Harvard May Be Covering Up Defacement Investigation

WASHINGTON - Dec. 3, 2015 - PRLog -- It has now been two weeks since Harvard Law School very publicly denounced actions by one or more persons who placed easily-removed black tape over the photos at the school of several of its black law professors, and referred the incident to the police for investigation as a possible hate crime, but there has been no followup announcement of who the perpetrators or even persons of interest are, or why their identities haven't yet been discovered.

        This seems very strange if not downright suspicious, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, since the number of likely suspects - those who had both a motive and also access to the building when the taping apparently occurred - seems small, and the culprits behind similar incidents at other schools have often been uncovered within only days.

        Although it is possible that the tape was applied by racist white law students, many, including Banzhaf, have suggested that the action was much more likely to have been done as simple retaliation for two earlier defacements by black law students likewise involving black tape.

        In the first, black law students had in a similar manner used tape to cover the pictures of black law professors. Then, just before the incident now under investigation, the seal of Harvard Law School itself was covered up by an organization of black law students using exactly the same tape as that used in the most recent incident.

        Perhaps that’s why Randall Kennedy, a black professor at Harvard Law, has now written that the act may simply have been "a rebuke to those who have recently been taping over the law school’s seal.”

        Another theory which has been mentioned for the most recent defacement is that it was a hoax by one or more black students, similar to other campus situations in which black or Jewish students had themselves posted symbols allegedly aimed at their own groups in order to create controversy.

        For example, Kennedy said of the incident: "maybe it was meant to protest the perceived marginalization of black professors, or was a hoax meant to look like a racial insult in order to provoke a crisis."  Also, Elie Mystal, a black columnist writing in AboveTheLaw, lends support to this hoax theory, writing: "Other people think that it was done by a black student to protest black professors who aren’t using their positions to do enough to help black students at the school.”

        If, in fact, the new taping over of black professors was done by one or more racist white students, the great majority of law students who seem to oppose whatever message they were trying to send should have been able to identify the most likely suspects, since it would have been very difficult for them to completely suppress such strong racist feelings from fellow students for months.  Moreover, it appears that only a very few would have no alibi, and may have been in Wasserstein Hall when the defacement occurred.

        But if the identity of one or more of such racist law students has been discovered, Harvard may have a very good reason for keeping the information secret from its students and the public, says Banzhaf.

         If the school sought to punish these white racist students, it would have to explain why it took no similar action a year ago when black students similarly defaced the pictures of black professors, or more recently when a black student organization openly and proudly similarly defaced, with exactly the same black tape, the seal of the Harvard Law School.

        This is especially true since, even if the message being sent in the most recent defacement was racist in nature, it is nevertheless fully protected by both free speech and academic freedom.

        As Charles Ogletree, one of the black law professors whose picture was defaced, told Harvard Magazine, "he believes the incident represents constitutionally-protected free speech. 'I’m a firm believer in the First Amendment, even for speech that might be ugly or hateful….I don’t think any of these actions are criminally prosecutable. I think they’re freedoms of expression. Nothing was burned or damaged,'”

        If, on the other hand, the taping under investigation was done by students simply retaliating for the two earlier instances of similar defacement done by black students, Harvard would be in an even more embarrassing position if it sought to punish them, since those who engaged in the two earlier defacement actions did so openly and faced no university discipline, much less a request that they be investigated by the police for a hate crime.

        Finally, if the defacement now under investigation was the work of black students, as either Kennedy or Mystal suggested, Harvard would be in an even more embarrassing predicament.

        Having very strongly and publicly condemned this recent taping, it would be very difficult to now seek to excuse it solely because the perpetrators turned out to be blacks rather than white racists, or simply because the Law School’s administration happened to sympathize with their message.

        All of this very strongly suggests that schools, especially very prestigious ones like Harvard, should not speak and act about on-campus expressive speech prematurely before most of the underlying facts are known, and that it certainly should not denounce - much less refer for possible criminal prosecution - expressions which are fully protected by both free speech and academic freedom, suggests Banzhaf.