Who should prep university presidents? Crisis managers, not lawyers.
Why do lawyers believe they are best qualified to prep their clients for nonlegal situations such as the congressional hearing earlier this month featuring the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT? And where were the professional crisis managers who do this for a living? They had to be MIA or overruled by the lawyers.
Published reports stated that in the weeks leading up to the congressional hearing, one law firm coordinated the preparation for both Harvard and Penn and also met with the president of MIT.
All three presidents came across as so scripted that they even used some of the same words in answers to questions. No competent crisis manager would have permitted their clients to come across as human automatons, especially when all three of these presidents are bright and capable people.
This was not a courtroom they were in but a political room. As Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley law school, commented, the college presidents appeared to be “prepared to give answers in court — and not a public forum.”
Testifying in a court of law often calls for specific answers to questions. But if the opposing lawyer unfairly attacks your client, you have both client counsel and the judge to object and overrule improper or misleading questions.
No such process exists in congressional hearings, where the only thing missing in the circus that took place Dec. 5 was the carnival barker, although Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York did a fair impression of that role.
The presidents had to give crisp and emotional answers to the very specific question of whether calls for genocide of Jewish students was protected speech according to the guidelines of their institutions. That’s the first question any good crisis manager is preparing their client for before they step into the congressional hearing room. Ever since the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, almost every major university president has faced protests on their campus and been asked their position on free speech and whether hate speech directed at Jewish students was protected speech.
And after the presidents got the answer wrong the first time in the prep session, we would roll the video tape, show them where their answers were deficient, and have our Stefanik impersonator go at them again. And again, until they got it right.
The challenge for these three presidents was not to litigate what is protected speech on their campuses. Nor was it their role to parse the student handbook on the code of conduct on whether or not that harmful speech was directed to a specific individual or group. Congressional hearings are forums for sound bites and certainly not meant to interpret the context or meaning of questions from people like Stefanik.
While the three presidents were being coached on the legal definition of free speech and their respective codes of conduct on their campuses, Stefanik was preparing her “gotcha questions” and hoping that one or more of the presidents would take the bait. Unfortunately, all three did.
The damage was done, their performances justly criticized and a day later, the president of Penn resigned. As the then-chair of the Penn board of trustees Scott L. Bok stated after Liz Magill’s resignation, “She was not herself .... Over-prepared and over-lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes, she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question and that was wrong.” Bok announced his resignation following Magill’s.
What then could have changed the outcome here?
The first step would have been to show these three accomplished leaders the video of the answers given by then-presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. During one of the 1988 presidential debates, CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered.
Instead of expressing anger and outrage at what he would want to do to this criminal, as Mario Cuomo did when asked the same question, Dukakis, a smart and accomplished governor of Massachusetts, gave a long-winded answer on the reasons he opposed the death penalty. When I show that clip to my crisis clients, they cringe and acknowledge that that was the wrong answer. But it helps them prepare for that type of question.
Lesson one for Gay or anyone else experiencing a communications crisis is to find the right opportunity to express your feelings and, in the Harvard leader’s case, outrage at the vile and hurtful comments being directed toward Jewish students. An experienced leader would throw back any comments that could be used against them in a follow-up question.
The next step would be to prepare for likely questions from members of Congress. Know that some members will try to force yes or no answers as context and nuanced explanations are not what they seek. Don’t be afraid to state that a line of questioning is misleading or inaccurate.
And if tripped up by a question that’s posed, answer instead the question you want to be asked. This is about controlling the conversation.
The next step is to preempt members from getting the headlines they seek. You don’t need to be a performer in their circus. How to do that? Release sound bites in advance of your testimony. Be unequivocal, be empathetic, but don’t wait to state your views until you get before a congressional committee.
My final bit of advice for Gay specifically would be to invite Stefanik — and the media — back to Harvard for a visit and tell her while free speech is indeed protected on campus, hate has no place at Harvard.
Bet that sound bite would be in every story.