HARVARD LIE SCHOOL: An Exposé of Corrupt Harvard Law School Administrators

The untold story of how Marcia Sells, a power-tripping Dean of Students at Harvard Law School, stole three years of an innocent student’s life, while other admins and faculty looked the other way.

Oct 29, 2021

TL;DR: In May 2018, Harvard Law School’s now-former Dean of Students Marcia Sells placed Ben B., then a first-year student, on a wrongful and admittedly non-disciplinary involuntary “academic leave,” based on a demonstrably false claim by Sells that Ben had stated to another of those deans (the school’s registrar, Lisa Burns), that he would not be taking his spring final exams. Sells would then prevent Ben from resuming his studies by rejecting his petitions to return that fall, telling him to write a new petition requesting to return as of the following semester, and then denying that new petition for no logical reason. This would continue, semester after semester, for three years. Meanwhile, Sells inexplicably refused to give Ben routine paperwork (example 1; example 2 - and instructions) that she knew he needed (and that he had explicitly requested) in order to reluctantly explore transferring out or restarting his studies elsewhere – even though all students, whether current or former, are entitled to that necessary paperwork, without exception. As a result, Sells – and by extension, Harvard Law School – have needlessly prevented Ben from continuing his studies at any other law school or at any other graduate or professional school toward a degree, for over three years, to present day.

In late 2020, audio was discovered of the very conversation between Ben and Burns that Sells cited when placing Ben on leave. This audio, as well as documents from the law school’s Administrative Board (nominally chaired by Professor Robert Sitkoff, with Sells, Burns and a third dean, Catherine Claypoole, serving as members) showed that Sells and Burns – and perhaps other administrators as well – actually knew that Sells blatantly lied to place Ben on leave. Further, they ignored that Ben had disputed that lie, not only in person (to Sells, witnessed by others) but even in writing to the HLS Administrative Board. Shortly after this audio came to light and was circulated in December 2020 to the full HLS faculty and senior Harvard University officials (including President Lawrence Bacow, Provost Alan Garber, and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Bill Lee), Marcia Sells suddenly resigned from Harvard Law School in the middle of the school year. Sells’ departure left the Harvard Law School Dean of Students Office, which serves 2,000 students, without a leader for the past eight months and counting. Sells was then announced by the New York Times as the Metropolitan Opera’s first chief diversity officer; meanwhile, Ben has been left languishing in academic and vocational purgatory, where he remains today.

Harvard Law School administrators, only communicating from a generic administrative email address rather than under their own names or email addresses, began claiming in May 2021 and June 2021 that Ben’s status at HLS is “withdrawn,” in direct contravention of the school’s removal of its non-disciplinary “involuntary withdrawal” provision from its Handbook with students nine months earlier, making Ben’s supposed “withdrawn” status a clear breach of contract by Harvard Law School.

This story is about much more than administrative malfeasance. It is also a stunning look at what really occurs behind the scenes at the world’s most influential law school and at so many other institutions with national and global reach: administrative bloat, the melding of politics and corporate purpose, suppression of ideological diversity, professional bullying, and the propagation of illiberal values.

Imagine being admitted to Harvard Law School. For many people, such an accomplishment would be a dream come true. Now imagine being forced onto an involuntary academic leave of absence from Harvard Law School, during your first-year spring finals period, based on a provable lie by your school’s dean of students that you had stated that you would not be taking your final exams. Imagine clearly telling administrators and faculty that this was a lie, and being ignored.

Next, imagine being emailed multiple letters by that same dean of students, on school letterhead, first telling you that you MUST NOT discuss your leave of absence “with others, including other Harvard administrators, faculty or staff,“ (click here to read) – later expanded to also include all former Harvard faculty and staff (click here to read) – and being told in those same letters that if you contact anyone, you will never be allowed to return to Harvard Law School.

Now imagine also being denied routine paperwork (known as a “dean’s certification” or “good standing letter”) that you need to reluctantly transfer to or restart your studies at any other law school or other graduate or professional school in the country, leaving you unable to continue or restart your studies, through no fault of your own, while also being unable to explain to anyone why you are not actively enrolled at Harvard Law School. Imagine this happening even though it is known that this wrongfully withheld paperwork is required by all schools in order for you to be admitted or enrolled. Meanwhile, even HLS students who are actually not in good standing or who are on disciplinary leave (unlike you) are given this paperwork without issue.

Finally, imagine being in this situation for over three years – for all of your late twenties and into your early thirties – to present day, while faculty and administrators at Harvard Law School do nothing to help you, even after an audio file completely exonerates you and proves that you were wrongfully placed on leave based on a lie.

This is the story of how a promising young man was targeted by a Harvard Law School administrator for years, while other Harvard Law School and Harvard University administrators and faculty did nothing to assist him. This story is tragic, it is infuriating, and worst of all, it is true.

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Timeline

This is a complex case full of alleged bad actors (not including Ben), twisted grievances, convoluted rules, and irrational vendettas. The people involved are smart, and sophisticated; they run Harvard Law School, which produces some of the best lawyers in the world. They know better than anyone how to weave a Machiavellian web of mean-spirited lies and legalese, and they take great pleasure in doing so as underhandedly as possible. It is a total clusterfuck. There are many squirrely legal details revolving around this case. Throughout this article, I try to bring us back to a birds-eye view periodically, so that it is digestible, without leaving out key facts and necessary details.

