“Life During a Constitutional Crisis” - Professor Bernard Harcourt

Описание: Episode 13 of the University of Miami School of Law's Constitutional Crisis Seminar features Bernard Harcourt, the Corliss Lamont Professor of Law and Civil Liberties at Columbia Law, and a faculty affiliate in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS), and the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.

Professor Harcourt has an A.B from Princeton, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After law school he served as a law clerk for Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, then represented individuals on Alabama’s death row, at what is now the Equal Justice Initiative, in Montgomery, Alabama. He continues to represent pro bono persons sentenced to death and life imprisonment without parole, as well as those detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Professor Harcourt taught at the University of Chicago, where he was the chairman of the Political Science Department and the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Political Science, before moving to Columb9ia. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, New York University, and the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey.

In 2019, Professor Harcourt won the N. Y. City Bar Association Norman J. Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award, a lifetime achievement award for his work on behalf of individuals on death row. Professor Harcourt actively challenged the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban, representing pro bono a Syrian medical resident excluded under the executive order, as well as Moseb Zeiton, a Columbia SIPA student.

Professor Harcourt’s scholarship includes more than a dozen authored or edited books on a wide variety of important topics in political, social, and legal theory, political economy, punishment practices, and critical philosophy.

In addition, Professor Harcourt has edited or co-edited and annotated many volumes of the lectures of philosopher Michel Foucault in French and English, as well as the definitive French edition of Discipline and Punish. His French connection extends to Professor Harcourt being a directeur d’études at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

We were privileged to welcome the intellectual’s public intellectual, Bernard Harcourt, to conclude this semester’s seminar series on The Constitutional Crisis.

Professor Bernard Harcourt began with a personal story about a response to the crisis of ‘30s fascism. His father, he explained, had a difficult escape from France in 1940 via Portugal.

But, Professor Harcourt said, growing up in the U.S. felt so safe. Never did he think he might have to flee, like his father had done.

So, what kind of acts do we need to be taking?

Harcourt says he sees our times as in the grip of a modern counter-revolution against the administrative state. But this is a sinusoidal pattern with historical waves, and we seem to be at an apex. The apex is caused by economic transformation caused by AI and other tech transformation, including the roles of labor, and of globalization.

Although we appear to be headed in the direction of an authoritarian state there is scope for opponents to rally the middle against those whose strategy relies on creating ‘others’ such as LGBT persons.

Indeed, history tends to show that when people retain their values, counter-revolutions tend to fail. Thus, follow Timothy Synder’s lesson: #1 Do not obey in advance. This is easy to do and is helpful for one’s own safety and well-being. It is also good to follow rule #4: and take responsibility for the face of the world—for creating the right appearances. And most important is Synder’s rule #20 ‘be as courageous as you can be.”

Harcourt says he owes his existence to a Portuguese counsel in France, Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Sousa Mendes was told he couldn’t grant visas any more without extensive delays at time when there were thousands asking for visas. Sousa Mendes had a 3-day crisis and decided to sign visas anyway—and he did them at scale. Signed 30,000 visas that allowed people to escape. Harcourt’s father, at age 12, had one of those visas.

We should follow this example and show as much courage as we can, Harcourt advised, and act in the face of what may be a growing crisis.