Friends,
Today I’d like to announce award winners in two contrasting categories.
First is this week’s Joseph Welch Award.
As you may recall, Joseph Welch was the brave person who stood up to Senator Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt at the Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954 — asking McCarthy, in front of the nation’s television cameras, “Have you no sense of decency?” — thereby precipitating McCarthy’s downfall.
This week’s Joseph Welch Award goes to Harvard University, which explicitly rejected policy changes demanded by the Trump regime — becoming the first university to directly refuse to comply with the regime’s demands.
The Trump regime threatened to revoke $256 million in federal contracts and an additional $8.7 billion in what it described as multiyear grant commitments unless Harvard agreed to “reduce the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs; report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities; and bring in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is ‘viewpoint diverse,’” among other steps.
Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, responded on Monday in a statement to the university that “no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
On Monday evening, the Trump regime said it had frozen $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard, along with a $60 million contract. Harvard will appeal this shameful challenge to academic freedom.
Congratulations, Harvard.
Other universities should take note and follow Harvard’s example.
By contrast is this week’s Neville Chamberlain Award.
The award is given to people or organizations that exemplify the cowardice of Britain’s prime minister from 1937 to 1940, who tried (in vain) to appease Hitler.
This week’s Neville Chamberlain Award goes to five more big law firms that have agreed to do Trump’s bidding.
Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, A&O Shearman, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft have agreed to do millions of dollars worth of free legal work for Trump on causes he supports.
Why? Because they fear that if they fight Trump, he’ll make it harder for their lawyers to gain access to public buildings and he’ll impose other penalties — with the result that they’ll lose some clients and money. And for them, money is more important than protecting the rule of law.
These firms join two other notably unprincipled firms — Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps — in receiving the Neville Chamberlain Award.
When the history of our current sordid era is written, as it surely will be, Big Law, the legal profession, and the bar will not be among the heroes.
Where is the bar? Where are the law schools? Where is the outrage?
Kudos, though, to Perkins Coie; WilmerHale; Jenner & Block; and, especially, Williams & Connolly, who have all bravely taken on and opposed Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional extortion racket. They get Joseph Welch Awards.
But shame on these other overpaid, Big Law quislings who have flocked to protect their wallets but not their country nor their morals.
Someone should inform the partners of these unprincipled firms that we are in a national emergency as far as democracy and the rule of law are concerned, and that as large law firms they have a special responsibility to maintain both.
Here are three simple ways to let them know they’ve failed:
1. Law schools should no longer permit these unprincipled firms to recruit law students on their premises.
2. Law students should no longer apply for jobs at these unprincipled firms, and make it known why.
3. Associates at these unprincipled firms should demand to know why these firms put profits over principle. Arrange meetings with partners. If they don’t give satisfactory answers, resign.