How Harvard ‘Capitulated'

Exclusive: Ron Sullivan on defending Harvey Weinstein and the campus culture that cost him his job

- Roger Parloff

HARVARD COLLEGE DID NOT RENEW RONALD S. Sullivan Jr., and his wife’s contracts as faculty deans of Winthrop House, one of the school’s 12 residential communities—the culmination of a series of campus protests. The turmoil was unleashed after the New York Post reported in January that Sullivan—a clinical professor at Harvard Law School, the head of its Criminal Justice Institute and a nationally prominent criminal defense attorney—would be joining film producer Harvey Weinstein’s legal defense team against a five-count indictment in New York State Supreme Court alleging rape and predatory sexual abuse.

Some students protested that his role on Weinstein’s team was inconsistent with Sullivan’s duties as faculty dean, and even that they felt unsafe with a dean who was aiding such a person.

In a Newsweek exclusive, Sullivan gave his first interview since his ouster to contributor Roger Parloff; he defended taking the case and accused Rakesh Khurana, Dean of Harvard College, of “cower[ing]” and “capitulating” to the “loudest voices in the room.”

Sullivan, 52, grew up in Gary, Indiana, where he attended public schools that were “100 percent” African American, he says. He graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1989 and Harvard Law School in 1994. Sullivan met his wife, Stephanie Robinson, when they were both students at Harvard Law School. She is also now an instructor there. She was formerly chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy; CEO of the Jamestown Project, a democracy-related think tank; and a national radio show host.