Jeannie Suk Gersen

Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste can all trigger traumatic flashbacks. So can words. And right now, battle lines are being drawn around attempts to limit exposure to words that could rekindle past trauma. ... In The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor, wrote that student organisations had asked teachers to warn their classes the rape-law unit might "trigger" traumatic memories.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. In this country we don’t ban “Mein Kampf,” Ku Klux Klan screeds, or objectionable terms for racial groups. It is clear that the government cannot disallow offensive or hateful speech. But the federal trademark law, known as the Lanham Act, has since 1946 barred the registration of marks that may disparage “persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.” In 2014, after nearly half a century of registering and renewing “The Redskins,” the government cancelled the football team’s trademark registrations, on the grounds that the name may be disparaging to Native Americans. The cancellation does not ban the team’s use of the name. Instead, it does away with the legal presumption that the team has the exclusive right to use the name in commerce, thus providing a substantial incentive for the Redskins—and other groups—to avoid using a name that may be considered offensive. The Supreme Court will likely consider the question of whether the government is permitted, under the First Amendment, to deny registration of disparaging trademarks, in the case of Simon Tam, for whom the Redskins are strange bedfellows. When Tam applied to register the name of his all-Asian dance-rock band, the Slants, he meant to reclaim an epithet for Asians as a badge of pride, but the government refused the registration on the grounds that the name was likely disparaging to people of Asian descent.

A new "sex bureaucracy" is attempting a full takeover of young people's sex lives through moral strictures that trample free speech and the due process of law. In only the most recent symptom of this disease, a court recently ruled that George Mason University wrongfully expelled a student in 2014 -- for engaging in consensual sex with his girlfriend. ...A forthcoming paper to appear in the August issue of the California Law Review outlines "The Sex Bureaucracy," which Harvard Law School professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk argue is thoroughly regulating "the space of sex" in America. The "bureaucracy dedicated to that regulation of sex ... operates largely apart from criminal enforcement, but its actions are inseparable from criminal overtones and implications."

Recent interpretations of Title IX by the Office of Civil Rights that broadly define sexual harassment have created a “chilling” effect at America’s colleges and universities, threatening academic freedom, due process, and free speech, argues a recent report released by the American Association of University Professors. The report characterizes OCR as conflating conduct and speech cases, creating a “seemingly limitless definition of harassment” without explicitly reaffirming the protected speech of classroom instructors, leaving faculty who teach and research sensitive topics related to gender, sex, sexuality, and rape law vulnerable to sexual harassment charges...“I have heard from a number of colleagues, not just in criminal law but in other subjects, that they are now unwilling to teach any cases having to do with sex or sexuality, that they’re scrubbing their syllabi of material that touches on those topics, because those topics are the areas in which [they] could be perceived as engaging in unwanted verbal conduct of a sexual nature,” said Harvard Law School professor Jeannie C. Suk, whose writings on the challenges of teaching rape law are quoted in the report. “As long as the standard that is being used looks at whether the act is regarded as undesirable or offensive, then of course anything that one teaches having to do with sex or sexuality can be regarded as undesirable or offensive.”

Fornication. Sodomy. Adultery. Not so long ago, the U.S. criminalized pretty much all sex outside of marriage. As these laws have been struck down by courts or allowed to settle into obsolescence, it would seem that sexual liberty has been vindicated as an important American value. But while the courts have been busy ushering the government out of our bedrooms, it's been creeping right back in under new pretenses. Gone is the language of morals, tradition, and orderr—the state now intervenes in our sex lives bearing the mantles of safety, exploitation, and sex discrimination. "We are living in a new sex bureaucracy," warn Harvard Law School professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk in an upcoming paper for the California Law Review. Contra court decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas—which decriminalized sodomy in Georgia and affirmed a constitutional right to sexual privacy—"the space of sex" is still "thoroughly regulated" in America, they write. And "the bureaucracy dedicated to that regulation of sex is growing. It operates largely apart from criminal enforcement, but its actions are inseparable from criminal overtones and implications."

