Who Qualifies for a Second Chance?

“Can their good works ever balance out any of the harm they have caused?”

Preface

For my first job out of law school, I worked as a consultant to a reputation management company. I had not thought about that experience for years until I recently stumbled upon an essay I wrote by hand in an old notebook. I must have written the essay in early 2011, so well before the #MeToo movement, well before the rise of cancel culture, and about four years before Jon Ronson published So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, his seminal 2015 book about ruined online reputations.

Even though this short essay is now a decade old, it seems more relevant than ever. So much has changed in the world in the past ten years, but apparently, the fundamental questions have not. In particular, the essay struggles with the question: After a person has committed a terrible act, when is it permissible to let him or her back into society? And also: Can their good works ever balance out the harm they have caused?

These were challenging and confusing questions for me a decade ago—just as they remain so today for the broader society. But these questions will never be answered unless we openly discuss them.

In the spirit of engaging in this discussion, below is my old essay, straight from the trenches of the nascent online reputation management industry.

The Essay

The other day, I had an unusually successful client: one of the top medical professionals, someone who has saved so many lives. He is also one of the most quoted medical researchers in the world. And yet, even at the peak of his extraordinary career, he has a tainted reputation because, allegedly, he tried on numerous occasions to take advantage of women in the workplace.