PRESS RELEASE: Students Protest Senior Fellow Bill Lee’s Keynote Speech
On Saturday, February 1, student organizers, mostly Asian, from the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign silently protested Wilmerhale partner and Senior Fellow William F. Lee’s Keynote Speech at the National Asian Pacific American Conference on Law and Policy. Students held up signs that demanded that Bill Lee direct the Harvard University endowment to divest from the prison-industrial complex.The signs also stated “Yellow Power and Black Power Together Can Dismantle the Prison-Industrial Complex” and “Choose the Right Side of History”. The conference was held by the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA).
William F. Lee is the Senior Fellow on the Harvard Board of the President and Trustees. Lee is also the Senior Chairperson on the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR) and widely thought to have the decision-making power over questions of divestment.
Divestment is far from unprecedented. Historically, the CCSR has approved Harvard’s decisions to divest from various industries, such as tobacco, companies related to South African apartheid, and companies related to genocide in Darfur.
“This was a chance for the Asian-American community at Harvard to band together and call out Bill Lee’s hypocrisy when it comes to minority rights,” said Amanda Chan, third-year law student. “Bill Lee defended affirmative action but he won’t stop profiteering from the prison-industrial complex, which impacts millions upon millions of poor Black and brown people. Many of these people are Asian.”
This protest served as a follow-up to the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign’s silent protest of Senior Fellow William Lee in December of 2019. There, Lee visited Harvard Law School to give a lecture about his experience as a trial lawyer defending Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process. Student organizers with the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign held up signs that stated “Affirmative Action, Yes. Prison Investments, No.” and “Bill Lee is upholding White Supremacy”.
The Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign is a group of students demanding that the University divest its holdings from the prison-industrial complex. It released a report in October of 2019 detailing these investments, which can be found at http://tiny.cc/hpdcreport.
“It’s a shame Bill Lee has chosen not to follow the wonderful history of Asian-Americans supporting the Black liberation movement,” said an organizer with the Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign. “Instead, Lee is on the wrong side of history. Years from now, people will think of him as someone who refused to see the humanity in his fellow people of color.”
John Weber
The protesting students make me proud to be a Harvard Alum, despite the university’s deep involvement in every major evil in the world. Keep on fighting. You are on the right side!