Ronald Sullivan: The Ideal of Justice in the Face of Controversy and Evil | Lex Fridman Podcast #170
the following is a conversation with ronald sullivan a professor at harvard law school known for taking on difficult and controversial cases he was on the head legal defense team for the patriots football player aaron hernandez in his double murder case he represented one of the gina's six defendants and never lost the case during his years in washington dc's public defender services office in 2019 ronald joined the legal defense team of harvey weinstein a film producer facing multiple charges of rape and other sexual assault this decision met with criticism from harvard university students including an online petition by students seeking his removal as faculty dean of winter pals then a letter supporting him signed by 52 harvard law school professors appeared in the boston globe on march 8 2019. following this the harvard administration succumbed to the pressure of a few harvard students and announced that they will not be renewing ronald sullivan's dean position this created a major backlash in the public discourse over the necessary role of universities in upholding the principles of law and freedom at the very foundation of the united states this conversation is brought to you by brooklyn and sheets wine access online wine store monk pack low carb snacks and blinkist app that summarizes books click their links to support this podcast as a side note let me say that the free exchange of difficult ideas is the only mechanism through which we can make progress truth is not a safe space truth is humbling and being humbled can hurt but this is the role of education not just in the university but in business and in life freedom and compassion can co-exist but it requires work and patience it requires listening to the voices and to the experiences unlike our own listening not silencing this is the lex friedman podcast and here is my conversation with ronald sullivan you were one of the lawyers who represented the hollywood producer harvey weinstein in advance of a sexual assault trial for this harvard forced you to step down as faculty deans you and your wife of winter pals can you tell the story of this saga from first deciding to represent harvey weinstein to the interesting complicated events that followed yeah sure so i got a call one morning from a colleague at the harvard law school who asked if i would consent to taking a call from from harvey uh he wanted to meet me and and chat with me about representing him i said yes and one thing led to another i drove out to connecticut uh where he was staying and met with him and some of his advisors and then a day or two later i decided to to take the case this would have been back in uh january of 2019 i believe so the sort of cases i i have a very small practice most of my time is teaching and and writing uh but i tend to take cases that most uh deem to be uh impossible uh uh i take the challenging sorts of cases and and this was uh fit the bill it was quite challenging in the sense that uh everyone had pre-judged the case when i say everyone i just mean the the general sentiment and the public uh uh had the case pre-judged uh even though the specific allegations did not regard uh the any of the people in the um in the new yorker that's the new yorker article that sort of uh uh uh exposed uh everything that was going on uh allegedly with with harvey so i decided to uh to take the case and uh i did is there a philosophy behind you taking on these very difficult cases like is it a set of principles is it just your love of the law or is it is there like set of principles why you take on the cases yeah i do i take on i'd like to take on hard cases and i like to take on the cases that uh are with unpopular uh defendants unpopular clients um and with respect to the latter that's where harvey weinstein fell it's because uh we need lawyers and good lawyers to take the unpopular cases because that those sorts of cases determine what sort of criminal justice system we have uh if we don't protect the rights and the liberties of those whom the society deems to be the least and the last the unpopular client and that's the the camel's nose under the tent if we let the camel's nose under the temp the entire tent is going to collapse that is to say if we short circuit the rights of a client like harvey weinstein then the next thing you know someone will be at your door knocking it down and violating your rights there's a there's a certain creep there with respect to um the way in which the the state will respect the civil rights and civil liberties of people and these are the sorts of cases that that tested so you know for example uh there's a there was a young man many many years ago named ernesto miranda by all accounts he was not a likable guy he was a you know three-time knife thief and not a likable guy but lawyers stepped up and took his case and because of that we now have the miranda uh warnings you have the right to remain silent those those warnings that uh officers are are forced to give to people so it is through these cases that we express oftentimes the best values in our criminal justice system so i i proudly take on these sorts of cases in order to vindicate not only the individual rights of the person whom i'm representing but the rights of citizens writ large who most of whom do not experience the criminal justice system and it's partly because of lawyers who take on these sorts of cases and establish rules that protect us uh for average everyday ordinary concrete citizens as from a psychological perspective just you as a human is there is there fear is there stress from all the pressure because if you're facing i mean the whole point a difficult case especially in the latter that you mentioned of the going against popular opinion you have the eyes of millions potentially looking at you with anger as you try to defend uh you know this these set of laws that this country is built on no it doesn't stress me out particularly it uh you know it sort of comes with the the territory i try not to get uh too excited in either direction so a big part of my practice is wrongful convictions and i um i've gotten uh over 6 000 people out of prison who've been wrongfully incarcerated and a subset of those people have been convicted and you know if people have been in jail 20 30 years who have gotten out and those are the sorts of cases where people uh praise you and and that sort of thing and so look i i do uh the work that i do i'm proud of the work that i do and in that sense i'm uh sort of a part-time taoist you know the expression reversal was the movement of the dow uh so i don't get too high i don't get too low i just try to do my work and and represent people to the best of my ability so one of the hardest cases of recent history would be the harvey weinstein in terms of popular opinion or unpopular opinion so well if you continue on that line uh what was that where does that story take you of taking on this case yeah so i i took on the case and then there was some uh some a few students at the college so let me back up i had an administrative post at harvard college which is a separate entity from the harvard law school harvard college is the undergraduate portion of harvard university and the law school is obviously the law school and i um initially was appointed as master of one of the houses we did a name change five or six years into it and and were called faculty deans but the houses at harvard are based on the college system of oxford in in cambridge so when uh students go to harvard after their first year they're assigned to a particular house uh or college and that's where they live and eat and so forth these are undergraduates these are undergraduate students so i was responsible for one of the the houses that's as its faculty dean so it's an administrative appointment at the college and some students who didn't clearly didn't like harvey weinstein began to protest about the representation and from there it just mushroomed into one of the most craven cowardly acts by any university in modern history it's a just a complete and utter repudiation of academic freedom uh and it is a decision that harvard certainly will live to regret it's frankly it's an embarrassment we expect students to do what students do and and i've encouraged students to have their voices heard and to protest i mean that's what students do what is vexing are the adults the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences claudine gay absolutely craven and cowardly the dean of the college same thing rakesh karana kraven and cowardly they capitulated to the loudest voice in the room and ran around afraid of 19 year olds oh my 19 year olds are upset that i i need to i need to do something and uh it appeared to me that they so so desired the approval of students that they were afraid to make uh the tough decision and the right decision it really could have been an important teaching exactly moment teaching moment yeah very important teaching moment so they they forced you to step down from that uh faculty dean position at the house it um i would push back on the description a little bit so so so i so i i don't write the the uh you know the references to the op-ed i did the new york times harvard made a mistake by making me step down or or something like that so i i don't write those things uh i did not step down and and refused to step down uh harvard declined to renew my my my contract and you know and i made it clear that i i was not going to resign as a matter of of principle and and force them to um do the the cowardly act that they in fact uh did and you know the the the worst thing about this uh they did uh the college uh uh dean gay and dean corona uh commission this survey they've never done this before survey from the students you know how do you feel