A former Harvard University overseer has been named in two ethics complaints over his law firm billing the university $42 million while he was on Harvard’s Board of Overseers.
The Attorney General of Massachusetts is investigating whether or not it was ethical for Harvard to pay law firm Wilmer Hale these millions of dollars while partner William Lee was a member of the Board of Overseers and director of the Harvard Corporation.
The New York Post reported on March 7 “that the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and the state’s attorney general have been sent formal complaints accusing Lee of ‘possible conflict of interest by trustee/director with pecuniary interest in service provider to Harvard.’”
“Lee, who graduated from Harvard in 1972, served on the university’s board of directors from July 2010 to June 2022, and was senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation from 2014 to 2022.”
The Wilmer Hale law firm provided legal representation to Harvard during the lawsuit that successfully challenged its race-based admissions policy, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. That lawsuit was filed in 2014.
Lee was Harvard’s lead counsel during the trial court phase of the case, in which a U.S. District Judge upheld Harvard’s affirmative action policy. The challengers appealed that ruling, and the Supreme Court overturned the district court decision, striking down Harvard’s admissions policy in a case that Harvard ultimately lost in June 2023.
By the time of the district judge’s ruling, Harvard had already paid the Wilmer Hale law firm $27 million and was “on the hook for $15 million more,” Bloomberg News noted.
The New York Post reported that the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers would publicly “neither confirm nor deny whether a complaint against an attorney had been filed. A spokesman for the Massachusetts AG said their office had received the complaint but cannot comment on, confirm, or deny an investigation.”
Three months ago, Lee was the lawyer who coached Harvard’s then President, Claudine Gay before her appearance in front of a House of Representatives committee investigating antisemitism. Gay told the committee that whether advocating genocide for Jews was compatible with Harvard’s speech rules depended on the “context.” Those comments did not go down well with the public, partly because they were hypocritical: Harvard has punished far less offensive speech when it does not involve Jews as a target — such as misgendering and anti-black speech, even if such speech does not advocate genocide or violence, and even if the “context” of such speech makes clear that it would be protected by the First Amendment in society as a whole.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression gives Harvard its worst rating for failure to comply with academic-freedom norms. In FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings, “Harvard University obtained the lowest score possible, 0.00, and is the only school with an ‘Abysmal’ speech climate rating,” notes FIRE.
Claudine Gay’s genocide comments, in combination with the discovery that she committed pervasive plagiarism in her writings, ultimately led to her resignation.