On Wednesday, a lawyer for the ex-captain of the Yale men's basketball team told Business Insider his client wants readmission to the Ivy League University. The former basketball captain, Jack Montague, is seeking readmission as part of a lawsuit he's planning to file against the university over its decision to expel him as the result of a sexual misconduct allegation..."As far as I know, the Yale expulsion is a final decision and he has exhausted his Yale appeals," Jeannie Suk, a Harvard Law School professor, told Business Insider. Suk has been vocal about these types of cases in the past, often arguing that the criminal court system, not colleges, should be the adjudicators of alleged sexual misconduct. "A lawsuit will not be able to force Yale to reverse its expulsion, even if Montague prevails against Yale in court. It will be a lawsuit for damages, alleging that Yale violated state and/or federal law in the policy or procedure they used to investigate and adjudicate his disciplinary case," she continued.

A book review by Jeannie Suk. Mass incarceration is synonymous with criminal justice in the United States. We are the world’s top jailer, have among the longest sentences, and tolerate shocking racial disparities in imprisonment rates. Baz Dreisinger is an unusual combination of English professor, journalist and documentary producer whose travels to nine countries to meet with their prisoners led to “Incarceration Nations.” This journey into what she calls “global hellholes” sets an earnest American on a quest for insight into American criminal punishment, via structured encounters with foreign prisoners in situ.

The Lyric Stage, a popular local theater, on Monday hosts a 7 p.m. screening of the short film “East of Hollywood.” It’s billed as “a mockumentary that exposes the stereotypes Asian-American actors are forced to deal with throughout the audition process.” Winner of best narrative short at last year’s Boston Asian American Film Festival, “East of Hollywood” is directed by Chris Caccioppoli and stars Michael Tow, who drew on real experiences that he and fellow Asian-American actors encountered over their careers. ...Following the screening, Caccioppoli, Tow, Oliva, and Nguyen will engage in a discussion moderated by Jeannie Suk, professor at Harvard Law School.

The founding director of the Broad Institute has come under fire for publishing an article that critics charge fails to disclose a conflict of interest and understates the contributions of women in developing a biotechnology. The article in question—published in the science magazine Cell and written by famous geneticist Eric Lander—outlines the history of CRISPR, a gene editing technology. Critics allege that Lander did not disclose a conflict of interest in the story: the Broad Institute is currently embroiled in a CRISPR-related patent dispute with the University of California...Lander’s colleagues at Harvard and the Broad Institute— including Law School professor Jeannie C. Suk and longtime Lander advisee Pardis C. Sabeti— characterize the attacks on Lander as baseless. “The kind of dedication that I saw firsthand, that Eric Lander had, to supporting and furthering the career of his mentees who were women—that is utterly inconsistent with some idea that he is erasing women’s role in science,” Suk said. Sapeti characterized Lander as an “extraordinary mentor” who pushed many women to have a strong voice at the Broad Institute, and said that the CRISPR narrative was not an issue of gender.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. In the middle of taking the bar exam at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, in New York City, along with thousands of aspiring lawyers, I had to go to the bathroom. The enormous line for the women’s restroom looked like it would take at least a half hour. There was no line for the men’s restroom. I walked in, passed my male counterparts at a row of urinals, used one of several empty stalls, then returned to my desk. I felt that my decision to forgo the women’s bathroom made a difference to my passing the exam, and that the much longer wait for women than men during an all-important test for entry to the legal profession was obviously unfair. There is now, however, an active debate around what bathrooms we should be able to use. A recently proposed Indiana law would make it a crime for a person to enter a single-sex public restroom that does not match the person’s “biological gender,” defined in terms of chromosomes and sex at birth...But the implications of the controversy go far beyond bathrooms.

At first glance, the navy spiral-bound tome known as the Bluebook seems rather unremarkable. But beyond its covers, the book details thousands of obscure and specific legal citation rules that require more than a thousand hours to compile. The massive, 582-page legal citation manual inspires both devotion and dread in its users—law students, scholars, and lawyers—who require its guidance for their professional work....Harvard Law Professor Jeannie C. Suk said the Harvard Law Review would not have grounds to claim copyright infringement unless BabyBlue copies specific examples used in the Bluebook. “It seems to me that trying to use copyright to protect the system of citation rules themselves is not promising, particularly given the already widespread adoption of those rules in the legal profession and by courts,” Suk wrote in an email.