at winthrop house yeah and the funny thing about the survey is they never release the results why did they never release the results they never released the results because i would bet my salary that the results came back positive for me and it didn't fit their narrative because most of the students were fine yes most of the students were fine it was the the loudest voice in the room so they never released it and you know i challenge them to this day release it yes release it but no but you know they wanted to uh uh create this narrative uh and um when the data didn't support the narrative then they just got got silent oh we're we're not going to release it the students demanded it i demanded it and they wouldn't release it because i am i i just i just know in my heart of hearts that it it was um uh it came back in my favor that most students at winthrop house said they were fine there was a group of students that weaponized the a term uh unsafe they said we felt unsafe and they they banted this term about uh but i'm again i'm confident that that the majority of students at winthrop house said they felt completely uh fine and the uh felt safe and so forth and the supermajority i am confident either said i feel great at winthrop or you know i don't care one way or the other and then there was some minority who had had a different view but um you know uh lessons learned uh i um it was a wonderful opportunity at winthrop i met some amazing students over the uh my 10 years as master and then faculty dean and i'm still in touch with a number of students some of whom are now my students at the at the law school so uh in the end i thought it was a it ended up being a great uh experience uh the national media was just wonderful and it's just wonderful people wrote such wonderful articles and accounts and wagged their finger appropriately at harvard uh uh compared me to john adams which i don't think is an app comparison but it's always great to read something like that uh yeah but but anyway that that was the harvard uh the harvard uh versus harvey uh situation so that that seems like a seminal mistake by harvard and harvard is one of the great universities in the world and so sort of its successes and its mistakes are really important for the world uh as a beacon of like how we make progress so what lessons for the bigger academia that get that's under fire a lot these days uh what bigger lessons do you take away like how do we make harvard great how do we make uh other universities yale mit great in the face of such mistakes well i think that we have moved into a model where we the the we have the consumerization of education uh that is to say we have feckless administrators uh who make policy based on what the students say now this comment is not intended to suggest that students have no voice in governance but it is to suggest that the faculty are there for a reason they are among the greatest minds on the planet earth in their particular fields at schools like harvard and yale stanford the schools that you mentioned mit quite literally the greatest minds on earth they're there for a reason things like curriculum and so forth uh are rightly in the province of faculty and while you take input and critique and so forth ultimately the grown-ups in the room have to be sufficiently responsible to take uh to take charge and to uh direct the course of a student's education and um you know you know my situation is one example where it really could have been an excellent teaching moment about the value of the sixth amendment about what it means to treat um what it means to treat people who are in the crosshairs of the criminal justice system but rather than having that conversation um it's just this consumerization model uh well there's a lot of noise out here so we're going to react in this sort of way higher education as well unfortunately has been commodified in other uh sorts of ways that has reduced or or impeded hampered these schools commitments to uh free and robust and open dialogue so to the degree that academic freedom uh doesn't sit squarely at the center of the academic mission uh any school is going to be in trouble and i really hope that that we weather this current political moment where um 19 year olds without degrees or running universities and get back to a a system where faculty where adults make decisions in the best interests of the university in the best interests of the student even to the degree though some of those decisions may be unpopular and that is going to require a certain courage and hopefully in time and i'm confident that in time um administrators are going to begin to push back on these current trends uh harvard's been around for a long time it's been around for a long time for a reason and one of the reasons is that it understands itself not to be static so i have every view that uh harvard is is going to adapt and get itself back on course and be around another 400 years at least that's my goal so i mean what this kind of boils down to is just having difficult conversation difficult debates uh when you mention sort of 19 year olds and it's funny i've seen this even at mit it's not that uh they shouldn't have a voice they should they they do seem to i guess you have to experience it and just observe it they have a strangely disproportionate power right right it's very interesting to uh to basically i mean you say yes there's great faculty and so on but you know it's not even just that the faculty is smart or wise or whatever it's that they're just silenced so the terminology that you mentioned is weaponized as sort of safe spaces or that certain conversations make people feel unsafe what do you think about this kind of idea you know is is there some things that are unsafe to talk about in the university setting is there lines to be drawn somewhere and uh just like you said on the flip side with a slippery slope is it too easy for the lines to be drawn everywhere yeah that's a great question so this idea of unsafe space at least the vocabulary derives from some research uh academic research about feeling psychologically uh unsafe and so the notion here is that there is uh there are forms of uh psychological disquiet that impedes people from uh experiencing the educational environment to the greatest degree uh possible and that's the uh argument uh i and assuming for a moment that uh people do have these feelings of of of disquiet at elite universities like mit and like harvard that's probably the safest space people are going to be in for their their their lives because when they get out into the the quote unquote real world uh they won't have the um the sorts of uh nets that these schools provide safety nets that these schools provide uh so to the extent that research is descriptive of a psychological feeling i think that the duty of the universities uh are to challenge people it seems to me that it's a shame to go to a place like harvard a place like mit yale any of these uh great institutions and come out the same person that you were when you went in uh that seems to be a horrible waste of four years and and money and and resources rather we ought to challenge students that they grow challenge some of the their most deeply held assumptions they they may continue to hold them but the point of an education is to rigorously interrogate um these fundamental assumptions that have guided you uh thus far and to do it uh fairly and and civilly so the extent that there are lines that should be drawn there's a long tradition in the university of civil discourse so you should draw a line somewhere between civil discourse and uncivil discourse the purpose of a university is to talk difficult conversations tough issues uh talk directly and frankly but do it civilly and you know so to you know yell and cuss at somebody and that sort of thing well you know do that on your own space but observe the norms of civil discourse at the university uh so look i think that the presumption ought to be that uh the most difficult topics are appropriate to talk about at a universe that that ought to be the presumption now you know should uh um mit for example give its prom imprimatur to someone who is espousing uh the flat earth theory you know the earth is flat right so there if if certain ideas uh are are so uh contrary to the scientific uh and and cultural thinking of the of the moment yeah there's space there to draw a line and say yeah we're not going to uh give you this platform to uh tell our students that the earth is is flat uh but you know it's a topic that's controversial but contestatory that's what universities are for if you don't like the idea present better ideas and articulate them and i i think there needs to be a mechanism outside of the space of ideas of humbling like i've done martial arts for a long time i got my ass kicked a lot i think that's really important i mean the in the space of ideas i mean even just in engineering just all the math classes my memories of math which i love is kind of pain is basically coming face to face with with the idea that i'm not special that i'm much dumber than i thought i was and that anything accomplishing anything in this world requires really hard work that's really humbling that makes you that that puts you because i remember when i was 18 and 19 and i thought i was gonna be the smartest the best fighter the the nobel prize winning uh you know all those kinds of things and then you come with face to face with reality and it hurts and it feels like there needs to be efficient mechanisms from the best universities in the world to without abusing you it's a very difficult line to to walk without like uh mentally or physically abusing you be able to humble you and that's what i felt was missing in these very difficult very important conversations is the 19 year olds when they spoke up the mechanism for humbling them with ideas