Law in a Lifeboat
Adrift at sea with no food and no hope of rescue, desperate crewmen kill their shipmate Richard Parker and eat his remains to survive (“Law in a Lifeboat,” January-February 2026, page 26). An identical episode occurs in the nineteenth-century novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Yet another example of an author lifting material from the headlines? No. Remarkably, Edgar Allan Poe published his book in 1838, 46 years before Parker, Dudley, and Stephens were shipwrecked.
Mark Eckenwiler ’82
In retracing the impact of The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, Adam Cohen fails to pose or answer what I view as the most significant issue: what assurance did the murderous seafarers have that they would not be rescued an hour or a day after their act of cannibalism? In other words, how can one adjudge the legality or morality of the throat slitting absent greater context?
Clearly, had the act been committed within sight of a rescuing boat, there would be no real legal or moral quagmire; we would all agree that the perpetrators committed murder. The degree of temporal and spatial separation from rescue must inform any judgment in the case; if those who engaged in the act could reasonably assume that they had no way out but the killing of another, this becomes a much closer case.
Moreover, in such desperate straits, it is doubtful that any legal regime could curb the appetite of the empowered.
Michael Sussman, J.D. ’78
The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens case cannot reasonably be compared to the trolley problem as suggested in “Law in a Lifeboat.” In the trolley case, a utilitarian can easily demonstrate that switching the runaway train saves multiple lives and maximizes utility. Captain Dudley and Stephens, by contrast, were guilty of a crime even if they were judged on utilitarian grounds. Maximizing utility, in this case, would seem to require maximizing the expected remaining life-years of the survivors, i.e., saving the life of someone with a life expectancy of 50 more years is better than saving the life of someone who has a life expectancy of 15 or 20 more years. Killing the youngest member of the crew doesn’t accomplish this. If Captain Dudley had been interested in maximizing utility, he might have slit his own throat or Stephens’s throat. What this case really demonstrates is that Dudley and Stephens, like many who invoke utilitarian arguments, were really interested in maximizing their own utility.
Howard Landis, M.B.A. ’78
Adam Cohen’s article about Dudley and Stephens is entertaining, but this case does not deserve the level of attention it has received in the legal and philosophical academy.
According to Cohen, “the case almost perfectly illustrates the great philosophical debate between utilitarians...and those who espouse a rights-based theory of justice” (January-February 2026, page 30). But Dudley and Stephens is a poor illustration of that debate. The problem is that it was overwhelmingly likely that Parker would have died of dehydration if he hadn’t been killed. This is a moral confound in the case: a factor beyond Parker’s right to life and the calculus of consequences that is potentially morally relevant.
A true test of the disagreement between utilitarians and rights-based theorists needs to be a case in which this moral confound is absent. Perhaps the most famous is the late Judith Jarvis Thomson’s case of the doctor who kills a perfectly healthy bystander in order to save the lives of five other innocents who will die if they do not receive the bystander’s vital organs through transplantation. Here, I expect, the reader will agree that it is not morally permitted to kill the one to save five. If there is a major lesson to be drawn from Dudley and Stephens, it is that we all need to be very careful to avoid moral confounds when we test moral principles against each other.
Samuel C. Rickless ’86
If the cannibalism debate provokes strong opinions, so did the debate over the allocation of life-saving ventilators in ICUs during the early COVID-19 epidemic. Various U.S. medical centers, state health commissions, and bioethicists rushed to promulgate triage guidelines. The University of Pittsburgh guideline, a model for many states, does not mince words: the tiebreaker for access is age. They use the term “life-cycle considerations,” a code for giving priority to younger patients within age groups: 12 to 40, 41 to 60, 61 to 75, over 75. A list of “factors that have no bearing”—which starts with “race, disability” and includes “perceived social worth, perceived quality of life”—omitted age.
Unashamed, undisguised medical discrimination was signed by apparently honorable, even distinguished, physicians and bioethicists. It was the impetus for the book I published in 2024, American Eldercide: How It Happened, How to Prevent It. What made the situation even more appalling—and ultimately different from the cannibalism on the boat—was that an ethical alternative was staring them all in the face. A Harvard Medical School epidemiologist organized a petition that was quickly signed by hundreds of doctors. In cases of scarcity, which are likely to recur in any public health catastrophe, they recommended a lottery.
