Jeannie Suk Gersen

Nineteen Harvard Law professors have written a letter condemning "The Hunting Ground," a film purporting to be a documentary about campus sexual assault. The film has been getting some Oscar buzz, and CNN is preparing to air the program next week. In a press package for the film, CNN singled out a story in the film about a sexual assault accusation at Harvard. The press packet named the accused student, even though he was not identified in the film. The 19 professors want to be sure viewers are aware that the film is highly misleading...The 19 professors include feminist icon Nancy Gertner; outspoken critics of campus rape hysteria Elizabeth Bartholet, Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk; as well as President Obama's former mentor Charles Ogletree.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. An eighteen-year-old male student’s sexual encounter with a fifteen-year-old female student at St. Paul’s School has led to his being sentenced to one year in jail, followed by five years of probation, and registered for life as a sex offender. Both feel their lives are destroyed. Our fascination with the secret sex rites of the New Hampshire prep school put Owen Labrie’s bespectacled face in all the papers. But the deeper pity and fear the case inspired revolved around a basic question we increasingly project onto the bodies of our young: What makes sex rape?...We are in the midst of a significant cultural shift, in which we are redescribing sex that we vehemently dislike as rape, and sexual attitudes that we strongly disapprove of as examples of rape culture.

In response to students’ calls for more coursework on the topic of rape law, next semester Yale Law School will introduce a new seminar dedicated exclusively to the study of gender-based violence. Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor who teaches criminal law and procedure, said she has seen an increase in interest in rape law coursework in the last few years, adding that she is not aware of any criminal law professor at Harvard who does not include rape law in his or her course. Students seem very interested in learning the criminal laws governing rape, and particularly how they differ from the policies about campus sexual misconduct to which they are consistently exposed, Suk said.

Students accused of violating Harvard’s sexual harassment policy may turn to attorneys as their personal advisers, and if they successfully appeal investigators’ decision in their case, a body of faculty and senior administrators will rehear it, according to a new document clarifying Harvard’s handling of complaints. On Monday, following heavy scrutiny, administrators with Harvard’s central Title IX office released a 10-page Frequently Asked Questions document offering more details about the University’s policy and procedures governing its response to sexual assault on campus...According to Jeannie C. Suk, a Law School professor and vocal critic of Harvard’s central Title IX framework, representatives from Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel in fall 2014 had indicated plans to release an FAQ document about the policies. Officials also consulted Law faculty members when crafting them, according to Karvonides. The guidance document released Monday seems responsive to many of Suk and her colleagues’ criticisms. “These FAQs show that the University can listen to reason on this sensitive and controversial topic,” said Janet E. Halley, a Law School professor who has led an effort at Harvard and across the country challenging what she argues is the federal government’s overzealous approach to Title IX compliance...“I think they have actually addressed the worst problems on the substantive policy side,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, one of 28 Law School faculty members who signed a letter slamming the policy last year in The Boston Globe. In particular, Bartholet praised the document’s clarification of the difference between “incapacitation” and “intoxication,” as well as its affirmation of protections for academic freedom.

Can colleges provide due process for defendants accused of rape, and adequate justice for the victims? Or do these cases belong in the criminal courts? An Intelligence Squared debate featuring law professors from Harvard, Yale, CUNY and NYU. Motion: Courts, not campuses, should decide sexual assault cases. FOR: Jed Rubenfeld of Yale and Jeannie Suk of Harvard. AGAINST: Michelle Anderson of CUNY and Stephen Schulholfer of NYU.

Harvard Law School professor Jeannie C. Suk argued at a forum in New York this week that the criminal court system, not campus resources, should investigate and adjudicate cases of alleged sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. At the forum—hosted by Intelligence Squared Debates and titled “Courts, Not Campuses, Should Decide Sexual Assault Cases”—Suk and Yale Law School professor Jeb Rubenfeld argued in favor of the motion..."What campuses are doing under pressure from the Department of Education is hurting the cause of gender equality,” Suk argued during an opening statement. “Campus tribunals use procedures that lack basic fairness and often reach inaccurate outcomes.”

This is a strange moment for sex in America. We’ve detached it from pregnancy, matrimony and, in some circles, romance. At least, we no longer assume that intercourse signals the start of a relationship. But the more casual sex becomes, the more we demand that our institutions and government police the line between what’s consensual and what isn’t. And we wonder how to define rape. Is it a violent assault or a violation of personal autonomy? Is a person guilty of sexual misconduct if he fails to get a clear “yes” through every step of seduction and consummation?...“If there’s no social consensus about what the lines are,” says Nancy Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and a retired judge, then affirmative consent “has no business being in the criminal law.”...“It’s an unworkable standard,” says the Harvard law professor Jeannie C. Suk. “It’s only workable if we assume it’s not going to be enforced, by and large.”

Laws regarding rape should be taught in criminal law classes at Harvard Law School despite its potential to trigger psychological trauma, two Law professors argued at a discussion on the topic Wednesday afternoon. Law professor Jeannie C. Suk, who has taught criminal law and procedure at the Law School, and Andrew M. Crespo ’05, who served as Harvard Law Review’s first Latino president and will teach criminal law for the first time next fall, both stressed the pedagogical value of including rape law in a curriculum. Suk spoke out on the issue when she penned a New Yorker article called “The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law" in December.

On the other side of the country, Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk has taken to the New Yorker to express concern over her perception that students are increasingly likely to object when classroom discussion turns to rape. "Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well," she writes. "One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word 'violate' in class—as in 'Does this conduct violate the law?'—because the word was triggering."

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. Imagine a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood. What should his instructors do? Criminal-law teachers face a similar question with law students who are afraid to study rape law...But my experience at Harvard over the past couple of years tells me that the environment for teaching rape law and other subjects involving gender and violence is changing. Students seem more anxious about classroom discussion, and about approaching the law of sexual violence in particular, than they have ever been in my eight years as a law professor.

In a week of many developments in the world of law, Harvard Law School faculty were online, in print, and on-the-air offering analyses and opinions.

In a talk sponsored by the Harvard Federalist Society and moderated by HLS Professor Jeannie Suk, David Lat discussed the impact of blogging on the judiciary.