was missing i got kind of gotten broken broken down because as you say there does like i sensed fear ever everything was permeated with fear and fear is uh paralyzing fear is destructive especially in a place that's supposed to be all about freedom of ideas right and i mean i don't know if you have anything um any thoughts to say on this whole idea of cancer culture where people um a lot of people use it it's become political so saying maybe outside of the world to politics is this uh uh uh you have do you have thoughts about it does it bother you that people are sort of put in this bin and uh labeled us something and then thereby you can ignore everything they say i mean stephen pinker there's a lot of harvard folks that are fighting against i guess these set of ideas but do you have do you have thoughts i think that we as a culture are way way way too quick to cancel uh people and it it's become almost reflexive now uh you know someone uh says something or makes an an offhand comment uh even a mistake uh there's there's a move to simply uh cancel uh folks so i think that this uh quote-unquote council culture uh has really gotten out of control at this point it's forcing people to be robotic uh in many ways robots i will say not now i know i'm venturing into your uh intellectual domain for future robots watching this no offense and there are minute it's discouraging a lot of good people from um getting into public life in any sort of way because you know who needs the who needs the stress uh of it well in some sense you're an inspiration that you're able to withstand the the pressure the pressure of the masses but it is as i said it's a sad aspect of human nature that we kind of get into these crowds and we get we start chanting and it's fun for some reason and then you forget yourself and then you sort of wake up the next day not not having uh anticipated the consequences of all the chanting yeah and we get ourselves in trouble in that i mean there's some responsibility on the on social networks and the mechanisms by which they make it more frictionless to do the chanting to do the canceling to do the outrage and all that kind of stuff so i actually on the technology side have a hope that that's fixable but yeah it does seem to be you know it almost like the internet showed to us that we have a lot of broken ways about which we communicate with each other and we're trying to figure that out same with the university the this mistake by harvard showed that we need to reinvent what the university is and i mean all of this is it's almost like we're finding our baby dear legs and trying to strengthen the institutions that have been very successful for for a long time you know the really interesting thing about harvey weinstein and you choosing these exceptionally difficult cases is also thinking about what it means to defend evil people what it means to defend these we could say unpopular and you might push back against the word evil but bad people in society um first of all do you think there's such a thing as evil or do you think all people are good and it's just circumstances that create evil and also is there somebody too evil for the law to defend and so that's a so the first question that's a deep uh philosophical question whether the category of evil uh does any work uh for me it does for me i i do think that i do subscribe to that category that there is uh evil uh in the world as conventionally uh understood so uh so there are many who will say yeah that just doesn't doesn't do any work for me uh but the category evil in fact does intellectual work for me and i i understand it as as something that uh that exists uh is it genetic or is it the circumstance like what kind of work does it do for you intellectually i think that it's uh it's highly contingent that is to say that the conditions in which one grows up and so forth uh uh uh begins to create this category that we may think of as evil now there are um studies and and whatnot that show that uh certain um uh brain abnormalities and so forth are are more prevalent in say serial killer so there may be a biological predisposition to certain forms of conduct but uh i don't i don't have the uh biological evidence to make a statement that someone is born evil in and you know i i'm not a determinist thinker in that way so you come out the womb evil and you're destined to be that way um to the extent there may be biological uh determinants uh there still require some um uh nurture uh as well uh so but do you still put a responsibility for the on the individual of course yeah we all make choices and so some responsibility on the individual indeed we live in a culture unfortunately where a lot of people have a constellation of bad choices in front of them and that makes me very sad yeah um that the people grow up with with predominantly bad choices in in front of them and that's unfair and that's that that's on all of us but yes i do think we make we make choices wow that's so powerful the constellation of bad choices hey that's such a powerful way to think about sort of equality which is this the set of trajectories before you that you could take if you just roll the dice because uh you know life is is a kind of optimization problem sorry to take us into math over a set of trajectories under imperfect information uh so you're gonna do a lot of stupid shit to put it uh in technical terms uh but uh the the the fraction of the trajectories that take you into into bad places or into good places is really important and that's ultimately what we're talking about and evil might be just a little bit of a predisposition biologically but the rest is just trajectories that you can take i've been studying hitler a lot recently i've been reading probably way too much and it's it's interesting to think about all the possible trajectories right that could have avoided the this particular individual developing the hate that he did the following that he did the the actual final uh there's a few turns in him psychologically where he went from being a leader that just wants to conquer and to somebody who allowed his anger and emotion to take over where he started making mistakes for uh in terms of militarily speaking but also started doing you know evil things and all the possible trajectories that could have avoided that are fascinating including he wasn't that bad at painting a drawing right that's that's true from the very beginning and uh and his time with vienna there's all these possible things to think about and of course there's millions of others like him that never came to power and all those kinds of things uh so but that goes to the second question on the on the side of evil do you think and and hitler is often brought up as like an example of somebody who is like the epitome of evil do you think you would if you got that same phone call after world war ii and hitler survived uh during war you know at the trial for war crimes would you take the case defending uh adolf hitler if you don't want to answer that one is there a line to draw for evil for who to not to defend no i think i think everyone i'll do the second one first everyone has a right to a defense if you're charged criminally in in the united states of america so i know i do not think that there's someone so evil that they do not deserve a defense process matters process helps us get to results more accurately than we would otherwise so it is important and it's vitally important and indeed more important for someone deemed to be evil to receive the same quantum of process and the same substance of process that anyone else would it's vitally important to the health of our criminal justice system for that to happen so yes uh everybody uh hitler included were he charged in the united states for a crime that occurred in the united states uh uh yes um um whether i would do it if i were a public defender and assign the case uh yes i started my career as a public defender i represent anyone who was assigned to me i think that is our uh our duty uh in private uh uh practice uh i have choices uh and i i likely based on the hypo you gave me and i would tweak it a bit because it would have to be a a u.s united states yeah and so but but i get the broader point and don't want to bog down in technicalities i'd likely uh pass right right now as i i see it unless um it was a case where no nobody else would would would represent him uh you know then uh i i would i would think that i have some sort of duty and an obligation uh to to to do it uh but yes everyone uh absolutely deserves a right to competent counsel that is a beautiful idea it's difficult to think about it in the face of public pressure it's just i mean um it's kind of terrifying to watch the masses during this past year of 2020 to wash the power of the masses to make a decision before any of the data is out if the data is ever out any of the details any of the processes and i and there is an anger to the justice system there's a lot of people that feel like even though the ideal you describe is a beautiful one it does not always operate justly it does not operate to the best of its ideals it operates unfairly can we go to the big picture of the criminal justice system what do you given the ideal works about our criminal justice system and what is broken well there's a lot broken uh right right now and i usually focus on on that uh but uh in truth a lot uh works about our criminal justice system so there's a there's an old joke uh and it uh it it's funny but it it carries a lot of truth to it and the joke is that um in the united states we have the worst criminal justice system in the world except for every place else yeah and uh and yes we certainly have a number of problems uh and a lot of problems based on race and class and economic station but we have a process that privileges the liberty and that's a good feature of the criminal