Call to Battle: We Must Stand in Solidarity with Harvard

I wrote to friends a few weeks ago outraged at the Trump Administration’s attack on Jenner & Block, the law firm in Chicago where I worked decades ago as a cub lawyer and for which ever since I have always maintained the warmest feelings of loyalty and respect.  

In recent weeks, with new ferocity in the last few days, Harvard University, another institution of which I am an alum, has come under attack by the Trump Administration. This is an attack hardly aimed just at Harvard, but at the entire fabric of higher education in America. Trump’s selective aim at Harvard is taken almost directly from the Nazi playbook’s attack on Frankfurt University very short weeks after Hitler took power in Germany in January 1933.

An email arrived this week from Alan Garber, Harvard’s president. Harvard continues to stand firm, though under enormous pressure.  Lawyer-in-endless-recovery that I am, I was immediately drawn by the link to Harvard’s complaint filed in federal court to resist this blatant Trump attack. Reading through the complaint to the end, I was delighted to see that the lead law firm (joined by others) filing Harvard’s complaint was Jenner & Block. The federal district court in Boston has already entered the Temporary Restraining Order requested by Harvard.

When Trump earlier this year unleashed his retributive attacks on law firms, a few (like Jenner & Block) resisted. Many others ingloriously capitulated. In the case against Trump by the Seattle-based resister, Perkins Coie, a federal district court judge has already ruled Trump’s action to be unconstitutional. In the Jenner & Block case, a district court has granted the firm’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order protecting the firm from Trump’s vengeance. As soon as the process plays out, the court in that case, too, will find Trump’s action unconstitutional. (Trump’s Executive Order against Jenner & Block has just been ruled unconstitutional by a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C.)

Over 500 law firms across the country signed an amicus brief supporting Jenner & Block’s request for the restraining order, However, as Michael Klarman argues in his powerful lecture on Trump 2.0, every law firm in the country should have stood together. No law firm should have caved to Trump’s demands, And no law firm should have stood silent on the sidelines, as many more did.

Every voice must be raised against the incessant lawless Trump bullying. Institutions of higher education must stand together.  I therefore humbly ask, please communicate today with the leadership of your institution. Please ask that institution to stand loudly and firmly in denunciation of Trump’s attack on higher education. Harvard has been selected as Trump’s first, but certainly not last, victim.

Donald Trump has a lot of trouble with history, especially with American history. Though just last week he demonstrated utter incomprehension (or was he just blowing his racist dog whistle?) about South African history. As for American history, just a month ago was the 250^th anniversary of the rout of the British Redcoats marching back to Boston from their largely fruitless foray to destroy the resistance supplies and arrest resistance leaders in Concord.

It was the Minutemen from all the surrounding towns hurrying to take up positions behind walls and fences at Merriman’s Corner who delivered on the Redcoats the guerrilla fire that peppered their retreat all the 16 miles back to Boston. A long-ago cousin of mine was among the Minutemen from Reading, Massachusetts who were the first to engage the Redcoats at Merriman’s Corner. My fourth great-grandfather was in the Reading regular militia who picked up the harassment of the Redcoats in Cambridge, hours later. 

How could those two and their compatriots ever have foreseen that I would want, and I would want my friends to want, to be a Minuteman and militiaman today in opposing the Trump vision of 21^st century American autocracy?  Finding solidarity today to defend not just Harvard, but all of American higher education, with letters, voices, and demonstrations. That is today’s call to action on today’s Battle Road where Trump must be opposed, all across America.  

I am pleased, proud, angry, and hopeful.