The good thing about this story is that Ben’s claims are all independently verifiable, as he began copying many (and in some cases, most) full-time Harvard Law School faculty, as well as several non-faculty HLS and Harvard University staff, on key emails about this situation beginning in September 2020, attaching documents and correspondence for their review. Those individuals can confirm that they are aware of the situation, and will not deny receiving the emails – so there should be no question as to the authenticity of any of these emails or other documents. Dozens of these faculty and staff, perhaps intentionally, or perhaps unintentionally, sent (and have continued to send) read receipts to Ben in response to multiple emails from him on which they were copied, which further shows that they likely are aware of the situation – and that they have been aware of it for some time now.

A hyperlinked outline of this article is below – click each heading to jump to that part of this post. [Note: the hyperlinks may not work on mobile browsers.]

1. The Motive

2. Wrongful Plagiarism Accusation – and Cover-Up? (October 2017)

3. Potential Title IX Violations by Harvard Law School (October 2017 – January 2018)

4. The Exam Access Record; Sells Lies to Wrongfully Place Ben on Leave (May 2018)

5. Did Harvard Law School Violate Harvard’s Information Security Policy? (October 2019)

6. Ben Files a Civil Rights Complaint Against Harvard Law School (May 2020)

7. The Smoking Gun Audio (Late 2020)

8. Slinking Off Into the Night (January 2021)

9. The Victim Impact

10. The Current Dilemma; How to Help (Pt. 1)

11. Moving Forward; How to Help (Pt. 2)

The Motive

When I first heard about this case, the biggest thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was – why? Why would Harvard Law School administrators just make things up and ruin the lives of their own students? It didn’t make any sense. It’s all so contrary to their reputations – really intelligent people doing things that are nonsensical and harmful. It makes me wonder whether they were convinced to treat Ben a certain way, for bad reasons, and now don’t know how to come to terms with the fact that their assumptions and beliefs – or perhaps even other, unknown lies that this former dean of students may have told them in private – were simply not true.

It’s hard to believe that the problem was Ben, considering comments that Ben’s first-year section-mates made about him during their spring term (anonymously, mind you):

Left: Comments from over twenty students in Ben B.’s eighty-person first-year section at Harvard Law School. These comments were submitted in March 2018 (during Ben’s spring semester) as part of an anonymous voluntary “compliment exchange” section exercise organized by fellow section member S.H. The students who chose to participate submitted their comments independently and in private. To this day, Ben does not know which classmates made which statements, apart from a student named Jack. | Right: Ben B. (photo by M. Bentsen)

Perhaps, from Marcia Sells’ perspective, there was a problem with Ben, or rather, a problem with his identity. You see, though Ben might be a first-generation Nigerian-American (and therefore, black, like Sells), he is also Jewish (surprise!), and he was actively involved in pro-Israel politics prior to enrolling at Harvard Law, having served from 2015 to 2017 on the New York Young Leadership Council of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. He traveled to Israel numerous times, and participated in Israel advocacy programs like Fuel for Truth and Legion Krav Maga. What does this have to do with Sells? Well, there were a few other complaints and concerns about Sells over the years, many related to issues of concern to some Jewish and Israeli students. Sells and “the tribe” go way back.

Two months after Sells arrived at Harvard Law in September 2015, an unknown person scrawled a swastika (link) onto a desk in an HLS classroom. Following complaints from students, Sells sent an email to the student body acknowledging the incident, but would only refer to the swastika as a “symbol of hatred” – without actually describing it as a swastika.
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Later in the 2015-2016 academic year, in late March of 2016, Sells reportedly told a student (who happened to be a conservative critic of some of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign tactics), that a sign with the name “Trump” in it could be offensive to students in the same way that a sign with the name “Hitler” in it might be offensive to Jews. (Click here to read coverage of that situation from FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.) In other words, Sells equated the monster who murdered six million Jews and tried to take over the world, with the semi-isolationist president who was the most reliably pro-Israel president in decades (to the chagrin of the left) – and who was also the first American president with a Jewish child and grandchildren.
The following month, a student at HLS who was an activist in the HLS chapter of the anti-Israel “Students for Justice in Palestine” organization caused an uproar when he asked visiting Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, to her face: “How is it that you are so smelly? ... [you’re] very smelly, and I was just wondering” (calling her a smelly Jew). This remark was rebuked by many members of the HLS Jewish community, who were in turn rebuked, at least indirectly, by Marcia Sells. Sells accused some of them of “cyber-bullying” and “bigotry,” according to a Harvard Crimson article about the hubbub (linked here) — and the student whose comments set off the controversy was never punished.

It wouldn’t be hard to believe that Sells thought Ben didn’t have the right (i.e., hard left) political and ideological leanings, and perhaps tried to push him out, as her own personal contribution to the #resistance. After all, Ben’s classmates’ comments about him, above, suggest that he was both well-liked by those who knew him, and known for bringing some heterodox ideas into the mix at Harvard Law School. Relatedly, it is possible that Sells had gotten wind of two occurrences in April 2018 in which Ben’s pro-Israel (and occasionally contrarian) perspectives may have been sussed out by some members of the HLS community.