justice system so here's how it works the idea of the relationship between the individual and the state is such that in the united states we privilege uh liberty over and above very many values so much so that a statement by increased mather not you know terribly far from where we're sitting right now has gained traction uh over all these years and it's that better 10 guilty go free than one innocent person convicted that is an expression of the way in which uh we understand liberty to operate in our collective consciousness we would rather a bunch of guilty people go free than to than to um impact the liberty interests of any uh individual person so that's a guiding principle in our criminal justice system uh liberty and so we set a process that makes it difficult to convict people we have rules of procedure that are cumbersome and that slow down the process and that um exclude otherwise reliable evidence and this is all because we place a value on uh liberty and i think these are good things and it uh and it says a lot about our criminal justice system some of the bad features have to do with the way in which uh this country sees color as a proxy for criminality and and treats uh people of color in radically different ways in the in the criminal justice system uh from arrests to charging decisions to sentencing people of color are disproportionately impacted on all sorts of registers one example and it's a popular one that although there appears to be no uh distinguishable difference between uh drug use by whites and blacks in the country um uh blacks though only 12 percent of the population represent 40 of the uh the uh drug charges in in the country there's there's there's some disequities along uh race and class and the criminal justice system that we really have to have to have to fix and they've grown to more than than bugs in the system and have become features unfortunately of our system oh to to make it more efficient to make judgments so the racism makes it more efficient it uh it it efficiently uh moves people uh from society to the streets uh and that's uh and a lot of innocent people get caught up in that well let me ask in terms of the innocence so you've gotten a lot of people who are innocent uh you def uh i get i guess revealed their innocence demonstrated their innocence what's that process like what's it like emotionally psychologically what's it like legally to fight the system in uh through the process of revealing sort of uh the innocence of a human being yeah emotionally and psychologically it can be taxing uh i follow a model of uh what's called empathic representation and that is i i get to know my clients and their family that i get to know their strivings their aspirations their fears their sorrows so that certainly sometimes can do psychic injury uh on one uh if you you know you get really invested and really sad and and or happy and it uh it it it does become emotionally uh taxing but the idea of someone sitting in jail for 20 years completely innocent of a crime can you imagine sitting there every day for 20 years knowing that you factually did not do the thing that you were convicted of by a jury of your peers it it's got to be the most incredible thing in the world what the but the people who do it and the people who make it and come out on the other side as productive citizens are folks who say they they've come to an inner peace in their own minds and they say these bars aren't going to define me uh that my my humanity is uh it is there and it's it's immutable and they uh are not bitter which is amazing i i would tend to think that i'm not that good of a person i would be bitter for every day of 20 years if i were in in jail for something but you know but but people tell me that you know that they can't survive like that one cannot survive like that and you have to come to terms with it and uh and uh the the people whom i've exonerated i mean they they come out uh most of them uh come out and and they just uh really just take on life with a vim and and vigor without uh bitterness and it's it's a beautiful thing to see do you think it's possible to eradicate racism from the judicial system i do i think as uh i think that race insinuates itself in all aspects of our lives and the judicial system is not immune from that so to the extent we begin to eradicate dangerous and deleterious race thinking from society generally then it will uh be eradicated from the uh criminal justice system i think we've got a lot of work to do and i think it'll be a while but uh but i think it's it's doable i mean you know uh the country so historians will look back 300 years from now and take note of the incredible journey of uh diasporic africans in the in in the us an incredible journey from uh you know slavery uh to the the heights of politics and business and judiciary the academy and so forth and not a lot of time and actually not a lot of time and if we can have that sort of movement historically uh let's think about what the next 175 years will look like i'm not saying it's going to be short but i'm saying that if we keep at it keep getting to know each other a little better keep enforcing laws uh that prohibit uh the the sort of race-based discrimination that people have experienced and provide as a society opportunities for people to thrive in this world then i think we can we can see a better world and if we see a better world we'll see a better judicial system so i think it's kind of fascinating if you look throughout history and race is just part of that is uh we create the other and uh treat the other with disdain through the legal system but just through human nature i tend to believe we mentioned offline that i work with robots it sounds absurd to say especially to you especially because we're talking about racism and it's so prevalent today i do believe that there will be almost like a civil rights movement for robots because uh with the i think there's a huge value to society of having artificial intelligence systems that are uh that interact with humans that are and are human-like and the more they become human-like you will they will start they will start to ask very fundamentally human questions about freedom about suffering about justice and they will will have to come face to face like look in the mirror in asking the question just because we're biologically based just because we're sort of uh well just because we're human does that mean we're the only ones that deserve the rights again giving forming another other group which is robots and i'm sure there could be along that path different versions of other that we form so racism race is certainly a big other that we've made as you said a lot of progress on throughout the history of this country but it does feel like we always create as we make progress create new other groups and of course the other the other group that perhaps is outside the legal system that people talk about is the essential no i eat a lot of meat but the torture of animals you know the people talk about when we look back from you know a couple centuries from now look back at the kind of things we're doing to animals we might regret that we might see that in a very different light and it's kind of interesting to see the future trajectory of what we wake up to about the injustice in our in our ways um but the robot one is the one i'm especially focused on because uh but at this moment in time it seems ridiculous but i'm sure most civil rights movements throughout history seem ridiculous at first well it's interesting sort of outside of my uh intellectual bailiwick uh robots as i understand the development of um artificial intelligence uh though the um the aspect that uh still is missing is this notion of of consciousness uh and that it's it's consciousness that is the the thing that uh will uh will move um if it were to exist and i'm not saying that it can or will but if it were to exist would move robots from uh machines to um something different that ex something that experienced the world in a way analogous to what how we experience it um and also as i understand the science there's a um unlike what you see on on television that we're not we're not uh there yet in terms of uh this notion of uh the machines having uh a consciousness um uh or a great general intelligence all those kinds of things yeah yeah a huge amount of progress has been made and there is it's fascinating to watch so i'm on both minds as a person who's building them i'm realizing how sort of quote-unquote dumb they are but also looking at human history and how poor we are predicting the progress of innovation and technology it's obvious that we have to be humble by our ability to predict coupled with the fact that we keep uh to use terminology carefully here we keep discriminating against the intelligence of artificial systems the smarter they get the more ways we find to dismiss the their intelligence so this this has just been going on throughout where i it's almost as if we're threatened in the most primitive human way animalistic way we're threatened by the power of other creatures and we want to lessen dismiss them so consciousness is a really important one but the one i think about a lot in terms of consciousness the very engineering question is whether the display of consciousness is the same as the possession of consciousness so if a robot tells you they are conscious if a robot looks like they're suffering when you torture them if a robot is afraid of death and says they're afraid of death and are legitimately afraid like for in terms of just uh everything we as humans use to determine the ability of somebody to be their own entity they're the one that loves one that fears one that hopes one that can suffer if if the robot like in the dumbest of ways is able to display that we it changed it starts changing things very quickly uh i'm not sure what it is