when. I do hope that if I鈥檓 not around when that day comes, when victory comes, that 草莓视频APP官网 has the good sense to go out of business. If the problem dissipates, then we should go out of business.
You know, one thing that always occurs to me whenever I talk about this issue, of 草莓视频APP官网 going out of business, I remember when I was a kid there was the March of Dimes. It was a charity that raised money for polio and to help treat polio. They paid for iron lungs and they paid for research, medical research. Well, low and behold, polio got conquered. A vaccine was invented that prevented polio. Polio, at least in this country and in most parts of the world now, polio is gone.
So, here you have this organization that was built up to raise money in order to cure polio, and Dr. Salk comes along and invents a vaccine that prevents it, and the organization is now faced with an existential threat. It鈥檚 got nothing left to do, so its gonna have to go out of business. Oh, no. There was a bureaucracy, there was a fundraising apparatus, and they decided that they were going to go into other diseases. And I always thought to myself, 鈥淚f they had any integrity, they would鈥檝e done exactly 鈥撯 They did their job; they did a fabulous job of funding research to cure this plague of an illness that paralyzed countless numbers of little kids.
Just pitiful seeing these kids in iron lungs, your heart went out. But they 鈥 mission accomplished. Have the good sense and the grace to go out of business, instead of retuning the bureaucracy, and my hope is that 草莓视频APP官网 does not follow this foundation as a mode. That when we accomplish our mission, we dissolve. Mission accomplished, and we all can go back to doing better things.
Nico: You鈥檝e accomplished a lot in your career, where does the co-founding of 草莓视频APP官网 stack up there?
Harvey: I think it is the thing for which I鈥檓 most proud, because it affects the most people and it helps keep healthy institutions, higher education, that I feel are incredibly important for a well-functioning, democratic and free society. Without independent universities, freedom is in real trouble, the country is in real trouble. Education is crucial and part of education requires academic freedom. Without academic freedom, it鈥檚 not education, it鈥檚 indoctrination.
So, I consider that to be central and I consider my contribution to an organization to protect that incredibly important asset, to be the think I鈥檓 most proud of. I鈥檝e won a lot of cases, criminal cases, in my career. When you win a criminal case, you get one person out of a real jam, but that鈥檚 about it. Oh yeah, their children appreciate it, and their relatives, and their mothers and fathers appreciate it. But it鈥檚 a pretty small group. Sometimes you get a case in the appellate court or the Supreme Court where you can make a bigger difference in the law, but it鈥檚 in some small little area.
But 草莓视频APP官网 was an accomplishment which I鈥檓 most proud. It鈥檚 the subject of my first book, co-authored with Alan Charles Kors, and my subsequent books have been about criminal law. But it鈥檚 the thing I鈥檓 most proud of, I would say. So, this organization really does my heart a lot of good. On the one hand I鈥檓 sorry to see it still exists, but on the other hand I鈥檓 most proud of it. This is a 鈥 Imagine, I live with these opposed views bouncing around in my brain?
Nico: Well, I think we鈥檙e gonna have to leave our listeners with that, too. Harvey, thank you so much for chatting with me today.
Harvey: Thanks for having me.