Margaret Morganroth Gullette ’62, Ph.D. ’75, B.F. ’87
Hard cases may make bad law, but they also make great stories—seemingly forever. As a law student, I wrote about the Richard Parker cannibalism case in the Harvard Law Review 41 years ago, in my book note reviewing Cannibalism and the Common Law by A.W.B. Simpson. My analysis then was that the case illustrated the limits of utilitarianism, because a “greatest good for the greatest number” moral theory, taken seriously, would appear to mandate that poor Parker (or someone) be consumed, rather than simply justifying or excusing such action. It’s tough to square that demand with most people’s moral intuition. I knew at the time that I was not the first Harvard-affiliated person to address the Parker case, and I suspected—correctly, I now see—that I would not be the last.
Joseph M. Ramirez, J.D. ’85
Adam Cohen’s cover story on the case of the nineteenth-century English cannibals is an intriguing—and highly entertaining—meditation on what appear to be irresolvable legal and moral paradoxes. Cohen mentioned that the cannibals were found guilty. He didn’t comment, however, on their punishment, which became a story in itself. At the time murder was a capital offense, so they were duly sentenced to be hanged. But the sentence prompted massive public sympathy for the convicts due to the extremity of their predicament at sea, and the court itself recommended mercy. The result? A six-month prison sentence without hard labor, after which they were released. Talk about lessening a sentence!
Saniel Bonder ’72
Adam Cohen’s “Law in a Lifeboat” is an excellent example of how moral dilemmas interact with the law. It also exemplifies the fascination with cannibalism. But Harvard isn’t the only campus tied to the subject. An even closer connection is at another university. Ten years before Captain Dudley infamously saved himself, Alferd Packer confessed (controversially) to eating his companions on a winter trip through the San Juan mountains in southwestern Colorado. He eventually spent many years in prison for his supposed deeds. At the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1968, the administration allowed the students to name the eatery in the new student union. It is still the Alferd Packer Restaurant and Grill.
Randy Levine, Ph.D. ’72
I was disappointed to see that your account of the seafaring cannibals case neglects to mention the definitive modern scholarly account of the incident and resulting legal proceedings by the renowned legal historian and Michigan law professor A.W.B. Simpson, Cannibalism and the Common Law: The Story of the Tragic Last Voyage of the Mignonette (1984).
John H. Langbein, LL.B. ’68
Adam Cohen’s article on the 1884 cannibalism-at-sea case was riveting. Cohen mentions other popular tales involving cannibalism, including “Hansel and Gretel” and The Silence of the Lambs, in his piece; I am only surprised that he omitted a reference to the 2004 folk-rock album Mignonette, which was directly based on the incident, and the ill-starred 2024 Broadway musical it inspired, Swept Away.
Peter Vertes, M.A. ’86
I found it troubling that Adam Cohen’s long article “Law in a Lifeboat” included no acknowledgment of, or reference to, the highly regarded classic work on this specific topic, Cannibalism and the Common Law (1984), by the late professor A. W. B. Simpson of the University of Chicago and University of Michigan law schools.
Steve Upton
Adam Cohen’s article on the history of The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens brought back a lot of 1L memories; I remember learning the case from Professor James Vorenberg. (Clearly, it made an impression that remains after 45 years!) He imparted to the fledgling lawyers in the 1L Criminal Law course that the law would entail hard, even impossible, cases, and notwithstanding the imperfections of each competing theoretical approach, the ability to live in a tolerant and just society depended equally, if not more so, on the willingness of those in power to recognize the imperfections of “perfect” justice and to “do the right thing.” A lesson worth remembering, indeed.
Herschel S. Weinstein, J.D. ’80
Adam Cohen’s article on the Dudley and Stephens case fails to mention the great 1580 essay on cannibalism by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne discusses the morality of cannibalism, as practiced then by the Tupinamba of Brazil and as compared to other European practices, such as torture and slavery, and rates cannibalism as relatively acceptable as a moral matter. I recently re-read Robinson Crusoe (probably 60 odd years after the last time I read it), and Crusoe’s moral indignation about the cannibal feasts on his island motivated him to rescue a planned victim—who became his man Friday—and to slaughter the cannibals.
On re-reading this 1719 example of British moral investigation, I learned that Crusoe’s voyage that left him marooned was undertaken to buy slaves for his Brazil plantation. Crusoe also considered selling Friday into slavery. At the risk of presentism, we may consider Crusoe’s imperialist exploitation of Brazil and interest in cheap slave labor with opprobrium, more than Montaigne’s concern about Tupinamba cannibalism.
