Study Group with Josh Gerstein: A Washington Veteran's Unique Perspective on Law and Politics

Presidents need talented lawyers to defend and design their policies, but some of the federal government’s most significant legal decisions—involving whether or not to charge people with crimes—are traditionally expected to be removed from partisan political considerations or those of loyalty to the occupant of the White House.

Where has that line between politics and prosecutions historically been drawn? Has it shifted or broken down entirely? If so, can it be restored in our highly polarized times?

GUEST: Former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig will join Resident Fellow Josh Gerstein in-person for the April 11 session.

During a career spanning several decades, Greg Craig worked at the most senior levels of presidential campaigns, the State Department, and the White House. He led President Bill Clinton’s successful defense against impeachment, served as the top foreign-policy adviser to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid and later as Obama’s first White House counsel.

Craig has been active in human rights causes since he was an undergraduate. He attended Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963, helped register voters in Mississippi during the civil rights movement, worked on legislation opposing apartheid in South Africa and was intimately involved in efforts to close the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Craig also played the role of stand-in for Republican presidential nominees in the debate prep of Obama and Sen. John Kerry.

During his stints outside government, Craig worked as a trial lawyer on numerous cases of national significance, including the father of Elian Gonzalez—the boy at the center of a high-profile international custody dispute in 2000 involving Cuba and the U.S.

Craig is a graduate of Harvard College (’67), received a master’s in philosophy from the University of Cambridge and got his law degree from Yale, where he was in the same class as Bill and Hillary Clinton.

AUDIENCE: These conversations are open to members of the Harvard community. Please RSVP with a valid Harvard email address.

OFF-THE-RECORD: In keeping with our long tradition at the IOP to ensure honest and candid discussions of politics, all IOP study groups are off-the-record.