but it does seem that there's a huge component to consciousness that is a social creation like we together create our consciousness like we believe our common humanity together alone we wouldn't be aware of our humanity and the law as it protects our freedoms seems to be a construct of the social construct and when you add other creatures into it it's not obvious to me that like you have to build there will be a moment when you say this thing is not conscious i think there's going to be a lot of fake it until you make it and there'll be a very gray area between fake and make that uh is going to force us to contend with what it means to be an entity that deserves rights where all men are created equal the the men part might have to expand in ways that we are not yet anticipating that's very interesting i mean my favorite the fundamental thing i love about artificial intelligence is it gets smarter and smarter it challenges to think of uh what is right the questions of justice questions of freedom it basically challenges us to uh to understand our own mind to understand uh what uh like almost from an engineering first principles perspective to understand what it is that makes us human that is at the core of all the rights that we talk about and all the documents we write so even if we don't give rights artificial intelligence systems we may be able to construct more fair legal systems to protect us humans well i mean interesting ontological question uh between the the performance of consciousness and and and actual consciousness to the extent that it's um that actual consciousness is anything beyond some contingent reality uh but you've posed a number of of interesting philosophical questions and then there's also it strikes me that that philosophers of religion would pose another set of questions uh as well when you um deal with uh uh issues of uh of structure versus soul body versus soul and and uh it it would be a it will be a complicated mix and i suspect i'll be uh dust by the time those questions get get worked out and uh so yeah the soul the soul is a fun one there's no soul i'm i'm not sure maybe you can correct me but there's very few discussion of soul in our legal system right right correct so uh but there is a discussion about what constitutes a human being and i mean you gestured at the notion of uh the potential of the law uh widening the domain of uh so of of human being so and in that sense right uh you know people are very angry because they can't uh uh get uh sort of pain and suffering damages if someone negligently kills a pet because a pet is not a human being and people say well i love my pet but the law sees uh a pet as chattel as property like this this water bottle uh so the the current legal definitions um trade on a definition of humanity that may not be worked out in any sophisticated way but certainly um there's a there's a share broad and shared understanding of what what it what it means so probably doesn't uh explicitly contain a definition of something like soul but it's it's more robust than you know a carbon-based organism uh there's something uh a little more distinct about what the law thinks a human being is so if we can dive into uh we've already been doing it but if we can dive into more difficult territory so uh 2020 had the tragic case of george floyd when you reflect on the protests on the racial tensions over the death of george floyd how do you make sense of it all uh what do you take away from these events well the george floyd moment occurred at at an historical moment where people were in quarantine for covid um and people um have these uh cell phones to a degree greater than we've ever had them before and this was a sort of the straw that broke the camel's back after a number of these sorts of cell phone videos uh surfaced people were fed up uh they there was unimpeachable uh evidence of um a form of of mistreatment whether it constitutes murder or manslaughter there the trial is going on now and jurors will figure that out but but there was widespread appreciation that a fellow human being was was mistreated that we were just talking about humanity that there was um not a sufficient recognition of this person's uh humanity the common humanity of this person the common humanity of this person well well said and people were fed up so we were already in this covet space where we were exercising care for one another uh and it there was just an explosion the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the you know civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s and people uh simply said enough enough enough enough this has to stop we cannot treat uh fellow citizens in in this way and we can't do it with impunity and the young people say we're just we're just we're not gonna stand for it anymore they took to the streets but with the millions of people protesting there is nevertheless taking us back to the most difficult of trials you have the trial like you mentioned that's going on now of derek showing of one of the police officers involved uh what are your thoughts what are your predictions on this trial where the law the process of the law is trying to proceed in the face of so much racial tension yeah it's it's going to be an interesting trial i've i've been keeping an eye on it there in jury selection now today as we're we're talking uh so a lot's going to depend on what sort of jury gets elected uh yeah how sorry to take sorry to interrupt but uh so one of the interesting qualities of this trial maybe you can correct me if i'm wrong but uh the cameras are allowed in the courtroom at least during the juror selection so so you get to watch some of this stuff and the other part is the jury selection again i'm very inexperienced but it seems like selecting and what is it unbiased jury is really difficult for this trial it's it almost like i i i don't know uh me as a listener like listen you know listening to people that are trying to talk their way into the jury kind of thing trying to decide is this person really unbiased or are they just trying to hold on to their like deeply held emotions and trying to get onto the jury i mean it's incredibly difficult process i don't know if you can comment on a case so difficult like the ones you've mentioned before how do you select a jury that represents the people and doesn't and and carries the sort of the ideal of the law yeah so a couple things so first yes it is televised and it will be televised as they say gavel the gavel so the entire trial the whole thing is going to be televised so uh people are getting a view of how uh laborious jury selection can be i think as of yesterday they had picked six jurors and it's it's taken a week and they have to get to 14. uh so they've got you know uh probably another week or or more to to do i've been in jury trials where it took a month to choose a jury so that's the most important part you have to you have to choose the right uh sort of jury so unbiased in the criminal justice system has a particular meaning and it it means that um that uh let me tell you what it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that a person uh is not aware of the case it also does not mean that a person has informed an opinion about the case those are two popular misconceptions what it does mean is that notwithstanding whether an individual has formed an opinion notwithstanding whether an individual knows about the case that individual can set aside any prior opinions can set aside any notions that they've developed about the case and listen to the evidence presented at trial in conjunction with the judge's instructions on how to understand and view that evidence so if a person can do that then they're considered unbiased so you know as a long-time defense attorney i you know i would be hesitant in a big case like this to pick a juror who's never heard of the case or anything going around because i'm thinking well who is this person and what what what in the world do they do uh uh so uh or or are they lying to me i mean how can you not have heard about uh this case um so they may bring other problems so i you know i don't mind so much people who've heard about the case or folks who've formed initial opinions uh but you you what you don't want is people who uh have tethered themselves to that opinion uh in a way that uh you know they can't be convinced uh otherwise so um but you also have people who uh as you suggested who just lie because they want to get on the jury or lie because they want to get off the jury so sometimes people come and say you know the most ridiculous outrageous offensive things uh to know because they know that they'll get excused for pause and others who um you can tell uh really badly want to get on the jury so they're you know they're just they pretend to be the the most uh neutral unbiased person in the world uh what the law calls the reasonable person we have in law the reasonable person standard yeah and i would tell my class the uh you know the the reasonable person in in real life is the person that you would be least likely to want to have a drink with the most boring uh neutral not interesting sort of person in the world and so a lot of jurors engage in the performative act of presenting themselves as the most sort of even killed rational reasonable person because they really want to get on the jury yeah there's an interesting uh question i apologize that i haven't watched a lot because it is very long i've watched it uh you know there's there's certain questions you've asked in the juris you asked in the jury selection i remember uh i think one jumped out at me which is uh you know something like does the fact that this person is a police officer make you feel any kind of way about them so trying to get it that you know i don't know what that is i guess that's bias and that's such a difficult question to ask like i