First, Ben was part of the team of students who helped organize the Israel Summit at Harvard (link), a university-wide student-run day-long event held in early April 2018 at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA. The event aimed to “broaden students’ horizons” with respect to Israel by highlighting Israeli social entrepreneurship and enterprises as well as offering networking opportunities for Harvard students. Ben was one of the two Harvard graduate / professional school students on the planning team, which was led by Max A., a student at Harvard College. Ben was the only HLS student on that team, and in addition to helping with overall planning of the event, he was responsible for coordinating non-financial graduate student organization co-sponsors of the event, across Harvard’s graduate and professional schools. Ben submitted the event for approval as an entry on the HLS events calendar in March 2018 (archived here), after which point it was featured in Harvard Law’s widely read daily email digest of upcoming events – which most HLS faculty, staff and students receive in their inboxes each morning. Sells was probably displeased about this.
Ten days after the Israel Summit at Harvard, in mid-April 2018, a black undergraduate student at Harvard (reportedly having a bad reaction to medication or drugs, to the point that he had undressed in the middle of a five-lane street directly across from HLS buildings) was physically tackled and struck by Cambridge police. The HLS Black Law Students Association immediately (that night) alleged on Twitter that “police brutality” had taken place (read the tweet here), leading Cambridge Police to defensively (and perhaps unprofessionally) tweet back a preliminary police report revealing the student’s name. Ben expressed in a Facebook post and to some friends that it seemed that BLSA might have better served the student by focusing on protecting the student’s privacy, collecting evidence, getting in touch with the student’s family, and keeping cool heads. He also indirectly criticized BLSA for seeming to have put a policy reform goal ahead of the needs of the student involved. Several BLSA members – as well as a number of very liberal and very white non-BLSA members – were apoplectic, and wrongly accused Ben of supporting police brutality. That said, many HLS students agreed with Ben, including some BLSA members, who direct-messaged and texted him to say so — and he had meaningful conversations with both BLSA and non-BLSA students offline.
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This all still doesn’t seem like enough reason for a dean of students to wage a scorched earth campaign against a student, though. Why ruin his life over a petty political grudge? This all seems like… small fries?

*Former Harvard Law School Dean of Students Marcia Sells*

The answer — or at least my pet theory — is chilling: Why do serial killers kill? Because they want to kill. Birds must fly. Fish must swim. And deans must meddle. There’s no further “why.” Why do insane people occasionally push innocent strangers onto train tracks in the NYC subway system? Because they are insane, and because they can. Why did Harvard Law School let Sells get away with all of this, even after receiving evidence proving that she lied? Because they cannot believe – or admit to themselves or to others – that they hired someone who was quietly insane to be their Dean of Students. Perhaps Sells thinks she is a good person. Perhaps she has rationalized that blackballing Ben was a noble, good deed. After all, the ends justify the means. If a goal is morally important enough, any method of getting it is acceptable. And being anti-racist, or anti-fa, or pro-BDS is clearly a morally important enough goal.

Or perhaps Marcia Sells was just a pathological liar and also careless. In the summer of 2021 (months after leaving Harvard Law in February 2021), Sells let Barnard Magazine – the self-published magazine of her alma mater, Barnard College

– falsely describe her as a former Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School “law professor,” despite the fact that she had never previously been a law professor (or any other kind of professor) at either school. Barnard Magazine didn’t correct the error – if it actually was an “error,” rather than planted false information – not even in the online version of the magazine. Sells didn’t have them correct it either, though she surely read it and knew it falsely represented her professional history. It was only in late September 2021, after Ben emailed leadership at Harvard Law School, Harvard University, Barnard College, Columbia University, and Columbia Law School to point out the ridiculous situation (linked here), that the article was then corrected later that same day. A Barnard Magazine editor emailed Ben, thanking him for pointing out the false claim, and informing him that it had finally been corrected.

Wrongful Plagiarism Accusation – and Cover-Up? (October 2017)

It appears that the series of events leading to Sells' placement of Ben on an academic leave by way of a false statement in a letter she sent to other administrators (more on that below) began with yet another false accusation – a baseless and since-abandoned wrongful accusation of plagiarism by Sells and two other non-professors at HLS: visiting First-Year Legal Research and Writing (LRW) lecturer Diana Newmark and Director of the First-Year Legal Research and Writing Program Susannah Barton Tobin

This off-the-books accusation took place during an in-person meeting in October 2017, just six weeks into Ben's first semester. According to Ben, these staffers did not even tell Ben the meeting would be about alleged plagiarism ahead of time, whether in writing or otherwise. They first invited him to meet them in Sells' office, and then introduced the accusation for the first time after he walked into her office and the meeting began. (Two additional HLS employees in the HLS Dean of Students Office (DOS), Lakshmi Clark and Carolyn Hubbard, were brought into the meeting right as it began.)

No evidence or explanation was ever provided, either during that meeting or after it, even though Ben asked for evidence or an explanation repeatedly. During this in-person ambush, Newmark said to him, “Your [First-Year Legal Research and Writing “Closed Memo”] was decent/good, if you did write it yourself,” and later said during the meeting, “What are you going to do differently in order to pass?” Sells and Tobin continued, threatening Ben by claiming that unnamed prospective employers would be contacting both of them to inquire about him before hiring him, and that both of them would “respond.” In addition to making these wrongful accusations and inappropriate threats, Ben believes that these Sells, along with Newmark and Tobin, also spread the rumor to faculty, based on statements made by some of his first-year professors, including his first-year section leader and Contracts professor Randall Kennedy.

