 A dry season of rights
How naive I have been,
thinking that there is actually justice in America
By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi
October 31, 2003
The Iranian
Hamvatanan-e aziz,
False arrest, incarceration,
public defamation, censorship, blacklisting, egregious court
rulings defying the elementary principles of
law and equal justice. No,
I am not refering to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rather, I am refering to that
venerable 'beacon on the hill,' Harvard University, my Great Nemesis, I have
been battling constantly since 1990, the ruthless Goliath that has thrown its
elephantine weight against me intent on crushing me years after years.
The years burn up as a fading lantern, homage
to the majesty of the absurd, a muse easy to bear, Camusian laughter,
thinking, what might break this dry spell?
On March 23rd this year, I got a notice from the
Supreme Court of the United States. It read: Afrasiabi versus
Harvard University, et al, motion to file
petition for certiorari out of time is denied (full court).
I have since
consoled myself
with the thought that at least I got the ears of the whole nine justices
for a brief moment, however despairingly, and that itself is
making history, legal
history, given my pro se status.
No, it has not been easy fighting the ruthless
Goliath for seven consecutive years acting as my own attorney
against a horde of shameless, manipulative
power legal hired hands put up by Harvard in my civil rights law suit filed
in a federal
court in Boston in 1996 shortly after the false charges -- of death threats
and extortion -- were dropped against me.
The case's docket sheet alone
is over one
hundred pages, testimony to the maddening zeal with which I litigated my
complaint: over 700 motions and briefs, more than thirty hearings, and
a controversial
jury trial lasting ten full days featuring two university presidents, a
half dozen
Harvard police officers, several professors, including the famed historian
Howard Zinn, the playwright David Mamet, and CBS' "60 Minutes" correspondent,
Mike Wallace, testifying on my behalf as my character witness.
"The cannons of Harvard are lined up against
a pea shooter," said Wallace
to the reporters after his in-court testimony on a cold January morning,
in 1999, exactly three years after my pre-dawn arrest by Harvard
police on the fictitious
charges intended to silence my criticisms of a Jewish professor of Middle
East at Harvard who had earlier smeared me with Wallace.
"I
admire Afrasiabi," read
the writeup below Wallace's picture in the next day's Boston Globe article
on the on-going trial. "I think he is an honorable man,
and I think he is innocent enough to think that he can prevail
over the resources of Harvard," Wallace
was quoted. In retrospect, I realize how naive I have been,
thinking that there is actually justice in America, not knowing
that it is just ice, floating
feeably above
a glacier of might, that all the things I had been teaching my students
at the
time -- for I was a professor of American government at the time of
my arrest, instantly losing my job and forced to enroll as a
student (of
theology) subsequently
-- about American justice were pure illusions. I had, in a word, seriously
deluded myself.
The Commonwealth of Fear, that is all that I can
now think of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, run by Harvard
like a feudal feifdom. And, how could
I think otherwise? I have endured so many bitter memories of the
racist, discriminatory
court systems in Massachusetts that it would take a thick volume
to explain, and yet I find myself so expired in energy these
days, as
the process
siphoned my energy, surely, steadily, without any remorse.
All I
can think is the
brutal
grin on the faces of Harvard's chief counsel when the federal judge
reversed himself overnight on the testimony of two handwriting experts
who had
concluded that the Harvard detective on trial, Richard Mederos, had
the same handwriting
as the "extortionist."
The same judge who had exclaimed, "this
is going to win the case" on day five of the trial, on day
six would disallow the experts' written finding and prevent its
publication
to the jurors. Funny thing, around the same time, the US Supreme
Court had made a couple of landmark rulings about the importance
of handwriting
testimony
as "expert
testimony" and that was one reason
I continued to vest my
hope in the appeals process, thinking that the lower court's
decision will be overturned, and when
the three justices of the Appeals Court for the First Circuit
disappointed me, inevitably turned my stare toward the Supreme
Court for the
tid-bit flung at
them. Any surprise that they rejected it in the post 9/11 milieu
wrought with anti-Middle East xenophobia? Who knows, may be if I had submitted my appeal
to the Supreme Court in a timely fashion, within the alloted
90 days, and not on the
91st day,
things
could
have been different. But I had miscalculated the deadline by one
day, and happened to be tagging along President Khatami in his
trip to Spain,
just
as I had on
several of his other trips to Europe and Central Asia.
I should
have given my
personal business a greater priority, I keep telling myself, cursing
myself often for all the sacrifices I have made for the sake of "my Iran," a
country I have barely lived in since my teen years. Or is it an
omnipower inner calling
I have no control over? My thoughts race back to a moment when we had
a clairvoyant in our living rooms in Shiraz and he jotted down "politics" (siyasat) while pointing at
me and on his way out said meaningfully, "your forefathers came from Ecbatana." Fooled
by metaphors, aren't we all?
In conclusion, another poem adorning the back
cover of my poetic legal diary:
Celebtrate!
Celebrate having known her,
her shallow depth and deep cold-heartedness,
the seriousnessness that was ever there,
the facade, the pomp and pain.
Celebrate, the knowledge you are privileged to share
with your neighbor, family and friends:
Justice is but a walking shadow, always whispering:
high tide, fresh bread.
And I have to yell:
No pennies, Prima donna! Author
Kaveh Afrasiabi has a Ph.D. in political science. He has authored
a number of books, fiction and non-fiction, and numerous articles
-- including the Harvard Theological Review,
Middle East Journal, UN Chronicle, and The New York Times.
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