asked myself of that question like how much you know we all kind of want to pretend that we're not racist we don't uh judge we don't have we're like these per word the reasonable human but you know legitimately asking yourself like are you what are the what are the prejudgments you have in your mind uh is that even impossible for a human being like when you look at yourself in the mirror and think about it is it possible to actually answer that yeah i look i i do not believe that people can be completely unbiased we all have baggage and bias and bring it wherever we go including to court what you want is to try to find a person who can at least recognize yeah when a bias is working and actively try to do the right thing that's the best we can we can ask so if a juror says yeah you know i grew up in a place where i tend to believe what police officers say that's just how i grew up but if the judge is telling me that i have to listen to every witness equally then i'll you know i'll do my best and i won't weigh that testimony any higher than i would any other testimony if you have someone answer a question like that that sounds more sincere to me uh sounds more honest and if you want a person you want a person to try to do that and then in closing arguments right as the lawyer right i'd say something like ladies and gentlemen you know we chose you to be on this jury because you swore that you would do your level best to be fair that's why we chose you and i'm confident that you're going to do that here so when you heard that police officer's testimony the judge told you you can't give more credit to that testimony just because it's a police officer and i trust that you're going to do that and that you're going to look at witness number three you know john smith you're going to look at john smith john smith has a different recollection and you're duty-bound duty bound to look at that testimony and this person's credibility you know the same degree as that other witness right and now what you have is just a he said she said matter and this is a criminal case that has to be reasonable doubt right so you know so you and and really someone who's trying to do the right thing uh it's helpful but no you're not going to just find 14 people with no biases that's that's absurd well that's that's fascinating that uh especially the way you're inspiring the way you're speaking now is uh i mean i guess you're calling on the jury that's kind of the whole system is you're calling on the jury each individual and the jury to step up and really think you know to step up and be their uh most thoughtful selves actually most introspective like you're trying to basically ask people to uh be their best selves and that's and they i i guess a lot of people step up to that yeah that's what this system works i'm very i'm very pro jury juries they they get it right it works a lot of the time most of the time and they really work hard to do it so what do you think happens i mean maybe i'm not so much on the legal side of things but on the social side it's like with the o.j simpson trial do you think it's possible that derek shawn does not get convicted of the what is the second degree murder how do you think about that how do you think about the potential social impact of that the the riots the protests the either either direction any words that are said the tension here could be explosive especially with the cameras yeah so yes there's certainly a possibility that he he'll be acquitted for homicide charges for the jury to convict they have to make a determination as to officer chovin's former officer chovin's state of mind whether he intended to cause some harm whether he was grossly reckless in causing harm so much so that he disregarded a known risk of death or serious bodily injury and as you may have read in the papers yesterday the judge allowed a third degree murder charge in kentucky which is cons it's the mindset the state of mind there is not an intention but it's a depraved indifference uh and what that means is that the jury doesn't have to find that he intended to do anything uh rather they could find that he was just indifferent to a risk uh that's dark yeah yeah i'm not sure what's worse uh yeah well that's that's a good point but uh but but it's another basis for the jury uh to convict but but look uh you never know what what happens when you go to a jury trial so there could be a um an acquittal and if there is i imagine there would be massive uh uh protests uh if he's convicted i i i don't think that would happen uh because i just don't see at least nothing i've seen or read suggest that there's a a big pro uh chauvin camp out there ready to protest well there could be a is there also uh potential tensions that could arise from the sentencing i don't know how that exactly works sort of not enough years kind of thing yeah it could be like all that kind of a lot could happen so it depends on what he's convicted of uh you know one count i think is like up to 10 years another counts up to 40 years uh so it depends what he's convicted of and yes it depends on how much of the how much time the judge gives him if he is convicted uh that there's a lot of space for people to be very angry and so we will we will see what happens i just feel like with the judge and and the lawyers there's an opportunity to have really important long-lasting speeches i don't know if they think of it that way especially with the cameras it it feels like they have the capacity to heal or to divide um do you ever think about that as a as a lawyer as a legal mind that your words aren't just about the case but about the they'll reverberate through history potentially um that is that is certainly a possible consequence of things you say i don't think that most lawyers think about that uh in the context of the case your role is much more narrow you're the partisan advocate as a defense lawyer partisan advocate for uh that client as a prosecutor you're a minister of justice um attempting to prosecute that particular case but the reality is you are absolutely correct that sometimes the things you say will have a shelf life and you mentioned o.j simpson before you know if the glove doesn't fit uh you must have quit it's gonna be you know just in in our lexicon for probably a long time now so so it it happens but that's not uh and and shouldn't be uh foremost on your mind right what what do you make uh what do you make of those jason trout do you do you have a thoughts about it he's uh he's out and about and on social media now he's a public figure is there uh lessons to be drawn from that whole saga well you know that was an interesting case i was a young public defender i want to say in my first year as a public defender when that verdict came out so that case was important in so many ways one it was the first dna case a major dna case and there were significant lessons learned from that one mistake that the prosecution made was uh that they didn't present the science in a way that a lay jury could understand it um and uh what johnny cochran did was he understood the science and was able to uh uh translate that into a into a vocabulary that he bet that that jury understood uh so so cochran was dismissive of a lot of dna they say you know he said something like oh you know they say they found you know uh such and such amount of dna that's just like me you know wiping my finger against my nose and and and just that little bit of dna and uh that was effective because the prosecution hadn't done a good job of establishing that yes it's microscopic you don't need that much yes wiping your hand on your nose and touching something you can transfer a lot of dna and that gives you good information yeah but you know it was the first time that the public generally and that jury maybe since high school science had heard you know you know nucleotide i mean it was just all these terms getting thrown at them and and but it was not weaved into a narrative so cochrane taught us that no matter what type of case it is no matter what science is involved it's still about storytelling it's still about a narrative and he was uh and he was great uh at that at that uh at that narrative and was consistent uh with his narrative all the way out um another uh lesson that was relearned uh it's that you know you never ask a question to what you don't know the answer that's like uh trial advocacy 101 yeah and so when they gave uh o.j simpson the glove and it wouldn't fit you know you don't you don't do things where you just don't know how it's going to turn out it was way way too risky and then and and i think that's what acquitted him because that glove the glove just wouldn't fit and he got to do this and ham in front of the camera and all of that and uh and it was big do you think about do you think about representation of storytelling like you yourself and your absolutely absolutely we tell stories it is fundamental we uh since time immemorial we have told stories to help us make sense of the world around us so as a scientist you tell a different type of story but we as a public have told stories from time immemorial to to help us make sense of the physical and the natural uh world and uh we are still a a species that is moved by storytelling so that that's first and and last in trial work you have to tell a good story um and you know the basic introductory books about trial work uh teach young students young students and young lawyers to to start in opening with this case is about this case is about and then you fill in the blank and you know that's your narrative that's the narrative you're gonna you're gonna tell and of course you can do the ultra dramatic the glove doesn't fit kind of uh the climax and all those kinds of things yes but that's the best of narratives the best of stories yes speaking of other really powerful stories that you were involved with is