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Updated March 29, 2025, at 10:30 p.m.
Roughly 70 percent of Harvard Law School’s professors accused the federal government of exacting retribution on lawyers and law firms for representing clients and causes opposed by President Donald Trump in a Saturday night letter to the school’s student body.
The letter, which was signed by 82 of the school’s 118 active professors as of this article’s publication, described Trump’s threats as a danger to the rule of law. It condemned the government for intimidating individuals based on their past public statements and threatening international students with deportation over “lawful speech and political activism.”
Nine emeritus professors also joined the statement.
Though interim HLS Dean John C.P. Goldberg was absent from the list of signatories, the letter was signed by most of the Law School’s top leadership. All three of HLS’ deputy deans — I. Glenn Cohen, Maureen E. “Molly” Brady ’08, and John Coates — signed the letter, as did former HLS Dean Martha L. Minow.
“While reasonable people can disagree about the characterization of particular incidents, we are all acutely concerned that severe challenges to the rule of law are taking place, and we strongly condemn any effort to undermine the basic norms we have described,” the letter stated.
The Trump administration has taken aim at elite law firms in recent weeks, through a series of orders to take away their lawyers’ security clearances and bar them from entering government offices. Three firms — WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Perkins Coie — have sued to block Trump’s orders. Others — Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — have opted to negotiate with the administration instead, agreeing to provide tens of millions of dollars in pro bono services to causes favored by Trump.
The White House has accused the firms of abusing the legal system, including “unethical conduct when litigating against the Federal government or pursuing baseless partisan attacks.” Many of the targeted firms had either previously been involved in investigating individuals with ties to the Trump administration or had represented clients who were at odds with Trump.
The impacted firms are all frequent employers of Harvard Law School graduates — and most of them regularly host recruiting events on the school’s campus. More than half of the Law School’s most recent graduating class now works at a big law firm.
The HLS faculty letter slammed both the Trump administration’s threats and firms’ decision to make concessions.
The letter also comes as many international Harvard affiliates express fear about their ability to take public stances on controversial issues. Roughly three weeks ago, former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was detained by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement following his involvement in the school’s pro-Palestine encampment last spring.
Several other students across the country have been detained by law enforcement since, though no such cases have been reported at Harvard to date. Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen who had written an op-ed urging Tufts to consider a student government resolution accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, was detained last week in Somerville.
The Constitution, the letter said, was “designed” to enable political disagreement without having to fear punishment.
“Neither a law school nor a society can properly function amidst such fear,” the letter continued.
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Goldberg’s absence from the letter was especially notable. So far, he — along with the other deans of Harvard’s schools — has declined to take a public stance on the Trump administration’s orders on higher education.
He was also not listed on a similar Wednesday joint letter from 79 current and former law school deans, including the law school deans of Cornell University, Georgetown University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
HLS professor Andrew M. Crespo ’05 said this was the first time in his decade as a professor that he had seen 90 colleagues agree “on anything.”
Benjamin M. Eidelson, another professor and signatory, wrote in a statement that, “a lot of the people who signed this letter are not big ‘open letter’ people.”
“Speaking for myself, it felt important to level with our students about how alarmed we are and just say outright that this assault on civil liberties and the right to counsel is not normal,” he added.
—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.
—Staff writer Bradford D. Kimball can be reached at bradford.kimball@thecrimson.com.
