After a massive leak, the Harvard Law Review was accused of using a racially conscious and ideologically discriminatory rubric to evaluate article submissions. But many of the authors whose works were evaluated in the leaked documents didn’t see it that way.
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A Mass Leak Showed the Harvard Law Review Assessed Articles for DEI Values. Some Authors Say That’s Not a Problem.
After a massive leak, the Harvard Law Review was accused of using a racially conscious and ideologically discriminatory rubric to evaluate article submissions. But many of the authors whose works were evaluated in the leaked documents didn’t see it that way.
The Harvard Law Review — a student-edited publication that is America’s most prominent law journal — has found itself engulfed in a public battle over accusations that it unfairly boosted Black and Latino authors.
Since April, the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing news site, has published a steady drumbeat of leaked documents from the Law Review’s article submission process, which the Free Beacon alleged documented discrimination against white and Asian authors. In the months since, three federal agencies — the Department of Health and Human Services, the Education Department, and the Justice Department —
opened investigations into the allegations.
And then, on June 19, the Free Beacon dropped a bombshell: nearly 2,300 pages showing how the Law Review’s editors evaluated article submissions.
The Free Beacon claimed they had clear evidence that the Law Review’s editors used a racially conscious and ideologically discriminatory rubric. But many authors whose articles were discussed in the leak said they saw nothing to object to in the Law Review’s process — even as others agreed that the process considered race in pernicious ways.
The leaked documents show individual editors’ assessments of 416 articles submitted for the most recent volume of the Law Review, all anonymized at this stage of the review process. The Crimson was able to identify and contact 360 of the authors.
Of the 20 authors who gave statements in response, 12 said there were no major issues in the criteria used by the Harvard Law Review and that the editors’ rubric did not consider race inappropriately. Five objected to the rubric — though some thought it would be concerning for the government to intervene. The remainder did not address the Law Review’s use of the rubric.
“I thought the memo discussing my article was thoughtful and incisive,” wrote Genevieve Lakier, a law professor at the University of Chicago, whose paper on free speech law and stalking was rejected. “I do not think there is anything wrong with student editors taking questions of diversity into account, particularly when it comes to citations.”
University of Oregon law professor Mohsen Manesh said that his ethnicity was not discussed in the leak, and that his submission was rejected primarily because the editor was unpersuaded by his arguments.