In the latest development of a heated publicity battle, filmmakers of a popular documentary that criticizes Harvard Law School’s handling of a sexual assault case penned an op-ed for the Huffington Post sharply rebuking Law professors who have challenged the film...Law professors who have publicly challenged the film similarly took issue with the premise and title of the filmmakers’ op-ed. Janet E. Halley, one of the 19 professors who criticized the documentary in November, denied that she and the other professors were retaliating against or targeting Willingham and said the professors’ statements were critical of the film itself, not any individual student. “The reason I participated in the Law professors’ press release is not that a student came forward and complained about sexual assault, nor that she complained in the criminal process,” Halley said. “It is that ‘The Hunting Ground’ has profoundly misled the public about the ensuing processes which came out decisively against those claims.” Jeannie C. Suk, another professor who signed the public release, said her criticism of the film stemmed from concerns about fair sexual assault grievance processes, not retaliating against individual complainants. “There is this idea that we have to stand by and support or be silent about a film that does a very poor job of moving forward fair and effective policy or else be considered deniers of the problem,” Suk said. “That’s just a proposition that I don’t accept.”

...The Stanford study is just one example of the many factors that make it difficult to quantify the scope of the sexual violence problem on college campuses. While awareness of the issue rose to the forefront in 2015, the hard work of assessing the true scale of the problem has posed challenges for those looking to prescribe a cure. ...“I don’t see any evidence that campuses are doing a good job or will do a good job at handling these cases,” Jeannie Suk, a professor of criminal law at Harvard University, says. “If you treat sexual crimes differently than other serious crimes, it sends a message that these crimes are not as important. Just as we would for any other serious felony, we should involve the police.” While Suk does not support eliminating universities’ power to investigate and punish sex crimes, she believes campus adjudication systems are significantly less effective than the criminal justice system.

As the law professor prepared for her class on sexual assault, she opened her emails to find a strange request: could she give assurances that the content of the class would not be included in the end-of-year exam, her students asked? They were concerned there might be victims of sexual assault among their classmates, they said. Anyone in that position could be traumatised at being confronted with such material in the exam hall. Across the United States, lecturers have received similar messages from students demanding that modules of academic study – ranging from legal topics to well-known works of literature – be scrubbed from exams, and sometimes from the syllabus altogether. Jeannie Suk, a professor at Harvard Law School, which numbers President Barack Obama among its many notable alumni, cited an example where a student had asked a colleague “not to use the word 'violate’ – as in 'does this conduct violate the law’ – because the term might trigger distress”.

...Colleges and universities across the country are required by federal law to investigate and adjudicate whenever a student makes allegations of sexual misconduct. The procedures vary widely. Most schools hold disciplinary hearings, often made up of teachers and students, some with little training, acting as prosecutor, judge and jury..."The schools, upon receipt of the Dear Colleague letter and looking at its requirements, weren't completely sure of exactly how to comply, and so in many cases they did more than they necessarily needed to do," says Jeannie Suk, a Harvard Law professor and outspoken critic of the campus tribunals. "They kind of in a sense over-complied. Now, they bent over backwards, and then that's when they put in place -- kind of in a hurry -- these procedures that now don't respect fair process."

Amid a growing controversy involving questions of accuracy and fairness, the makers of The Hunting Ground, a documentary indictment of campus sexual assaults, are defending the film, which is set to air on CNN on Nov. 22...On Nov. 19, law professors at Harvard, where another of the film’s documented incidents took place, attacked the filmmakers’ accuracy in a widely publicized joint letter that focused on the victim’s inebriation and the absence of violence in the assault. The professors wrote in a letter that was posted on The Harvard Law Record website that the film gave the impression that the accused student "like others accused in the stories featured in the film, is guilty of sexual assault by force and the use of drugs on his alleged victims, and that he, like the others accused, is a repeat sexual predator.” The professors, including prominent faculty members Jeannie C. Suk, Laurence Tribe and Randall Kennedy, noted that there have been "extensive investigations and proceedings" examining the case against the student -- at Harvard Law School, in a criminal case before the grand jury, and in criminal trial before a jury.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. I often informally ask my students, at Harvard Law School, what their most important ideals are and how they hope to fulfill them in their lives and careers. In the past several years, I’ve been touched to hear a significant plurality of students name a priority that I didn’t hear much when I began teaching, nearly a decade ago: their close relationships with their parents... Particularly in the way things have unfolded at Yale, students’ social-justice activism has been expressed, in part, as the need for care from authority figures. When they experience the hurt that motivates them to political action, they’re deeply disappointed with parental surrogates for not responding adequately or quickly enough to support and nurture them.