James Kardon ’71
In more than 80 years of reading I have had few experiences of snapping back and upright, likely goggle-eyed, as I had reading the sentence in Adam Cohen’s article recounting his roommate’s chicken-leg-and-ketchup evocation of “Thomas Dudley, an English captain…[who] after a shipwreck, with no food in his lifeboat…decided the only way to survive was to kill and eat the cabin boy” (January-February 2026, page 27).
Mustard would have been a historically more likely choice.
J. Cynthia Weber, Ph.D. ’70
Michael Sandel
In the Michael Sandel interview, the interviewer suggests that Sandel was concerned that globalization led to increasing inequality (“Making Waves with Philosophy,” January-February 2026, page 29). This is true only if you adopt a hyper-nationalist stance. Globalization led to greatly increased equality among all people since it raised a couple of billion of us out of poverty.
A good book in 2018, Factfulness by Swedish academic Hans Rosling, detailed how far the world advanced on such issues as hunger, education, women’s rights, and infant health due to globalization and science. Sandel seems (per the interviewer) willing to base his argument about globalization and science on the know-nothing response to vaccination and immigration of the current administration.
James Kardon ’71
The most striking aspect of Professor Sandel’s call to “transition to the green economy” is its grassroots counterpart. A group called PlantBabyPlant has recently been launched to counter the idea of “Drill, baby, drill.” Its guiding force is Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. Both her books have been on the bestseller list for years, proof that this worldview has already taken root in our destructive consumerist culture.
Sandel’s brilliant analysis includes examining “market values,” “social and civic inequalities,” and a twisted new concept of freedom. With Kimmerer and Sandel leading the way, I suggest we’re on the path to a transformative future.
Kitty Beer ’59
Michael Sandel speaks of “the need to create more class-minded institutions” and then names a few—parks, playgrounds, municipal swimming pools, etc. One such class-mixing institution he does not mention, but 40 years ago William F. Buckley did. In a small book, now difficult, if not impossible, to find, he called for a universal draft in late teenage years.
As a veteran, I found my Army experience eye-opening because it was a true class-mixing system. Buckley, if I recall correctly, spoke for a military draft. I would urge a general draft in which each physically abled person between the ages of 18 and 25 would serve for two years in one of the many opportunities for service, including the military, education, road-building, and the Peace Corps. Youth want to be appreciated and to be useful, and youth need to learn about others of their age who come from different social and economic circumstances. Bravo to Buckley, and as he wished, may some ambitious politician undertake to make such a system the law in our land.
Kenneth W. Phifer ’60
FXB Center
Harvard Magazine’s online coverage on December 10, 2025, of the “revamp” of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center cited concerns about FXB raised in the Presidential Task Force on Combatting Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. In another context, Harvard’s own attorneys warned that the task force did not fact-check claims. The report noted, on page 7, that it had received corroborating evidence for some of them.
The Harvard Magazine article failed to note remarks made about the FXB Center reported in the simultaneously released Presidential Task Force on Combatting Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias. This report noted that some students reflected on the presence of few Palestinian voices at Harvard, now likely silenced, and raised concerns regarding academic freedom (see page 82 of the task force report).
Whatever the editorial stance of Harvard Magazine, it should strive for balance in its news coverage.
Mary T. Bassett ’74
FXB professor of the practice of health and human rights,
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Campus Speech
I enjoyed Rakesh Khurana’s article “A Clear-Eyed Take on Campus Speech” (January-February 2026, page 37). I agree that the role of the university as an environment for civil discourse is more important than ever, but he only touches on the role of social media in the current polarization of public discourse, while I believe it is a root cause.
In social media, groups are separated by their alignment with certain statements, which an algorithm then amplifies. Each of these bubbles gets its own set of facts that seemingly support internal statements. The algorithms are designed to encourage strong reactions to drive engagement: rage, hate, envy, pride, certainty, demonization of contrary evidence or opinions. In every sense, the list of properties I currently see in social media’s design is anti-university, anti-intellectual, anti-civic, anti-citizen. It is not surprising that the public (and therefore students) have responded in kind. The unavoidable fact is that universities are becoming more like social media than social media is becoming like universities.
There needs to be some idea of social media as a public utility that supports and is responsible to the public interest, in the same way that Dr. Khurana calls for university leadership to support and be responsible to the university community. In that regard, the crisis of civility is really a crisis of leadership at every level of society.
Larry Kyrala, A.L.B. ’12
I read former Dean Rakesh Khurana’s review of Terms of Respect with a sinking heart. My distress arose from what I saw as the contrast between the Eisgruber/Khurana view of how elite colleges should educate their students and that articulated by Dean Jeremy Knowles 25 years ago, in his September 2001 welcoming speech to the first-years (a cohort that included our daughter).
