Howard Pines
Thanks to Bradford Clark who teaches at George Washington Law School and has a home here, we were able to connect with another constitutional scholar and media favorite, Professor Jonathan Turley. Turley has agreed to speak at a U.S. Constitution Scholarship Foundation event at Walker’s Landing Monday, Dec. 2. His presentation will cover our present political climate and his recent bestselling book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in the Age of Rage.” In addition to being a professor at the George Washington University Law School, Turley has written articles for the New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Wall St. Journal. He also is a featured guest on Sunday talk shows like Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox News Sunday. He has worked closely with many of the networks’ most famous reporters from Tim Russert and Dan Rather to Britt Hume. Since the 1990s, he has served as a legal analyst for NBC News, CBS News, and BBC, and is currently a legal analyst for Fox News. He has covered stories that ranged from the Clinton impeachment to Trump’s impeachments, and the recent Presidential elections. Many of us on the island are extremely impressed by Turley who, unlike many of today’s political commentators, comes across as not only very knowledgeable, but also very thoughtful.
Turley grew up in Chicago. His dad was an international architect who was an associate of famed modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Roh. His mom was a social worker and activist, who was the former president of the Jane Addams Hull House. In the late 1970s, Turley served as an Illinois Democrat House Leadership Page. He went to the University of Chicago for his BA and then attended Northwestern Law School where he served as Executive Articles Editor of the Northwestern University Law Review.
After law school, Turley worked as an intern with the general counsel’s office of the National Security Agency. His interests have been to teach, practice, write, and be a commentator. Before joining George Washington Law School, he taught at Tulane Law School. At George Washington University Law School, he teaches torts, criminal procedure, and Constitutional Law. He also happens to be the youngest individual to receive an academic chair in the school’s history. He is best known for his writing and commentary in the media and his views and actions have impacted both sides of the aisle. He called for the criminal prosecution of George W. Bush administration officials for war crimes, which included torture. On the other side, in December 2019, Turley testified before the House Judiciary Committee arguing against a Trump impeachment, arguing that the evidence did not meet the standard definitions of those crimes and that the charges against Trump represented lowering of impeachment standards to “fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.” While he condemned Trump’s speech before the riots at the Capitol, he argued, instead of impeachment, for a bipartisan, bicameral vote of censure to condemn Trump’s words and actions leading up to the riot. While he declined to represent Trump, he did speak in his favor to Republican Senators before the first and second impeachment trials.
Turley is very concerned about political reporting and commentary today. He is worried that most commentators and reporters have become advocates of specific positions rather than subscribing to objectivity. In addition, he believes our major universities and law schools have become far too biased, with less than 10% of professors being conservative, which he believes prevents students from getting a balanced view of our laws and the U.S. Constitution.
Amelia Island resident Howard Pines has more than 30 years of experience as CEO, chairman and founder of BeamPines, a premier firm in the executive coaching business. He also co-founded the BeamPines/Middlesex University master’s Program in Executive Coaching. Before that, he served as senior vice president of human resources for a Fortune 100 corporation. He is the author of "The Case for Wasting Time and Other Management Heresies."