the aaron hernandez trial and the whole story the whole legal case can you maybe overview the big picture uh story and legal case of aaron hernandez yeah so aaron whom i missed a lot so he was charged with a double murder in in in the case that i tried and this was a unique case in one of those impossible cases uh in part because aaron had already been uh convicted of a murder and so we had a client who was on trial for a double murder after having already been convicted of uh a separate murder and we had a jury pool uh just about all of whom uh knew that he had been convicted of a murder because he was a very popular football player in boston uh which is a big football town with the with the patriots uh so you know so everyone knew that he was a convicted murderer and here we are uh defending for uh in a double murder case um so that was the that was the context it was not a case in the sense that the this murder had gone gone unsolved for a couple of years and then a nightclub bouncer uh said something to a cop who was working at a club uh that uh aaron hernandez was somehow involved in that in that murder that happened in the theater district that's the district where all the clubs are in boston and where the the homicide occurred and once the police heard aaron hernandez's name then it was you know they went uh all out in order to to to do this and they found a guy named alexander bradley uh who uh was a a very significant uh uh uh a drug dealer in the uh sort of uh connecticut area uh ver very significant very powerful um and uh he essentially in exchange for a deal uh pointed to aaron said yeah i was with aaron and uh and aaron was the uh was the murderer uh so that's how the case came came to court okay so that that says the context what was your involvement in this case like legally intellectually psychologically win this particular uh second charge of murder so a friend uh called me jose baez who is the defense attorney and he comes to a class that i teach every year at harvard the trial advocacy workshop as one of my teaching faculty members it's a class where we teach students how to try cases so jose called me and said hey uh i got a call from massachusetts aaron hernandez uh you want to go and and talk to him uh with me so i said sure so we went up to the to the prison and um uh and met uh aaron and uh spoke with him for two or three hours that first time and before we left he said he he wanted to uh retain us uh he wanted to work with us and and that started the representation what was he like uh what would in that time what was he worn down by the whole process was there still he wasn't light in that he was not he he had i mean more than just the light he was luminous almost uh he had a radiant million dollar smile uh whenever you walked in uh my first impression i distinctly remember was wow this is what a professional athlete looks like and he walked in and he's just just bigger and more fit than you know than anyone you know anywhere and it's like wow this and you know when you saw him on television he looked kind of little and i was like so i remember thinking well what what do those other guys look like in person and and he's extraordinarily polite uh young uh is that i was surprised by how young uh he was both in mind and uh on body but chronologically i was you know thinking he was in his you know in his early 20s i believe uh but there seemed to be like an innocent stone uh in terms of just the way he saw the world uh i think that's right they picked that up from the from the documentary just taking that in i think that's right yeah yeah uh so there is a netflix documentary titled killer inside the mind of aaron hernandez what are your thoughts on this documentary i know if you've gotten a chance to see it i i did not i have not seen it i did not participate in it i know i was in it because of uh there was news footage uh that but i did not participate in it i had not talked to aaron about uh about uh press or anything uh before he he died uh my strong view is that the attorney-client privilege survives death and so i was not inclined to talk about anything that aaron and i talked about so i just didn't uh participate and and and never watched not even watch huh is that does that apply to most of your work do you try to stay away from the way the press perceives stuff um during uh yes i try to stay away from it i will view it afterwards i just hadn't gotten around to watching uh aaron because it's kind of it's kind of sad yeah so i just haven't watched it but i definitely stay away from the press during trial uh and you know there are some lawyers who watch it religiously to see what's going on but you know i'm i'm confident in my years of training and so forth that and that i can uh actively sense what's going on in the courtroom and and that i really don't need advice from joe 476 at gmail uh you know some random guy on the internet telling me how to try cases so yeah it's just to me it's just confusing and i just i keep it out of my mind and even if you think you can ignore it just reading it will have a a little bit of an effect on your mind i think that's oh i think that's right over time i might uh accumulate uh so the the documentary but in general it mentioned or kind of emphasized and talked about aaron's sexuality or sort of they were discussing basically the idea that he was a homosexual and some of the trauma some of the suffering that he endured in his life had to do with sort of fear given the society of of what his father would think of what others around him sort of especially in sport culture and football and so on so i don't know in your interaction with him was do you think that maybe even leading up to a suicide do you think his uh struggle with coming to terms with the sexuality had a role to play in much of his difficulties well i'm not gonna talk about my interactions with them and anything i derive from from that um but you know what i will say is that um a story broke on the on the radio uh at some point uh during the the trial that aaron had been in the same sex relationship with someone and some sport local sportscasters local boston sports casters or we really mushroomed uh the the the story so um he and everyone was aware of it you'll you also may know from the court record that the uh prosecutors floated a uh specious theory um for a minute but then backed off of it that you know that aaron was um that there was some sort of uh i guess gay rage at work with him and that might be a cause a motive for the killing and uh luckily they they really backed off for that that was quite an offensive uh claim in in in theory so um but um to answer your question more directly i mean i have no idea why he he killed himself it was a a surprise and a shock um i was scheduled to go see him like a couple days after it happened i mean he was anxious uh for um jose and i to come in and do the appeal from the murder which he was convicted for he wanted us to take over that appeal um he was talking about going back to football i mean he said well you talk about this or you earlier you talked about the sort of innocent aspect of him he said you know well ron maybe not maybe not the patriots but you know i want to get back in the league and i was like you know aaron that's that's going to be tough man but he really but you know he really believed it and uh and then you know for a few days later that to happen it was just it was a real shock to me like when you look back at that at his story does it make you sad very very uh i i thought uh so so one i i believe he he he absolutely did not uh commit the the the crimes that we acquitted him on uh i think that was the right answer uh for for for that um uh i don't know enough about bradley the first case i'm sorry to make uh make an opinion on but but in our case uh you know uh it was just he had the misfortune of having a famous name and the police department just really just just just really got got on him there so um uh yes it's it's i miss him a lot it was very very sad surprising yeah and and i mean just on the human side of course we don't know the full story but just everything that led up to suicide everything led up to an incredible professional football player you know that whole story if uh remarkably talented athlete remarkably talented athlete and it has to do with all the all the possible trajectories right that we can take through life as we were talking about before and some of them lead to uh to suicide sadly enough and it's it's always tragic when you have absolutely yeah some you know somebody with uh with great potential uh resulting in the things that happen right people love it when i ask about books i don't know if uh uh whether technical like legal or fiction non-fiction books throughout your life have had an impact on you if there's something you could recommend or something you could speak to about something that inspired ideas insights about this world complicated world of ours oh wow uh yeah so uh i i'll give you a a couple uh so one is uh contingency irony and solidarity by richard wardy he's a he's passed away now but was a philosopher at some of our major institutions princeton harvard stanford um contingency irony and solidarity at least that's a book that really helped me work through um a series of thoughts so it stands for the proposition that uh that our most deeply held beliefs uh are contingent that there there's nothing uh beyond history or prior to socialization that's definatory of the the the human being that's rory um and he says that uh our most deeply held beliefs are received wisdom and highly contingent along an uh a number of registers and he does that uh but then goes on to say that uh he nonetheless uh can hold strongly held beliefs recognizing their contingency but still believes them to be true and accurate it helps you to work through what could be an