Dean Knowles told his entering students that Harvard’s goal for them was that, upon graduation, “You will all be able to recognize ‘rot’ when you see it.” This goal would be achieved by exposing them to a wide (and unvarnished) range of people and convictions. I believe that Dean Knowles was embracing Holmes’s marketplace of ideas, which Dean Khurana characterizes as “reduc[ing] discourse to competition and consumption” (January-February 2026, page 38).
In contrast, the Eisgruber/Khurana preference is for Brandeis’s deliberative community, which must be “nurtured.” Forget unvarnished exposure. Quash what Dean Khurana calls “‘junk’ ideas.” Instead, expose students to those ideas and beliefs that “nourish public life” (whatever THAT means!).
John Thorndike ’64, J.D. ’68
Speak Up, Please
Harvard Magazine welcomes letters on its contents. Please write to “Letters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or send comments by email to yourturn@harvard.edu.
Khurana often refers to “the university” as if it was a monolithic entity with powers to influence the speech, and perhaps the thoughts, of its faculty and students. Not so fast, grasshopper. Harvard is run by its Board of Overseers and the Corporation with the president, fellows, and faculty forming the chorus in this dramatic opera. The faculty have drunk deeply of the leftist lemonade. Just look at their political contributions. I think a cultural shift toward free speech has serious headwinds with this embedded philosophy and will be very difficult.
Khurana states that the obligation of the university “involves, among other things, convincing students that real learning requires slow thinking and patient listening” (January-February 2026, page 38). Or, in the words of the great twentieth-century philosopher Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” Yogi’s implied message was that you should approach life with an open mind and not judge without reason and evidence. His plea runs headlong into the Ring Lardner expression: “Shut up, he explained,” which is the current mantra of the counterculture brigade.
Ronald M. Barton ’69
Getting to Mars
“How to Get to Mars (for Real)” steps gingerly around the question of how much a manned expedition to Mars would cost (January-February 2026, page 32). NASA’s own estimate for a single flight is approximately $500 billion. With subsequent support flights, the cost would ascend into the trillions. Meanwhile, half of humanity lives on less than $6 a day.
“I really do believe it’s part of us as humans,” a former Harvard faculty member exclaims excitedly, referring to costly but mindless adventures like this one (page 36). A pity that lifting up the less fortunate half of humanity is not a more prominent “part of us as humans.”
George Scialabba ’69
Thank you for your interesting article, “How to Get to Mars (for Real).” The engineering challenges are formidable and were interestingly described. However, the article does not address the question of why.
If the point is to learn about Mars, robots designed for the purpose are likely to be more cost-effective. So, we are left with the romance. Sending people to Mars is not likely to be a good use of resources, I suspect.
Jay Kadane ’62
Math Circle
I greatly appreciated the article on the Cambridge Math Circle (“A Numbers Game,” January-February 2026, page 13). I have been involved in a math circle for students for about 15 years and, for a short time, a now-dormant circle for teachers. It is worth noting that there is a prior history at Harvard in the 1990s. Bob and Ellen Kaplan started this circle and were quite influential in spreading math circles in the U.S. along with others. The Global Math Circle is a continuation of the Kaplan circle.
Bob Sachs ’76
Vita
The Vita story of Takashi Komatsu, 1886-1965, was a timely opportunity to revisit a global problem (January-February 2026, page 51). The run-up to Pearl Harbor and the ensuing U.S.-Japan conflagrations were all about “spheres of influence” driven by so-called vital economic interests. The United States proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine regarding South America but didn’t grant the Japanese empire similar entitlement in Southeast Asia.
Komatsu, in his impressive ascent into the chambers of Japanese authority and power, certainly would have been a keen observer if not a significant participant in the discussions of empire management. His company must have been building battleships in the late 1930s. What were his thoughts? Did he have intense conversations with U.S. operatives in the late ’30s? Was he a principled dissident who survived? Did he leave revealing private communications? Where are our historians when we need them?
Robert Park, A.M. ’67, S.M. ’81
John Roberts
I was disappointed by the publication of the very long hit piece “The Kingmaker?” in the November-December 2025 issue of Harvard Magazine (page 20) because it had no connection to Harvard. It says nothing about Justice Roberts’s time at Harvard nor how it affects him now. It discusses no issues that specifically impact Harvard (more than any other school), and it was written by a Yale professor. I don’t understand why it was published in Harvard Magazine. If I wanted a generic complaint about the Roberts court and the Trump administration, I would read The New York Times. The magazine (which I generally enjoy) should be focused on Harvard or it has no reason to exist.
