| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017162)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017162" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3657 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 4.2.12 |
| WC: 191694 |
| I had a goal for every class, and when I think back on it, it was far too ambitious. I had to, with |
| every single class, say something original, teach something original that had never been written or |
| said before by anybody. That was my aspiration, and I worked hard to achieve it. Law, of |
| course, was based on precedent: you got points for showing that someone, particularly a judge, |
| had said earlier what you are saying now. I hated that approach. It reminded me of my Yeshiva |
| education. I wanted to be original. Every single class had to have something new. I knew the |
| students wouldn't appreciate it because they didn't know it had never been said by anybody, but |
| that was my way of satisfying myself. And I would rip up the notes at the end of the year and I'd |
| say, we have to start from scratch all over again. I was a very energetic teacher and I really tried |
| to put everything I had into each class. |
| I introduced a lot philosophy and psychology into the classroom, and because I was teaching |
| criminal law. I had a lot of freedom since no one really cared about criminal law at Harvard. Our |
| students were unlikely to become criminal lawyers in those days. In fact, I started out one of my |
| classes by saying, "statistically, more of you are going to be criminal defendants than criminal |
| lawyers, so pay attention." My first year of "crim" class was kind of a course designed to stretch |
| the mind and teach analytic skills because it was not regarded as a "bread and butter" course like |
| corporations or tax. So I had a lot of flexibility in what I could teach. |
| A few years after I became a full professor, Derek Bok became the Dean of the Law School. We |
| never got along all that well. One day he called me into his office with a smile on his face and told |
| me that I was a very expensive professor. Since salaries are fairly standard at Harvard, I didn't |
| know what he was talking about. He pulled out a letter from a Harvard alum saying that he |
| would make a very considerable donation to Harvard Law School on one condition, namely, that |
| I was fired. Many of the old-fashioned alumni were upset by my liberalism and the fact that I was |
| teaching subjects like Psychiatry and Law, in addition to traditional subjects such as Criminal |
| Law, but this particular alum had a more personal grievance. I had represented, on a pro bono |
| basis, a young man I had grown up with in Brooklyn, who had been accused of making a bomb |
| for the Jewish Defense League that had caused the death of a young woman employee of Sol |
| Hurok. The young woman, as it turned out, was the sister-in-law of this wealthy alumnus. He |
| would not contribute a single penny to Harvard Law as long as I remained on the faculty, but if I |
| were fired he would donate a large building worth millions of dollars. In jest, I suggested to |
| Derek Bok that maybe we could make a deal for a significant severance package. We both |
| laughed. He knew that a great university like Harvard could never be intimidated, by the threat of |
| withholding any amount of money, into firing a tenured professor. |
| In my second semester of teaching, I was assigned the class in family law, which was an advanced |
| elective popular with women students, because women lawyers were thought suitable to practice |
| in such "soft" areas of law as divorce and child custody. My class included some of the most |
| prominent women graduates of that era, including Lydy Dole, who became a United States |
| Senator, Elizabeth Holtzman, who became a member of Congress and the District Attorney of |
| Brooklyn, Elizabeth Bartholet, who is a professor at Harvard Law School and several other |
| prominent figures. |
| 75 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017162 |
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