Ecoversity is not a "state-certified continuing education center...". it is a very small non profit organization which focuses on its website. See ecoversity.org.

Claude Convisser was never a student at Ecoversity. He was a guest there briefly in 2006. He was then told in writing that he was not welcome either as a student or as a volunteer at Ecoversity after he submitted an application.

The program to which Convisser was denied admission was discontinued after 2006. Although it taught sustainability, it was itself unsustainable. It lost well over $500,000 in the five years that it was offered and never had the minimum number of students needed to break even. In the summer of 2006, the last time it was offered, it had only four students taught by five faculty and overseen by four staff members.

Convisser's supporters are primarily a few of these people who did not want to see the program discontinued.

Convisser never met Francis Harwood. He was not present at the signing of her will. Her attorney has submitted an affidavit stating that she was completely responsible for her estate plan, which she altered at the end of her life due to the rapid onset of lung cancer. The actual cause of her death was untreated breast cancer, which had metastasized. Her doctor submitted an affidavit stating that Harwood never became mentally incompetent prior to her death.

Convisser was found by the investigative counsel for the NM Bar Association Disciplinary Board to be so dishonest as to be "irremediable." The Hearing Committee recommended him for a mental health evaluation and wrote that he should never be allowed to act as an attorney in any action involving myself or Ecoversity.

The SF Farmer's Market banned him from presenting his petition there and had him arrested for criminal trespassing in order to force him to comply.

I was paid $135,000 for settling Harwood's estate, which was probated in July, 2005. My fee schedule was approved by Harwood several months prior to her death when she asked me to be her Personal Representative.

Mr. Convisser's accusations are voluminous. In his brief stay at Ecoversity in 2006, he accused, in writing, a teacher of inappropriate sexual attention to certain students. This came after we received a complaint from another student, a woman less than half Convisser's age, that Convisser was guilty of precisely that behavior.

 In Decemeber of 2010, in a letter to my attorney, Victor Ortega, in yet another outrageous allegation, Convisser accused me of breaking into his home, stalking him and making prank phone calls to his physician.

There are many flaws in Convisser's petition in addition to the lack of addresses.  We respectfully disagree with the court's findings yesterday, however, we welcome the opportunity to clear our name.

Yesterday's findings validated the issue that the petition did not require addresses and that the petition be remanded to the District Court for further review. 

Jeff Harbour, 

Managing Director, 

Ecoversity

In my spare time, I am providing pro bono assistance to former faculty, staff and students of EcoVersity and residents of Santa Fe County who believe that our region could benefit from the hands-on sustainability center that EcoVersity’s founder generously endowed for this community.  For my service, Jeff Harbour has spread all kinds of defamatory rumors about me, like the comments he posted to this article.

I was a student at EcoVersity during the summer and fall of 2006.  Its then-Executive Director Arina Pittman has refuted Mr. Harbour’s allegations about my time at EcoVersity in an affidavit on file with the court.

The Farmers Market unlawfully prevents people from engaging in rights to free speech and petitioning, as the Santa Fe District Court determined in finding me not guilty of trespass when the Farmers Market was at the PERA Building parking lot.  These rights are now guaranteed as a provision in the Farmers Market lease at the Railyard.

At least fifty other people have gathered signatures for the Rescue EcoVersity petition, despite coordinated intimidation by Mr. Harbour and his paid lawyers.  A leader of the petitioning campaign, Tomas Enos, caught Mr. Harbour red-handed engaging in peeping Tom surveillance in the backyard of his herbal shop on Paseo de Peralta.  I complained to Mr. Harbour’s law firm, not only about his intrusion on El Milagro’s business, but also about his prank phone calls to my girlfriend, not my physician.

I regret that in response to my standing up to Mr. Harbour and his prominent law firm in support of nearly 2,000 Santa Fe petitioners / registered voters, the Bar chose to press charges against me, when I was new to town.  The disciplinary lawyer recommended not filing charges, but a member of the local hearing committee, who was at the time a neighbor of Mr. Harbour’s law firm, over-ruled this recommendation.  I taught legal ethics for four years and the Associate Dean of the Faculty invited me to teach the subject at UNM Law School, an opportunity I declined to pursue my present occupation of running a biofuel company.  Regrettably, in the disciplinary proceeding, I was prevented the right to cross-examine witnesses and present evidence that is normally accorded civil litigants.  Because I denied the charges (and still do), the hearing committee believed that my mental health was in question, a notion the Supreme Court rejected.

I have refrained from challenging Mr. Harbour’s defamation of me in court because he would defend with lawyers paid from the funds that Frances Harwood gave to this community, in the form of EcoVersity, its land, and its endowment

Regrettably, Mr. Harbour is now trying to sell the EcoVersity real estate to finance his $116,000 per year salary for doing nothing, after he drove away its faculty and staff, eliminated its teaching curriculum, and caused the State to de-certify EcoVersity as a teaching institution.  He got away with these steps after allowing a Picasso painting worth millions of dollars to escape from France Harwood’s estate, and EcoVersity’s benefit, without a contest in a bid to keep her family on the East Coast from questioning his take-over of the estate and EcoVersity.

Since the Supreme Court recently accepted Mr. Harbour’s appeal of the Court of Appeals ruling requiring a grand jury investigation, it remains an open question whether he will ever be held to account and EcoVersity will again open its doors to this community.

A correction to my posting above is that the Court of Appeals did not order the convening of a grand jury, but merely held that the Rescue EcoVersity petition has a sufficient number of signatures on it for the district court to order such an investigation, should that court find that the petition satisfies the other requirements for convening a grand jury.