Ben believes that he was penalized, despite the total absence of evidence for the accusation, in the form of a substandard grade on his transcript for his fall Legal Research and Writing course. After seeing the substandard fall course grade on his transcript once Fall 2017 grades were released in late January 2018, Ben sent all of his working files for his LRW closed memo to Newmark. At that point, administrators, including Sells, as well as Newmark and Tobin, began pretending that they had never accused him in the first place.

Toward the end of the 2017-2018 academic year, in early May, Ben told HLS Dean John Manning, in writing, about what had occurred, at which point Sells, according to Ben, claimed in a face-to-face meeting with him that the October 2017 meeting either never occurred in the first place, or had indeed taken place but occurred before he submitted his closed memo (and thus couldn’t have been about that paper, which was the only written work Ben had submitted at the time).

Here’s the kicker: to this day, nobody at Harvard Law School will confirm in writing to Ben that he was accused of plagiarism – but nobody will deny it in writing either. Marcia Lynn Sells departed in February 2021 without ever admitting or denying in writing that the plagiarism accusation occurred. On September 19, 2021, Ben emailed Susannah Tobin and Diana Newmark, copying HLS faculty, asking Tobin and Newmark to confirm or deny that there indeed was a plagiarism accusation (see here, beginning with the September 19, 2021 email). Neither Newmark nor Tobin have responded.

[JANUARY 2022 UPDATE: In the four months that have passed since Ben’s email dated September 19, 2021 to Newmark and Tobin, neither Newmark nor Tobin have admitted that Sells (and they themselves) accused him — but they also have not denied it either. (See email dated January 13, 2022 here.) If the accusation indeed occurred, as Ben credibly claims, and if it was justified (in other words, if it had a legitimate basis), Tobin and Newmark would simply admit that it did occur – and, ideally, they would explain the basis of it. If the accusation did not occur, Tobin and Newmark simply would have denied that it occurred, by now. But they haven’t done that either. Through their silence, Tobin and Newmark chose to neither admit nor deny that the accusation occurred — presumably because they know that it did occur, that it was unjustified, and that it was thus wrongful (as well as defamatory as a matter of law). The entire Harvard Law School full-time faculty, as well as Harvard Law School and Harvard University leadership, appear to be aware of all of this.]

Ben drafted a three-page summary of the situation years ago, in August 2019. I will refrain from copying and pasting its content here, but you can review it at this link. You can read it yourself if you need more details; which side of the story you land on is up to you.

Potential Title IX Violations – by Harvard Law School? (October 2017 - January 2018)

Interestingly, there is a Title IX component to this story as well, and it reflects poorly on Harvard Law School. (Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is the law that prohibits gender-based discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funds, including federal student loans.)

As mentioned in detail in the September 2021 emails from Ben to Tobin and Newmark, copying HLS staff, two of Harvard Law School’s designated Title IX coordinators during the 2017-2018 academic year were Marcia Sells (the dean of students) and Lisa Burns (the registrar). (See questions 10 and 11 in that email thread.) There was a third HLS Title IX coordinator as well – Catherine Claypoole (dean for academic and faculty affairs). All three women also served on the HLS Administrative Board, also known as the “Ad Board.” The Ad Board handles both non-disciplinary and disciplinary matters at Harvard Law School, but does not handle Title IX complaints, which are dealt with through a separate process that Ben was never involved with. Ben didn’t commit a Title IX violation and wasn’t even accused of one. According to him, “the only things I touched during my first year at Harvard Law School were overpriced casebooks, unfortunately.” Rather, it was Harvard Law’s Title IX coordinators themselves who arguably caused Harvard Law School to violate Title IX, owing to the way they handled Ben’s request to no longer be in Newmark’s course for the spring (as described in his three-page summary of the situation here), following the wrongful October 2017 five-women-vs-one-man baseless plagiarism accusation.

Once Ben finally told HLS Dean John Manning about the wrongful and entirely unsubstantiated plagiarism accusation in May 2018 and they got wind of it, it appears that the accusers thought to themselves, “Our baseless five-women-vs-one-man plagiarism accusation was both defamatory and a potential Title IX gender bias issue. Plus, not letting him switch instructors (and telling him in writing that “under no circumstances” could he switch) may have been a prima facie violation of Title IX. Fuck this. Put him on involuntary academic leave to make all of this go away.”

Is it really so hard to believe that five women, several of whom were Title IX coordinators, could mistreat a male student and then continue to act in a biased and discriminatory manner toward him in hopes of sweeping the entire matter under the rug?

The Exam Access Record Fabrication; Sells Lies to Wrongfully Place Ben on Leave (May 2018)

An audio file (more on this below…wait for it...) proves that when Ben met with the registrar, Lisa Burns, two hours before Marcia Sells then suddenly placed him on leave in May 2018, he did so because he wanted to discuss a specific issue with her: Burns had written wildly incorrect exam access records in an email to Ben (copying Sells) days earlier – an incorrect statement regarding when he supposedly had downloaded and begun an exam. The timestamp in Burns’ email was off by several hours.

