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One thing that leaps out in this interview is Sullivan’s consistent framing of Harvard students as children.
Another theme: Sullivan’s opaque lawyerly guardedness in discussing the Weinstein case and his reasons for taking it on.
It’s possible to say, BTW, both that (1) being a criminal defense attorney doesn’t imply personal sympathy for your client and (2) the corresponding ethical issues for faculty in a residential setting are different than those in the classroom environment.
From what I’ve seen, Sullivan’s critics seems to have a better grasp of this tension than his defenders.
A bit more on Sullivan’s guardedness: In other contexts, a professor doing advocacy for a controversial figure would typically be eager to explain why. But here Sullivan can’t or won’t.
Some of that reluctance is inherent to the attorney-client relationship. Some of it is Sullivan’s personal preference. What’s the balance? Again, largely opaque.
This stuff is tricky, and part of the trickiness arises out of the anomalousness of Sullivan’s role on the Harvard campus, and in the hall he’s responsible for.
The overwhelming majority of American colleges (95%? 99%?) have no faculty position that’s analogous to Sullivan’s. Most of us have no handy frame of reference for these questions.
