Law Schools

Charles Fried Joins Call For Harvard To Divest From Private Prisons

It's not as surprising a stance as one might think.

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Harvard sits atop a mountain of cash. Apparently not enough to spare to keep support staff employed during a pandemic, but a mountain of cash nonetheless. And this money is invested all over the place including private prison companies making a fortune turning America into a latter season Orange Is The New Black hellscape.

We’ve covered the efforts of the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign before — they’ve been advocating for the school to get out of the human misery business and ended up getting “investigated” by the school for their trouble. Investigated is in quotes because it’s never been quite clear what the students did that warranted an inquiry of any kind.

Now the effort has an unexpected ally in Harvard Law’s Charles Fried. Fried, the Solicitor General during the Reagan administration might seem on paper to be a supporter of private prisons — institutions that are generally propped up by “law and order” Republican state governments. But Fried is firmly opposed to the private prison industry and Harvard’s financial complicity in the endeavor, joining Professor Ron Sullivan for a panel discussion hosted by the Harvard Law Forum and Harvard American Constitution Society.

Fried’s argument fundamentally conservative and rooted in straightforward free enterprise. Private prison advocates like to posture as paragons of private enterprise, but as Fried points out, the market only works when there’s competition and when private companies are simply subcontracted to exercise the monopoly on state violence it basically devolves into torture. It’s a reminder that most of the American right has fetishized “privatization” with little attention to what makes the free market actually work.

Sullivan, who unintentionally became a “political correctness amok” talking point for briefly representing Harvey Weinstein, backs Fried’s reasoning and adds that if Harvard wants to present itself as committed to racial justice, getting out of this business would be a pretty good way to do that.

The ball is now in Harvard’s court.

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Earlier: Harvard Law School Students Come Together To Demand The School Stop Harassing Three Students

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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