The audio file shows that Burns repeatedly denied to Ben that the exam access records she had emailed him were incorrect, at which point Ben then revealed to her that he was in possession of administrator-level computer access logs (detailing when he downloaded his exam prompts and even when the times at which his computer was in various power statuses and connected to or not connected to the internet), clearly proving that Burns’ statement in her email to him was entirely wrong. Burns continued refusing to admit, or even consider, that she was wrong. Ben then calmly stated to Burns that he would be going to the office of HLS Dean John Manning for guidance and would then return. Ben clearly stated to Burns that he intended on completing all of his exams, and he absolutely never said that he would not do so. The audio file confirms all of this.

When Ben arrived at Dean Manning’s office a few minutes after meeting with Burns that day, Manning’s assistant at the time, Ann Wheelwright, told Ben that Dean Manning was not available to meet at that time (even though Ben could see that he was sitting at his desk), and also told Ben that he could not schedule an appointment to meet with Dean Manning at any other time. Wheelwright stated to Ben that he should meet with Dean Sells. It seemed to Ben that the registrar, Lisa Burns, had quickly contacted Wheelwright and asked her to keep him from meeting with Manning, thus preventing Ben from seeking assistance from Manning about the situation.

Kafkaesque.

When Ben met with Sells, she suddenly insisted, without any prior notice, that she would be placing him on academic leave. Sells showed him a letter on Harvard Law School letterhead, that she had drafted, printed and signed, in which she stated that Ben had told Burns that he would not be taking one or more of his final exams. This was a total fabrication. It was the kind of fantastical lie that nobody would expect the dean of students (and registrar) to tell. According to Ben, he immediately and repeatedly insisted to Sells that the claim was false (with another administrator from the HLS Dean of Students Office (DOS), Jeffrey McNaught, observing while sitting next to Ben). Apparently, Sells didn’t care – or, rather, she and Burns must have been totally confident that they could lie and get away with it. And they must have been scared shitless that if Ben didn’t go away somehow, they would look like habitual liars. Now here we are, three years later, and indeed, they look like habitual liars.

Sells would then tell Ben that he could petition to return from leave as of the Fall 2018 semester, stating in person that before he returned, he needed to show “productivity” through the summer (but not beyond the summer) through his summer internship – even though no “productivity” requirement for returning from academic leaves existed in the Handbook as written at the time (see copies of Harvard Law School’s past five handbooks here).

Ben also reports that during that same meeting, Sells threatened to cancel his summer public interest funding (SPIF) award, which he had already been approved to receive by the school’s financial services office, and which he needed for the most basic living expenses while doing his otherwise unpaid summer 2018 internship. (Ben, along with the majority of other first-year students, had already arranged to do a summer public interest internship, as it was the typical way in which first-year students gained internship experience before the second year.) Ben informed Professor Randall Kennedy about Sells’ threat. Ultimately, according to Ben, Sells then yielded a few days later and stated that she would let him have his summer public interest funding (which, in reality, it appears she did not have the authority to control and thus never should have threatened to revoke).

Sells nevertheless proceeded to wrongfully place Ben on an involuntary academic leave, by lying on Harvard Law School letterhead, in a letter to its Administrative Board (of which she and Burns were members), that Ben had triggered Section X-D-6 of the 2017-2018 Handbook (link) (“failing to take adequate steps to meet academic requirements”) when he supposedly told Burns that he would not be taking his remaining exams – which the audio file proves never actually happened.

Ben would petition numerous times to return from leave as of the Fall 2018 semester. Despite doing what he was told to do in order to return, Sells denied his petitions anyway, telling him to petition again for the next semester, only to deny his subsequent petition and tell him to petition yet again to return the following semester. This went on, ad infinitum, for three years.

Ben has repeatedly asked, in writing, why he was not allowed to return in the Fall 2018 semester. He has also asked whether Sells placed him on leave in May 2018 after first consulting HLS Administrative Board chair Professor Robert Sitkoff, as the HLS Handbook required her to do at the time. (See the Handbook provision in question here.) HARVARD LAW SCHOOL REFUSES TO ANSWER EITHER QUESTION. (Click here to read their completely non-responsive non-answer.)

To make the injury complete, in August 2018, Sells inexplicably refused to give Ben a routine “dean’s certification” / “good standing letter” that he requested from her, which he needed (and still needs today) to reluctantly transfer to or restart his studies at any other law school or any other graduate or professional school – but Sells never actually said that Ben was not in good standing.

Even if Sells’ (never-stated) position was that Ben was not in good standing, he was (and is) entitled to the paperwork anyway, as it is a form or letter stating whether or not the student is in good standing, rather than paperwork that is only to be provided if the administrator’s position is that the student indeed is in good standing. This means that even a student who is not in good standing still needs the paperwork to be completed and submitted by an administrator at any university that the student has attended toward a degree, whether or not the student has obtained said degree, in order to complete the application and enrollment process at any graduate or professional school. All current and former students are entitled to have this paperwork completed and submitted, without exception. As a result of Sells’ inexplicable refusal to complete and submit this most basic and universally required paperwork, Ben has been stuck in no-man’s-land ever since, unable to study anywhere toward a law degree or other graduate or professional school degree, since May 2018.

You can review two examples of these forms here and here (with corresponding instructions).