Peter Dong ’02
Your article “The Kingmaker?” was excellent and timely. John Roberts will have much to answer for if our democracy does not survive Trump. In what universe should inciting rioters to attack the Capitol and routinely accepting large gifts from foreign agents be considered legitimate “official acts” of a U.S. president?
Rob Williams, J.D. ’78
Your November-December 2025 issue featured a stimulating article about Justice Roberts. Then, your January-February 2026 issue collected a fascinating set of letters in response. Let me add an explanatory perspective. Back in the ’70s and ’80s students at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School engaged in robust debate about Roe v. Wade and other constitutional decisions. If you took a spectrum of 100 law students from that era, perhaps six out of 100 truly believed that activist liberal judges are the greatest threat to law and order in America.
Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett are the six who hold this belief. You can see it, for example, in their decision about nationwide injunctions in the case of birthright citizenship, in which they used the case to beat down leftist and centrist judges. Roberts and the other five believe this goal is more important than defending the legal system against direct attack from a right-wing president. How could anyone hold this belief, you might ask? The answer is simple: Roberts and the other five were selected because they hold this belief. Will these justices abandon their belief, recognize the greater danger, and change course before it is too late? Don’t count on it.
Robert M. Buchanan Jr. ’82, J.D. ’85
Regarding the recent letters to the editor about John Roberts: All the writers are good people, bright, good writers. All appear to believe that something of great importance needs to be fixed regardless of each writer’s political or social beliefs, as soon as possible. When the alarm goes off in the firehouse or the office of the first responders, it is clear that somebody or some situation is in need of a salutary response. There is no thought given to the political or social beliefs of those in need or of the responders themselves. It is difficult for me to read these letters without the acknowledgement of some personal responsibility recommended for an action to be taken to remedy the problem.
David Wizansky ’60
A lot has been said about Lincoln Caplan’s article on Chief Justice Roberts’s leadership of the Supreme Court. Some letters to the editors called out Caplan’s article for its liberal bias just because it is a “conservative court,” others commented that cycles always right themselves anyway. To me, there is nothing conservative about an originalist court deciding on “implied immunity” for the president out of the blue, when our first president stepped down to avoid becoming a king and in a farewell speech said that no man is above the law. As a history major, Roberts should go back to study 1933-34 Germany, the rise of Mussolini in Italy, Victor Orban in Hungary, and others. All would welcome such implied immunity as a gift and deference to executive orders. Those “cycles” end poorly for freedom of speech, people, universities, economies, and destroyed lives. Obviously, I feel I got more out of Harvard than Roberts did.
Bart Harvey ’71, M.B.A. ’74
In “The Kingmaker?”, Lincoln Caplan takes a whack at several Roberts Court decisions, but he’s particularly troubled by Trump v. United States, which held that a president has absolute immunity from criminal liability for acts discharging his core powers, presumptive immunity for other acts as president, and no immunity for private acts.
Immunity, the Court said, promotes a fearless discharge of presidential powers, and it extends to ex-presidents as well as sitting presidents. Mr. Caplan seems none too happy with sitting presidential immunity, and he rejects its extension to ex-presidents for acts taken as president.
In extending immunity to a presidential act, the Supreme Court really holds that the act is not a crime when it’s committed. An ex-president doesn’t need immunity, for time or change of status doesn’t convert innocence to guilt. And if the ex-president needed immunity, he should have it, for a president might not act fearlessly if he thought he could be marched from the White House to the Big House when his term expired.
Examples abound. Franklin Roosevelt imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans. Many historians claim Abraham Lincoln exceeded his war powers. Harry Truman seized steel mills and got his fingers slapped by nine Supreme Court hands. Barack Obama picked off an American citizen abroad. Most of these actions would be crimes if committed by anyone other than the president, but nobody claimed the presidents committed a crime, either as president or ex-president.
Jim Dueholm, J.D. ’67
Errata
In “Pugilistic Art” (January-February 2026, page 64), Daniel Mendoza was said to have become England’s first sports megastar in the late 1800s. In fact, this took place in the late 1700s.
In “A Flight of Fantasy” (January-February 2026, page 45), the name of the author of Le Morte d’Arthur was misspelled. The correct spelling is Thomas Malory.