intellectual tension uh other words so so you don't delve into one doesn't delve into relativism everything is okay but he gives you a vocabulary to think about uh uh uh how to negotiate these these these realities uh do you share this tension i mean there there is a real tension it seems like even like the law the legal system is all just the construct of our human ideas and yet it seems to be uh almost feels fundamental to what a uh what a just society is yeah i i definitely share the tension and and love the the uh uh his his vocabulary in the way he's uh helped me resolve the the the tension so right i mean yeah yeah so like you know uh infanticide for example perhaps it's uh socially contingent perhaps it's received wisdom perhaps it's anthropological uh you know we need to propagate the species and i still think it's wrong yeah and uh and and and rorty uh has helped me develop a category to say to to say that no i can't provide any in rorty's words non-circular theoretical backup for this proposition at some point it's going to run me into in a circularity problem but that's okay i'm i i i hold this nonetheless and full recognition of its contingency but what it does is is is is makes you humble and and when you're humble that's good because you know this notion that ideas are always already in progress never fully formed uh i think is is is the sort of intellectual i strive to be and if i have a a a sufficient degree of humility that i don't have the final answer capital a then that's going to help me to get to better answers lowercase a and and and rorty does that and he talks about uh uh in in the solidarity part of the book he has this concept of imaginative uh the imaginative ability to see other different people as we instead of they and i just think it's a beautiful concept but he talks about this imaginative ability and it's this active process so i mean so that's a book that's done a lot of work uh for me uh over the the years um uh souls of black folk by w.b du bois uh was absolutely pivotal pivotal in my intellectual development uh one of the uh premier uh set of essays in the western literary tradition and it's a deep and profound sociological uh philosophical and historical analysis of the predicament of blacks in america from um one of our country's greatest polymaths it it's just a it's a beautiful text and uh and i go to it uh yearly um so for somebody like me so growing up in the soviet union the struggle the civil rights movement the struggle of race and all those kinds of things that that is you know this universal but it's also very much a journey of the united states it was kind of a foreign thing that i stepped into um is that something you would recommend somebody like me to read or is there other uh things about race that are good to connect because my my my flavor of suffering and just i'm a jew as well my flavor has to do with world war ii and the studies of that you know all the injustice is there so i'm now stepping into a new set of injustices and trying to learn the the landscape i would i would say anyone is is a better person for having read uh du bois it's just uh he's just a remarkable writer uh and thinker and it uh i mean and to the extent you're interested in learning another history he does it in a way that is uh quite sophisticated so it's a uh so um uh i it's interesting i was going to give you uh three books uh i i noted the accent when i met you but i didn't know exactly where you're from but the the other book i was going to say is dostoevsky's crime and punishment and uh i mean i've always wanted to go to saint pete's uh just to sort of see with my own eyes what the word pictures that dostoevsky created in crime and punishment and you know i love others of this stuff too the brothers care and myself and so forth but crime and punishment i first read in high school as a junior or senior and it is a deep and profound meditation on uh the the both the meaning and the measure of our lives and uh uh dostoevsky uh obviously in in in conversation with other uh thinkers um uh really gets at the uh the the crux of a fundamental philosophical problem what does it mean to be a human being and um and uh for that uh crime and punishment captured me as a teenager and that's another text that i returned to uh often we've talked about young people a little bit at the beginning of our conversation is there advice that you could give to a young person today thinking about their career thinking about their life thinking about uh making their way in this world yeah sure i'll share some advice it actually picks up on a question we talked about earlier with in in the academy in schools but it's some advice that a professor gave to me when i got to harvard and it is this that uh you have to be willing to come face to face with your intellectual limitations and keep going and that's it and it's hard for people i mean you mentioned this earlier to to face really difficult tasks to uh and particularly in these sort of elite spaces where you've excelled all your life and you come to mit and you're like wait a minute i don't understand this yeah wait this is hard i've never had something really hard before and there are couple options and a lot of people will pull back and take the gentleman or just a woman's b and and just go on or risk going out there giving it your all and still not quite getting it and that that that's a risk but it's a risk well worth it uh because you're just going to be the better person the better student for it and you know and even outside of the academy i mean come come face to face with your uh fears and keep going and keep going in in life and you're going to be the better person the better human being yeah it does seem to be i don't know what it is but it does seem to be that fear is a good indicator of something you should probably face yes like fear kind of shows the way a little bit uh not always you might not want to go into the cage with a lion but uh but maybe you should maybe uh let me ask sort of a darker question because we're talking about dostoevsky we might as well do you uh do you and connected to the uh freeing innocent people do you think about mortality do you think about your own death are you afraid of death i'm i'm not afraid of of death i do think about it more now uh because i'm now in my mid 50s so i used to not think about it much at all but the harsh reality is that i've got more time behind me now that i do in front of me and it kind of happens all of a sudden too you realize wait a minute i'm i'm i'm actually on the back nine now uh so uh yeah my mind moves to it from time to time i don't uh dwell on it i'm not afraid of it uh my own personal religious commitments i'm i'm i'm christian and my religious uh uh commitments uh buoy me uh that uh you know that that death and i i believe this death is not not not the end so i'm not afraid of it now this is not to say that i want to i want to i want to rush to the afterlife i'm i'm good right here for a long time i hope i've got you know 30 35 40 more years to go uh but um but uh but no i don't i don't really i don't fear death though we're we're we're finite creatures we're all gonna we're all gonna die well the mystery of it uh you know for for somebody at least for me we human beings want to figure everything out uh whatever the afterlife is there's still a mystery to it that that uncertainty it can be terrifying if you ponder it but maybe uh what you're saying is uh you haven't pondered it too deeply so far and it's worked out pretty good it's worked out yeah no no no complaints so you said uh again the sayevsky kind of was exceptionally good at getting to the core of what it means to be human do you think about like the why of why we're here the the meaning of this whole uh existence yeah no i i do i think uh and actually think that's the purpose of an education what does it mean to be a human being and in one way or another we set out to answer those questions and we do it in a different way i mean some may look to philosophy to answer uh these questions why is it in one's personal interest to um to do good to do just uh to do justice uh some may uh look at it through the economists lens uh some may look at it through the microscope in the laboratory that the phenomenal world is uh is is the meaning uh of life uh others may say that that's one uh vocabulary that's one description but the poet describes a reality to the same degree as a physicist but that's the purpose of an education it's to sort of work through these issues what does it mean to be a uh what does it mean to be a human being and i think it's a fascinating journey and i think it's a lifelong uh endeavor to figure out what is the thing that nugget that makes us uh human do you still see yourself as a student of course not yes i mean that's uh that's the best part about going into into university teaching you're you're a lifelong student i'm always learning i learn from my students and with my students and my colleagues and your you continue to read and and and learn and and modify opinions and i i think it's just a wonderful thing well ron uh i'm so glad i that uh somebody like you is uh carrying the fire of what uh is the best of harvard so it's a huge honor that you will spend so much time waste so much of your valuable time with me i really appreciate that not a waste at all i think a lot of people love it thank you so much for talking today thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with ronald sullivan and thank you to brooklyn sheets wine access online wine store monk pack low carb snacks and blinkist app that summarizes books click their links to support this podcast and now let me leave you with some words from nelson mandela when a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in he has no choice but to become an outlaw thank you for listening and hope to see you next time