Did Harvard Law School Violate Harvard’s Information Security Policy? (October 2019)

In October 2019, while on this absurd leave of absence, Ben reported to Harvard Law School Dean John Manning, Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow, Harvard University Provost Alan Garber, and the Harvard University Office of the General Counsel, in writing, that the staff of the HLS Dean of Students Office (also known as “HLS DOS” or simply “DOS”), led by Dean of Students Marcia Sells was using personal NON-HARVARD file-sharing, cloud storage, and Gmail accounts to store and to transmit the most sensitive and confidential HLS student records in violation of the Harvard Information Security Policy (which explicitly prohibits the use of such systems to handle or transmit student data) and the Harvard Staff Personnel Manual.

Ben obtained proof that this had happened, including clear proof that Senior Director of Student Affairs and Administration Jeff McNaught (who reported directly to Dean of Students Marcia Sells) had engaged in this wrongful conduct and strong evidence that McNaught had attempted to conceal what he had done. Ben provided this proof to Dean Manning, President Bacow, Dr. Garber, General Counsel Diane Lopez, and one or more members of Harvard Corporation, Harvard University’s senior governing board, including Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Bill Lee. Dean Sells’ office responded by trying to excuse this inexcusable behavior, made statements that strongly suggested that her office had done this on numerous occasions, and then stopped responding. The HLS student body was never notified of the situation.

Instead of thanking Ben (and bringing him back from leave), the HLS Administrative Board (perhaps simply deferring to Sells) kept him on leave and pretended he had not potentially saved Harvard Law School from even bigger issues down the road. To this day, Harvard Law School has never denied that Jeff McNaught did indeed violate the Harvard Information Security Policy and Harvard Staff Personnel Manual – though McNaught did leave the HLS Dean of Students Office (DOS) in January 2020, a few months after Ben’s October 2019 report to the head honchos. HLS Dean of Students Marcia Sells might have directed this behavior or engaged in it herself on one or more occasions, and she was almost certainly aware of the efforts to cover up and excuse what had occurred even after Ben reported it to Harvard Law School and Harvard University leadership.

Ben Files a Civil Rights Complaint Against Harvard Law School (May 2020)

On May 15, 2020, Ben filed a thirty-page complaint against Harvard Law School and Harvard University with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) alleging fifteen acts of unlawful retaliation and fourteen acts of unlawful discrimination against Ben and/or other Harvard Law School students over a two-year period, continuing to present day, in violation of certain civil rights laws, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (including President Trump’s Executive Order 13899, Combating Anti-Semitism) and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. OCR confirmed receipt of Ben’s complaint and informed him that it was under evaluation, though a formal investigation apparently still has not been opened, seventeen months later.

They are obviously dragging their feet as a legal tactic, and sadly it seems to be working. It seems to me that OCR is just sitting on it – perhaps because Biden’s appointees to OCR are now in place (at least as acting appointees) or soon will be, and don’t want to investigate Harvard. Or perhaps because they (OCR and Harvard) privately hoped that that Ben would delay a costly civil suit against Harvard (which he cannot financially afford in any way) while hoping for OCR to set things right, until the statute of limitations for any claims related to this mess had run out. Or perhaps because they know that arcane rules in OCR’s Complaint Processing Manual (linked here) make complainants worry that if they file a complaint in civil court, OCR will dismiss the complaint filed with OCR (even after having sat on it for a year or more) by claiming that the civil rights complaint filed with OCR is now duplicative in light of the civil suit and thus should not proceed – even if the civil suit is filed after the OCR complaint precisely because OCR has failed to act. Meanwhile, a former Harvard employee, Mia Karvonides, has been an enforcement director at OCR since just a few days before President Trump took office in 2017 (see news coverage here and current OCR staff list here). Conflict of interest much? Indeed, personnel is policy. Republicans: in January 2025 (or whenever you’re about to move back into the White House), try to remember that it only takes one last-minute lame duck hire by an outgoing Democratic Party administration to neuter a key office in a federal agency (like OCR at U.S. ED), especially if that hire doesn’t require Senate confirmation.

Harvard (and other institutions) are famous for relying on this kind of tactic: play on both sides of the regulator-regulated game, performing a hand shadow puppet show with both hands. Draw things out as long as humanly possible; the more years that pass before an investigation begins, the better.

The last time a student filed an OCR complaint against HLS, in 2010, alleging that the school did not have proper controls in place to prevent and address sexual harassment, it took four years before the complaint was resolved (link). HLS had to agree to bolster its Title IX compliance, in a manner that some HLS professors, including many of its women professors, considered to be an over-correction, and also had to agree to be monitored by (or at least report to) OCR for three years, until 2017 or 2018. HLS probably doesn’t want to go through that again. Unfortunately, they may have really screwed up, thanks to certain women administrators (some of whom were triple-hatted as Title IX coordinators and Administrative Board members in addition to their official administrative roles) who falsely accused a male student of plagiarism based on no evidence, and then, when that failed, pretended that it never happened, wrongfully placed him on academic leave based on a new knowingly false accusation that he told the registrar that he didn’t want to take exams, and wrongfully kept him from applying to other schools. It’s a bizarre situation, but that’s what seems to have happened. You’ve got to hand it to Harvard – putting their woman (Karvonides) on the inside of OCR was a great way to ensure that OCR wouldn’t investigate alleged misconduct at Harvard.

The Smoking Gun Audio (Late 2020)

Where did I get this audio from? In December 2020, an unlisted YouTube link to the audio proving that Sells lied to place Ben on leave was emailed to over one hundred full-time Harvard Law School professors, fifty or so HLS administrative staff, and Harvard’s president.

