Stanford Reverses Offer to Radical Lawyer -- Lynne Stewart, who was slated to participate in a mentorship program, is chastised for her statements on violence. S.F. Daily Journal - Nov 12, 2002 By John Roemer Daily Journal Staff Writer         SAN FRANCISCO - Lynne F. Stewart, the New York radical lawyer, arrived in Palo Alto on Friday expecting to be honored as a mentor to Stanford Law School students in public interest practice.         Instead she found a fax at her hotel from Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan rescinding the mentorship offer because of Stewart's reported views on violence.         Sullivan withdrew the invitation, she said in a prepared statement, because "it has come to my attention that Ms. Stewart has expressed sympathy for and tacit endorsement of the use of directed violence to achieve social change."         Rescinding the invitation didn't mean Stewart was forbidden to be on campus. She took part Saturday and Monday in a Stanford conference on progressive lawyering called "Shaking the Foundations."         Stewart, 63, is under federal criminal indictment in New York for allegedly aiding an Islamic terrorist group by transmitting messages from her client, imprisoned leader Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. U.S. v. Stewart, 02CR395 (Southern District of New York).         Defense lawyer Michael E. Tigar of Washington, D.C., who represents Stewart, called Sullivan's move to withdraw the invitation "idiotic."         "It's indefensible for an otherwise sensible professor of law to confuse the views of a lawyer with the right to speak them," Tigar said Monday. "That's the most critical error a law professor can make."         Elizabeth Grossman, a Berkeley criminal defense lawyer who founded Women Defenders and who has invited Stewart to speak in the Bay Area, said Stanford's move is bad for students.         "Lynne Stewart is a passionate advocate for her clients," Grossman said. "This is a total loss for students who will not be exposed to a litigator of her caliber."         The tempest evidently arose because of a September article in The New York Times Magazine in which Stewart commented on civilian deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks:         "I'm pretty inured to the notion that in a war or in an armed struggle, people die. They're in the wrong place, they're in a nightclub in Israel, they're at a stock market in London, they're in the Algerian outback - whatever it is, people die."         The victims in the World Trade Center, she said, "never knew what hit them. They had no idea that they could ever be a target for somebody's wrath, just by virtue of being American. They took it personally. And actually, it wasn't a personal thing."         After mentioning Hiroshima and Dresden, she was quoted as having said, "So I have a lot of trouble figuring out why that is wrong, especially when people are sort of placed in a position of having no other way."         Despite those controversial views, Stewart was unprepared for Stanford's last-minute rejection.         "I read the fax and my jaw dropped," Stewart said. "I'm a known quantity. To pull this out of the hat makes me feel this is coming from the outside."         Nevertheless, she spoke at the law school forum about her own case and about defending unpopular defendants.         "I'm delighted we had her here to raise the issues she did," said professor Deborah L. Rhode, who has written about Stewart's case.         Conservative Stanford graduates who dispute her views may have pressured law school authorities to withdraw the mentoring invitation, Stewart speculated.         Tigar argued that Stanford's Hoover Institution for decades has promoted military violence.         "The place was full of hot warriors, cold warriors and advocates of massive retaliation," he said.         Sullivan declined to comment directly Monday. The law school's media office released a statement by Sullivan stressing the school "welcomes discussion and promotes rigorous debate of difficult and controversial issues."         That's why the school invited Stewart to serve as a David W. Mills Public Interest Visiting Mentor, the statement said, adding that it did so "without full consultation with faculty and senior administrators."         Mills is a senior lecturer at the school who teaches tax law and white-collar criminal defense. He did not return a call seeking comment. School spokeswoman Ann Dethlefsen said he has no direct tie to the mentorship program, which was named after him by a former dean "as an honorific."         Previous Mills visiting mentors include Renee Saucedo of La Raza Centro Legal, Anthony D. Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union and Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor. Stewart said she had been told the school will not pay the $1,000 stipend she had been promised but will cover her expenses.         Sullivan's statement to the media was somewhat milder than her fax rescinding the mentorship. The fax said bluntly, "you have expressly supported the use of violence to achieve social change."         Whatever the nuances, Stewart said she resents "having this sprung on me after I traveled here." And she isn't leaving town without a fight.         "I'm pugnacious," she asserted Monday from her Palo Alto hotel. "This is a further chilling of the atmosphere for civil rights in this country. It does seem to be outrageous. Republicans certainly manifest a belief in violence toward Iraq, and I don't see them being barred from anywhere."         During the Saturday panel discussion of immigration and civil rights, one student took Stewart to task for her New York Times Magazine remarks, according to an attorney who was present.         Stewart responded with a sketch of the uses of violence in revolutionary struggles throughout history.         "I'm with Washington, Jefferson and the Green Mountain Boys," she said Monday, referring to participants in the American Revolution. "Armed struggle is a tactic to be used judiciously."         Another student protested Stewart's exclusion from the mentoring program, she said.         "This young man announced the students will be organizing against kicking me out," Stewart said. "You know, they had 10 or 20 students signed up for me to mentor before the firestorm. Now I hear it's more like 50. If you want a book to sell, you ban it."         Tigar said Stanford's effort to insulate students from Stewart is hopeless.         "It's stupid and futile to attempt to shut ideas off from students by slamming the door of the university," Tigar said, recalling a lesson from a law professor at Boalt Hall, where he studied in the 1960s.         The professor was fond of quoting John Milton on censorship, which the British poet compared to "the gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate."