n 2018, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. agreed to join the legal team representing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in his New York City trial for rape and other charges. Weinstein, co-founder of the film company Miramax, had produced a number of highly successful films, eighty-one of which had won an Oscar, and also had won seven Tony Awards for his role in producing various plays and musicals. In 2017, Weinstein was forced out of the company he had established along with his brother based on well-documented allegations that he had sexually abused over eighty women (Kantor and Twohey 2019).

Sullivan, a highly regarded lawyer, is the Jesse Climenko Clinical Professor of Law and the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School's criminal-law clinic. In 2009, Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, were the first African Americans to be appointed as faculty deans at Harvard. They headed the residential college Winthrop House and were responsible for mentoring and supervising over four hundred students and organizing social activities. Sullivan's decision to represent Weinstein led to a call for his resignation from a small though vocal group of students. An online petition calling for Sullivan's removal as dean attracted 270 signatures from Harvard students. Graffiti critical of Sullivan, some of which was condemned as racist, appeared on campus buildings. One online post asked students how they would feel receiving a diploma from someone like Sullivan who had represented Weinstein. The issue for the students demanding Sullivan's resignation was that they no longer felt they were able to approach Sullivan with issues regarding sexual assault and that his perceived sympathy for an accused rapist made them uneasy and undermined the sense of community at Winthrop House.

Sullivan responded that lawyers are not an "extension of their clients. . . . When I'm in my lawyer capacity, representing a client, even one publicly vilified, it doesn't mean I'm supporting anything the client may have done. . . . [L]awyers are engaged in a long-standing tradition of service to people accused by the state. Just as surgeons don't decline to work on people because they're bad, lawyers too have these same obligations once they undertake a representation."

Fifty-two members of the Harvard Law School faculty expressed support for Sullivan. The dean of Harvard College nonetheless announced that he would conduct a "climate review" of the impact of Sullivan's representation of Weinstein on the student residents of Winthrop House and that based on the result of the survey he would take "appropriate action." Harvard, in 2015, conducted a similar review when students at another one of the resident houses alleged that there was a lack of acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.

Sullivan could justifiably believe that he was being treated unfairly. He had represented various Harvard women in sexual assault claims and as a special counsel had prosecuted the former governor of Missouri in a sexual assault case. Sullivan's progressive credentials could not be questioned. He had headed the public defender office in the District of Columbia; represented the family of Usaamah Rahim, who was shot by the Boston police after being falsely accused of being a terrorist; helped the family of Michael Brown obtain a $1.5 million settlement from the City of Ferguson, Missouri, after Brown was killed by a police officer; assisted in establishing an indigent defense system in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina; and in 2014 designed an integrity unit to identify wrongfully convicted individuals in Brooklyn, New York. Sullivan had not been hesitant to represent controversial clients. He defended former New England Patriots team member Aaron Hernandez at his second murder trial in which Hernandez was acquitted of murdering two men.

In early May 2019, Sullivan announced that he was no longer representing Weinstein and explained that the judge in rescheduling the trial had created a conflict with his teaching obligations at Harvard Law School. Sullivan added he would remain available to Mr. Weinstein's legal team for advice and consultation. Several days later, Sullivan and his wife Robinson were dismissed from their positions at Winthrop House by Rakesh Khurana, the dean of Harvard College, who explained that "[o]ver the last few weeks, students and staff have continued to communicate concerns about the climate in Winthrop House to the college. . . . I have concluded that the situation in the house is untenable" (K. Taylor 2019). Was Harvard correct in removing Sullivan as dean of Winthrop House?