We’re nothing if not reality-based here at BMG – at least, we try. So I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to see what was being publicly said around the time that Elizabeth Warren was hired as a law professor at Harvard in 1995. Fortunately, the Harvard Crimson’s archives are all readily available online, so it’s a fairly straightforward exercise in targeted Googling.
The bottom line: there was a lot of talk about the fact that Elizabeth Warren is a woman, and that Harvard Law School didn’t have a very good record at the time of tenuring women faculty. But, as far as I can tell, her Native American heritage was not publicly mentioned until at least a year after she was hired. Since it’s well known that the lack of minority women on Harvard Law’s faculty had been a hot issue for years – recall then-law student Barack Obama’s now-famous introduction of Derrick Bell, who ultimately gave up his Harvard professorship over the issue, at a law school rally in 1990 – it would be extraordinary if Warren’s background were known but never mentioned.
The fact that the student-run – and diversity-supporting – Harvard Crimson never thought to mention Warren’s heritage, even in its Feb. 22, 1995 editorial praising her hiring – seems to strongly support Professor Charles Fried’s insistence that Warren’s background simply never came up in the hiring process. We don’t know, because Harvard won’t say, what led law school spokesman Mike Chmura to comment publicly on her background in 1996, apparently for the first time, but even his 1996 comment supports the notion that precious few people at Harvard were aware of Warren’s heritage, since he said that the “conventional wisdom among students and faculty” was that even after Warren’s hiring, there were no minority women at Harvard Law. In any event, that comment seems to have made Warren’s Native American heritage part of the narrative at Harvard, judging from subsequent Crimson stories. But it seems clear that, while Warren’s gender was certainly relevant to her hiring by Harvard, her Native American ancestry was not. (To be clear: I’m not saying that Warren was hired “because she was a woman.” Obviously, her credentials were stellar. But there’s no doubt that Harvard Law School was under pressure in the 1990s to increase the number of tenured women on its faculty, and the contemporary accounts shown below repeatedly discuss that issue in connection with Warren’s hiring.)
The easiest way to do this seems to be a simple chronology. Here, then, are links to the relevant articles I’ve been able to find from the Crimson’s archives, along with some key excerpts. If I’ve missed something, by all means please let me know. I’ve added emphasis to parts that seem especially relevant.
Feb. 6, 1993: Law School Will Hire Woman Prof
The Law School faculty voted yesterday to offer a tenured position to Visiting Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Appointments Committee said last night.
Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Charles Fried said Warren received strong support from the faculty, including a unanimous endorsement from the Appointments Committee.
The vote marks an advance in the student and faculty effort to improve faculty diversity, according to several of the approximately 65 students participating in a silent vigil outside the faculty meeting in Pound Hall yesterday….
“Everyone at CCR [Coalition for Civil Rights] is totally elated that Professor Warren received tenure,” said third-year law student Lucy H. Koh. “CCR just wants to see some gender diversity on the faculty.” …
Despite the fact that a female was offered tenure, some students said they did not think the move went far enough, and said they wanted more ideological diversity as well.
“The fact that the tenure offers tend to be right of center, and only white women is disturbing,” said second year student Julie A. Su. “Their definition of diversity tends to be very limited.” …
There are still no tenured women of color on the Law School faculty. Five of the 60 tenured faculty at the Law School are women….
“In order to show a real commitment to diversity they need to do more than pass a resolution and bring in white women,” Su said. “They need women of color and ideological diversity.”
April 16, 1993: Warren Rejects Law School Tenure
Visiting Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, one of the two female scholars offered tenure by Harvard Law School this year, said yesterday that she will not accept the post.
Warren, who holds a tenured position at the University of Pennsylvania, said that her decision was based on “personal reasons.” …
Student support for her is unprecedented at the Law School.
“I’m heartbroken,” said third-year law student Elizabeth A. Moreno, one of the students in Warren’s bankruptcy law class. “She is loved by both the right and the left, something that is unheard of at Harvard Law School.”
