Award Name Benjamin Franklin Award Award category Gay/Lesbian Description In 2002, a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled "Secret Court Files, 1920." The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives.
He is a New York Times bestselling author who has contributed to Vanity Fair, Town and Country, and the New York Times..
About the Author William Wright graduated from Yale University in 1952.
Harvard\'s Secret Court is a deeply moving indictment of the human toll of intolerance and the horrors of injustice that can result when a powerful institution loses its balance.
Several students committed suicide; others had their lives destroyed by an ongoing effort on the part of Harvard to destroy their reputations.
Supported by legendary Harvard President Lawrence Lowell, Harvard conducted its investigation in secrecy.
The resulting witch hunt and the lives it cost remains one of the most shameful episodes in the history of America\'s premiere university.
The note he left behind revealed his Secret life as part of a circle of (cut "young") homosexual students.
In May of 1920, Cyril Wilcox, a freshman suspended from Harvard, was found sprawled dead on his bed, his room filled with gas--a suicide.
Award Name Benjamin Franklin Award Award category Gay/Lesbian Description In 2002, a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled "Secret Court Files, 1920." The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives
