Media Mentions

An interview with Mihir Desai. People have a bad impression of finance, and that's mostly worrying because its often justified, says Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai. The sector is in dire need of rehabilitation, and there are several ways it can be done. The first is to realize that turning money into more money is a shortsighted investment. To play the long game, the system needs to focus on and reward value creation, which drives innovation and the economy.

Economic forces and incentives shape not only our lives, but also our fiction – and economists rarely miss a chance to point this out. “Economics spotting” isn’t just a parlor game, however. It can help us remember why we care about economics in the first place. In an era when finance can look like alchemy or worse, its appearance in fiction can remind us that its most fundamental ideas are elegant and essential. There’s a bonus, too: approaching finance this way has the potential to enrich finance itself. “The Wisdom of Finance,” a new book by my Harvard Business School colleague and mentor Mihir A. Desai, traces financial ideas as they turn up in literature (as well as in music, film and theater). Desai’s panorama underscores how finance serves basic human needs – and crops up in unusual places.

"it was supposed to be an uneventful time,” former acting U.S. attorney general Sally Q. Yates told Harvard Law School (HLS) degree candidates during her Class Day speech—even, as her former chief of staff joked, a time for “long, boozy lunches.”...Yates the HLS Class of 2017—the bicentennial class, and the first to have a 50/50 ratio of men and women—that the same compass that helped her decide to stay when the going got tough is “inside all of us—that compass that guides us in times of challenges is being built every day, with every experience.” She added, “You, too, will be faced with weighty decisions where law and conscience intertwine. The time for introspection is all along the way—to develop a sense of who you are and what you stand for. Because you never know when you will be called upon to answer [those questions].”

An interview with Glenn Cohen. DNA kits are very popular these days with people wanting to know what countries their ancestors came from. But before seeking out the secrets of your family tree, make sure you read the fine print.

The Black Graduate Student Alliance held its inaugural Black Commencement at the Law School’s Holmes Field this morning, a ceremony honoring black graduates from across Harvard’s graduate schools. There was no headline speaker; instead, the event featured four student orators, each reflecting a different dimension of the black student experience. Near the end of the ceremony, the deans of each school presented their graduates with stoles of bright kente, a fabric of interwoven geometric patterns from west Africa, as they walked across the stage in front of the Law School library. By far the largest representation came from the Law School.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dropped the final fig leaf of democracy, announcing this week that the state of emergency will continue until Turkey achieves “welfare and peace.” The state of emergency, introduced with some justification after the failed coup in July 2016, allows Erdogan to rule by decree, sidelining both the legislature and the constitutional court. By extending it indefinitely, Erdogan is making explicit what had been implicit for months: He’s now officially a dictator. States of emergency are funny things. Many countries keep them on the books, because they are useful in genuine emergencies, and because their presence might, in theory, urge rulers back to democracy when the emergency passes.

An interview with Alex Whiting. The appointment of a special counsel to investigate President Trump’s ties to Russia seemed to elicit a bipartisan sigh of relief. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller will lead the independent inquiry, even as the congressional probe continues. Mueller’s involvement could bring much needed answers about Russia to the forefront, but it could complicate things, too.

On behalf of the Colombian peace communities, a coalition of human rights organizations - composed by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), and the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyer's Association (CAJAR) - has asked the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the alleged complicity of the leaders of Chiquita, the world's largest producer and distributor of bananas, in crimes against humanity..."During peace processes, economic actors often escape allegations, even when they have committed monstrous acts," said Professor Tyler Giannini, director of the Clinic of International Human Rights Law, at Harvard Law School: "The prosecution of Chiquita's leaders for their payments to the paramilitaries would be a sign that there is no impunity."

The rise of executive, continuing, and paid online education at Harvard, University leaders say, is part of a larger strategy to extend a Harvard education to an audience beyond the traditional on-campus undergraduate and graduate students...The Law School, too, has been offering executive education programs for the past ten years, ranging from several-day general leadership workshops to custom trainings for individual firms. According to Law School Executive Education Director Carrie J. Fletcher, international lawyers often comprise over half of enrollment in such courses. Fletcher said a “really strong network of executive education teams” exists at the University. The Law School hosts a University-wide executive education summit each summer to discuss “our collective role in the university” and ensure that the Law School “fits squarely in place with all of the exec ed teams,” Fletcher said.

Martin Shkreli—the price-hiking former pharmaceutical executive once dubbed the “most hated man in America”—hadn’t even started speaking when someone pulled the fire alarm...Quickly, Shkreli’s visit brought questions of free speech—what it means, and what, if anything, justifies its limitation—to the forefront of campus discourse. While some students argued that Shkreli should be free to state his views on campus, others said his appearance was dangerous and provocative without substance...Richard H. Fallon, a professor at Harvard Law School who teaches a course on the First Amendment, said that he thinks the University has dedicated itself to the protection of free speech. “On the whole, Harvard is absolutely an institution committed to freedom of speech,” Fallon said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The news that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to a Senate subpoena has raised a heated debate about the constitutional right not to incriminate yourself. Is it all right to infer guilt from silence, as Flynn himself and plenty of Donald Trump staffers have suggested in the past? Or does that inference undermine an American right by turning it into a damning admission? It's a complicated question. In a court of law, silence isn’t supposed to count as evidence. In the court of public opinion, however, it’s not so simple.

An op-ed by Bruce Schneier. As devastating as the latest widespread ransomware attacks have been, it’s a problem with a solution. If your copy of Windows is relatively current and you’ve kept it updated, your laptop is immune. It’s only older unpatched systems on your computer that are vulnerable...But it is a system that’s going to fail in the “internet of things”: everyday devices like smart speakers, household appliances, toys, lighting systems, even cars, that are connected to the web. Many of the embedded networked systems in these devices that will pervade our lives don’t have engineering teams on hand to write patches and may well last far longer than the companies that are supposed to keep the software safe from criminals. Some of them don’t even have the ability to be patched.

An op-ed by Andrew Manuel Crespo. Robert Mueller, the recently appointed special counsel overseeing the criminal investigation into whether Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, has a sterling reputation as a prosecutor’s prosecutor — someone who follows the facts without fear or favor, wherever they may lead. Based on what we know so far, those facts will lead him to the most consequential decision any American prosecutor has ever faced: Whether to pursue charges against the president of the United States for the federal crime of obstruction of justice.

An interview with Alex Whiting. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is taking over the investigation into potential links between President Trump's campaign and Russian officials. WSJ's Shelby Holliday explains just how broad his authority can go.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What’s been missing so far in the scandals surrounding the Trump White House is a concrete act taken at the behest of foreign powers. Now there’s strong evidence of one: Michael Flynn reportedly stopped an attack on the Islamic State capital of Raqqa by Syrian Kurds, a military action strongly opposed by Turkey, after receiving more than $500,000 in payments from a Turkish source. The Kurds' offensive had been greenlighted by Barack Obama’s administration, and is now back on track, reapproved by President Donald Trump sometime after Flynn was fired. If this story proves accurate then it’s a game changer for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Around the U.S., cross-party battles between governors and attorneys general are heating up in what some observers see as another sign of increasingly divisive national politics seeping into state offices...In 13 states, governors and attorneys general currently have different party affiliations. The offices of state attorneys general are supposed to serve as a check on power, which has historically triggered fights and lawsuits with governors—including some battles within party lines. “The friction is there on purpose, it’s there in the Constitution,” said James Tierney, a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Alex Whiting. There has been considerable discussion over the last week about whether President Donald Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice when he fired James Comey as director of the FBI. Caution has been important in this debate because obstruction of justice is a difficult crime to prove, the beyond a reasonable doubt standard for criminal prosecution is an onerous one, and not all the facts are known.

An op-ed by Hal Scott. A key purpose of an Italian withdrawal from the euro area would, of course, be currency redenomination: providing that contracts and instruments (including sovereign bonds) in euros could be repaid in a new, devalued national currency. The stark reality is that Italy could not successfully do so without the agreement of the EU and other major markets around the world. The process of making redenomination effective within a withdrawing Member State, between Italian debtor and creditors, is relatively straightforward. Italy simply would pass legislation providing that in Italy all contracts specifying payment in euros — from government bonds to commercial loans to home mortgages — were to be satisfied in the new lira.

After eight years at the helm of Harvard Law School (HLS), Dean Martha Minow plans to step down and return in the fall to the classroom, where she has taught for 36 years. Minow’s tenure was marked by digitization of the School library’s collection, diversification of the faculty and student body, and expansion of legal clinics and research programs. Among the challenges she faced were the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and a student movement calling for removal of the School’s shield because of its ties to a slave-owning benefactor. The School retired the old shield. Minow, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law, sat down with the Gazette to reflect on her tenure, her plans to defend the rule of law, and an upcoming book on law and forgiveness.

Can a stack of papers be as useful — or at least as cost effective — as a lawyer? A group of lawyers is trying to find out. Law professors at the University of Connecticut, Harvard University and the University of Maine will begin a large-scale experiment this month to see if proactively sending a set of materials with financial and legal advice — presented by a cartoon blob — can improve the financial lives of people being sued by certain types of debt collectors...And though the government theoretically provides access to lawyers for criminal defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys, there’s unlikely to ever be the political will to provide access to lawyers in civil cases, said James Greiner, a professor at Harvard Law School who is also part of the project. “What are we going to do about the fact that there are never ever going to be enough lawyers to provide a free lawyer to someone with a civil problem?” he said.

An interview with Nancy Gertner. "This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!" That was the tweet from President Trump this morning, following yesterday evening's news that the justice department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee its Russia investigation. The president may be fuming, but Congress issued a collective bipartisan exhale at the news. Amy Klobuchar, Democratic senator from Minnesota, called it "a breath of fresh air [that] has come into this week-long saga."