One of these kind souls forwarded it unsolicited to me, after reading other coverage on Karlstack about administrative malfeasance in higher education. Given that it might come up in litigation later, I won’t be making a copy of it or sharing the link to it at this time, though if Ben permits, I’ll share it. If that happens, I’ll update this post to include the link – if you’re subscribed, you’ll get an update alert in your inbox. At a minimum, I can confirm that the audio absolutely does exist and that it proves exactly what he claims it proves.

Maybe this situation reflects a systemic problem not only with Harvard Law Schools, but with law schools in general: deans of students mistreating students. See, for example, the recent article by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic titled “A Worrisome Peek Inside Yale Law’s Diversity Bureaucracy,” which describes the same kind of behavior occurring at Yale Law School. These deans are bullies. It is a pattern.

The audio file shows how most of the same people who were involved in either accusing Ben of plagiarism (Sells, Newmark, and Tobin, witnessed by Clark and Hubbard), covering it up (all of the above), or forbidding Ben from switching out of Newmark’s class (Sells, Newmark, Tobin, Burns, and Claypoole), were actively involved in unbelievable hijinks during spring exams before then pushing Ben out. According to Ben, the following occurred during exams:

DOS staffer Lakshmi Clark falsely stated (in an email to Ben) that Ben had been told by a registrar’s office staffer named Megan Markov (who reports to Burns) in a separate email the morning of May 9, 2018 to take an exam that day that had been previously scheduled for a different day. In reality, no such email from Markov ever existed, and Clark and Markov clearly knew that before Clark emailed Ben. Ben has raised this with HLS in writing, but they haven’t responded.
Several of Ben’s remaining exams (these are typically take-home exams completed using exam software on the student’s computer) were rescheduled against his will (by Clark, Sells, and Burns together), including an exam Ben explicitly asked to take as originally scheduled to avoid disruption of his exam preparation schedule, only to be told by Clark that he was being “aggressive” by politely asking to not have all of his remaining exams moved around without notice – at which point Ben yielded to the administrators. Ben had already taken the exam for his upper-level elective course (Corporations).
Burns, the registrar, then re-sent Ben a new exam schedule, different from that of his classmates. That email from Burns, copying Sells and Clark, included a demonstrably false exam access/download record (as mentioned above). Ben went to meet with Burns to discuss it.
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The audio is of that very discussion between Ben and Burns.
- This was the very conversation which Dean of Students Marcia Sells had cited in order to wrongly place Ben on leave, going so far as to state that the registrar had personally told her that Ben had specifically stated that he wouldn’t be taking one or more of his final exams.
- The audio file proved that Ben never said what the dean of students claimed he had said to the registrar, and that he had said the exact opposite to the registrar, repeatedly.
- The audio file irrefutably proved that the dean of students, Marcia Sells, had knowingly lied, and that the registrar, Lisa Burns, either worked with Sells in advance to lie about Ben, or, at a minimum, absolutely knew that Sells lied. (Sells sent the leave of absence letter, in which she lied about Ben, to Burns and to Claypoole, as well as to other HLS administrators, including HLS Administrative Board chair Professor Robert Sitkoff.)
- The audio file also showed that when Ben met with Burns in May 2018 just hours before Sells placed him on leave, Burns explained that when she informed him via email in January 2018 that “under no circumstances” could he switch to a different lecturer’s Spring 2018 LRW course (mentioned above), she had done so following a discussion about Ben’s request that she had with Sells and Claypoole.

Slinking Off Into the Night (January 2021)

In January 2021, The Harvard Crimson wrote a glowing tribute (link) to outgoing Harvard Law School Dean of Students Marcia Lynn Sells, in which she was praised for her “instrumental role” in shaping the “framework for furthering the vital goals” of inclusion and belonging at Harvard.

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Something smells fishy about this article, though – something that no mainstream press has ever pointed out. Sells left a high-level Harvard Law School administration position mid-way through the academic year? At the beginning of the semester? With no replacement announced? During a pandemic? For a newly created diversity job at an opera that wasn’t even operating at the time? That doesn’t really make sense. Could she have been pushed out over her alleged treatment of Ben or other students?

It is certainly not out of the question, based on the timing of events. Only a few weeks after the audio file was circulated to upper management in December 2020, Marcia Sells left Harvard for good, gone in a puff of smoke.

The Victim Impact

What are three to five years of your life worth to you?

This mess has dragged on for three and a half years now, and as mentioned earlier, Sells not only prevented Ben from resuming his studies at HLS, but also refused to give Ben the routine and required paperwork that he needed (and still needs) to reluctantly transfer or restart law school (or even another graduate or professional program) elsewhere. It is hard to believe that Harvard Law School administrators would deprive him of several years of his education and career as retaliation for reporting misconduct by HLS staff. But it looks like they did. Ben can prove it, and at this point, both the U.S. Department of Education and Harvard Law School leadership know that Ben can prove it.

Feel free to estimate yourself whatever a Harvard-trained lawyer’s salary (plus bonus) is worth over three or four years – or five, if Ben has to restart his studies next fall and graduate in 2025. (He was supposed to graduate in 2020.) Consider the financial impact of these lost wages, and the massive opportunity cost of leaving the workforce for law school to begin with. “Going to Harvard Law School is supposed to make your life better – not worse,” Ben says.

