Not Appreciating Non-Attribution

Harvard Law School has adopted new restrictions that ban Law School affiliates from attributing statements made in class to their speaker, then publicly sharing this information with those not present for the original conversation. According to the Law School, its new Non-Attribution Policy responds to the danger of social media — a place where the school worries statements may be posted out of context, causing students to not participate fully in class discussions. Notably, the policy does not apply after Law students graduate and does not impact internal misconduct reporting.

We find the need to institutionalize such a rule regrettable. If the Law School is right about the world we live in, it is a shame that the fear of comments being taken in bad faith is so great that it requires formalized standards of basic decency. Respect for the truth should be reason enough to represent the view of others faithfully. That said, the expression of dissenting opinions should not provoke bullying or harassment, either.

To blanketly curtail a form of public discourse in order to remove the need for this respect seems like the wrong approach. It’s a strangely paternalistic move on behalf of the Law School: almost akin to revoking a child’s phone privileges. Instead, norms for what may leave the classroom should be worked out in individual interactions and reflected in class-specific policies.

Admittedly, whether the classroom should be treated as a public and private space is an open question. So, then, is whether classroom discussions should be public or kept private — after all, four wall policies are not a foreign concept on Harvard’s campus. For the Law School to institutionalize the privacy of classes is to too hastily decide that question, without regard for differences in classes’ formats, goals, and content. Additionally, the restricted time frame of the policy seems inconsistent with the supposed rationale of privacy protection, and the inconsistency reveals a lack of genuine engagement with the concepts of classroom privacy and responsibility.

We believe that an appropriate policy should acknowledge the importance of the classroom as a space for evolving thought without abandoning personal responsibility. While the classroom is certainly a place to grow in your beliefs and learn from others around you, it is not a land where speech has no consequences.

Harvard Law students are on the brink of holding enormous power in our society — they must know that they are responsible for their words, and their peers should be able to openly react to their conduct, as you’d expect students studying in democractic societies to be able to. The non-attribution policy must not serve an ulterior purpose of allowing students to eschew accountability for their speech. The same applies to professors, who do not, and should not, get a free pass under this new non-attribution rule.

The Law School claims that the rule will help “enable all in a broad and diverse community to learn from one another,” but it also risks stripping this diverse community of a means to address any offensive speech and hold each other to a high standard of mutual respect. We trust students to honestly and fairly contextualize their peers’ in-class comments — we can’t think of an example of Law students doing anything to the contrary, and the Law School cites none in its rollout of the policy.

The unprecedented rise of the online classroom during the pandemic has forced us to ask deep questions about digital privacy. The answers to these questions and our interpretation of privacy will have tremendous implications as we move forward in the digital age. Blunt institutional decisions cannot address these nuanced topics; we should encourage individual engagement, mutual respect, and reflection instead.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.