The Current Dilemma; How to Help (Pt. 1)

This nightmare is ongoing; we are in the middle of it. It is unresolved. Ben is still hoping to resume his studies at Harvard Law School. Over three years have passed. It seems that some of the administrators who were involved in the original situation are still trying to prevent him from returning, perhaps so that they do not have to look him in the eye for the next several years, knowing full well that they acted so inappropriately for so long and at such great cost to him, for no good reason. The situation is made worse by the fact that they are simultaneously failing to rectify Sells’ refusal to provide basic paperwork to Ben so he can pursue his education elsewhere.

Not long before the current 2021-2022 school year began, the administration claimed that Ben was withdrawn, even though the HLS Handbook had already been amended as of the September 2020 edition so that it no longer stated that students could be withdrawn involuntarily by HLS (as opposed to being removed via disciplinary expulsion). Seriously.

What’s more, the administration actually told Ben he could reapply to HLS (apparently with no guarantee of readmission) – but the normal admissions deadline for students wishing to begin (or in Ben’s case, restart) first-year studies in August / September 2021 had passed months before, in February 2021. When Ben contacted the J.D. Admissions Office in August 2021, he was told he couldn’t be “admitted” this year; that office apparently did not answer him when he asked why he should not simply be re-enrolled as an active student (rather than re-“admitted”). That office informed Ben that he could apply during the 2021-2022 admissions cycle for admission to the J.D. Class of 2025 (enrolling in the Fall of 2022), but when the application was released in mid-September 2021, Ben found that it now includes a mandatory question requiring each applicant to check a box attesting that the applicant has never before been enrolled in a J.D. program (see screenshot here).

Was that confusing? If so, it’s not because you’re stupid. It’s because Harvard Law School administrators are cruel. Let me summarize: Harvard Law School administrators claim that Ben is involuntarily withdrawn even though Harvard Law School itself had written its own policies (in its Handbook – its contract with students) to REMOVE their own ability to withdraw a student (like Ben) involuntarily. Then they told Ben to reapply. Then they intentionally created a requirement in the application that they knew Ben would be unable to satisfy (that is, never having been previously enrolled in law school), so that he would be unable to actually reapply. Meanwhile, they continue to ignore his requests for the routine and required paperwork that he needs to go to any other school. That’s where we are, folks.

Again – Kafkaesque.

Honestly, this seems like something that could be solved in five minutes with a letter and a meeting, especially now that Marcia Sells is gone and they can call the whole thing a “misunderstanding.” Unfortunately for Ben, HLS administrators are mostly ignoring his emails and requests to meet (even via Zoom).

Some supportive emails to the dean of Harvard Law School and other HLS and Harvard University leadership would be very helpful at this time. Their publicly available contact information is summarized below, or you can CLICK HERE to automatically open up an email in your default email program with their email addresses automatically filled in for you:

HLS Dean John Manning: jmanning@law.harvard.edu and deansoffice@law.harvard.edu
HLS Registrar Lisa Burns: lburns@law.harvard.edu and registrar@law.harvard.edu
HLS Administrative Board Chair Robert Sitkoff: rsitkoff@law.harvard.edu and adboard@law.harvard.edu
HLS Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs Catherine Claypoole: claypool@law.harvard.edu (there’s no “e” before the “@” symbol in her email address, even though there’s an “e” in her last name)
HLS Dean of Student Services Jessica Soban (who stepped into that new position in 2020 and now apparently oversees student services offices across HLS, including the Dean of Students Office and Registrar’s Office; Soban also happened to be Dean of Admissions when Ben was admitted in 2017): jsoban@law.harvard.edu
The currently leaderless Harvard Law School Dean of Students Office (DOS): dos@law.harvard.edu (which, according to the Internet Archive, had fourteen full-time employees in late 2018 and now has seven, two of whom just joined this week….awkward)
Harvard’s Provost (the university’s chief academic officer) Alan Garber: alan_garber@harvard.edu and provost@harvard.edu
Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow: lawrence_bacow@harvard.edu and president@harvard.edu.

Moving Forward; How to Help (Pt. 2)

Where is the most senior Harvard Law School official, Harvard Law School Dean John Manning, in all of this? Is the influence of liberal administrators so strong that even a conservative dean (like John Manning, a supposed conservative and a former Scalia clerk) cannot stand up for a centrist or conservative student?

Is there any reason to be optimistic? Honestly? Yes! I think Harvard Law School administrators should have to answer to the federal government, to the HLS community, and to the public, about what has gone on here. Ben has a strong case and wins on merit alone. That being said, he needs all the support he can get to resolve things with these Harvard Law School administrators, so people should share this article widely, and email their thoughts (and their support of Ben) to Harvard using the email addresses above. I know that there are many lawyers reading this right now — share it with your lawyer colleagues and friends. The more pressure that is put on HLS administrators, and the more that people read this article, the closer we get to the point where Ben is reinstated – or at least is given the paperwork he needs to contniue his education elsewhere – and gets his life back.

Let’s try to make that happen.

Update (11/1/2021): An attorney has expressed willingness to represent Ben in litigation - but not for free. A fundraiser for the legal fees has been set up. If you wish to support Ben, you can contribute to a legal fund here (GoFundMe) or here (GiveSendGo).