According to Moreno, Warren’s bipartisan appeal and excellent teaching ability caused students on both the right and the left of the Law School’s extremely divided political spectrum to lobby for her.
June 10, 1993: Quiet Spring Belies Subtle Shift in Clark’s Attitude on Diversity
Last year, in the face of student protests for increased faculty diversity, the Law School offered tenure to a group of scholars who came to be known as the Four White Males….
This year, things have been a little different. Early in the spring semester, the Law School offered tenure to two female professors, Carol Rose of Yale and Elizabeth Warren of the University of Pennsylvania, who is currently a visiting professor at Harvard.
Although neither woman accepted Harvard’s offer, most students now recognize that some change has occurred, even if it has not been as swift as they would have liked.
Feb. 15, 1995: Woman Tenured At Law School
University of Pennsylvania legal scholar Elizabeth Warren has been appointed the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, University officials announced yesterday.
Warren, who taught at the law school as a visiting professor during the spring of 1993, said yesterday the offer had been available since that time, but added that family circumstances had kept her from accepting the position until now.
Warren will become the tenth women [sic] professor at the law school, which has more than 80 professors on its faculty.
In recent years, the Law School has been criticized for its low number of women faculty. The issue sparked wide-spread student protest in 1992 and 1993. However, Warren’s appointment comes as the latest in a series of recent women faculty hires….
In a press release issued yesterday, Dean of the Law School Robert C. Clark praised Warren’s appointment.
“Liz Warren is a spectacular addition to our faculty,” he said. “She is a leading scholar in the fields of bankruptcy and commercial law, and she is one of the rare legal academics to have devoted herself to a large-scale empirical research project of great relevance to legal policy making.”
Feb. 22, 1995: Warren Hiring a Step Forward
With every appointment of a female professor at Harvard, there is cause for celebration and cause for dismay: celebration because each additional woman on Harvard’s faculty represents a step toward balancing the male-skewed gender ratio, and dismay because men still make up the overwhelming majority of Harvard’s faculty.
With the appointment last week of University of Pennsylvania legal scholar Elizabeth Warren, however, Harvard Law School appears to be giving cause for celebration. Warren will become the tenth female professor out of 69 law school faculty members, making women about 15 percent of the school’s faculty. Compared to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where women make up slightly over 10 percent of the total faculty, the law school is not doing that badly. Fifteen percent may not be much, but it certainly represents some progress….
Warren is the first person, male or female, appointed this academic year at the law school. Additionally, this hiring represents one step in meeting Law School Dean Robert C. Clark’s stated goal of increasing the number of women on the faculty.
And gender aside, Warren is an ideal person to teach at the law school. Her teaching record is spectacular, and her scholarship is impeccable. When she was a visiting professor at Harvard two years ago, she was very popular with students, and last year she was awarded a University of Pennsylvania teaching award.
Warren has made major contributions to the fields of bankcruptcy and commercial law. Her research conclusions will have important ramifications for future legal policy making in this areas. It is good to see the law school hiring someone known for her teaching as well as for her research and contribution to current public policy.
Because female and male professors can offer different outlooks on the world, it is important for both female and male students to receive instruction and mentorship from professors of both genders. We applaud the law school for its recent hiring of qualified and superb women professors and hope the trend continues.
Oct. 22, 1996: Survey: Diversity Lacking at HLS
A majority of Harvard Law School students are unhappy with the level of representation of women and minorities on the Law School faculty, according to a recent survey.
The survey distributed last May by the Coalition for Civil Rights (CCR), reported that 83 percent of respondents believe the number of minority women on the Law School faculty is inadequate….
Of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic, said Mike Chmura, spokesperson for the Law School.
Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is Native American.
Jan. 28, 1998: Guinier Accepts Law School Tenure
When she begins teaching this fall, Guinier will become the first black woman to be a tenured professor in the 181-year history of the Law School. About three years ago, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is of Native American descent, become the first woman with a minority background to be tenured.
Guinier will become the first female African-American professor in the 181-year history of HLS. A former Clinton nominee and former NAACP lawyer and an expert on voting rights and civil-rights law, Guinier is a welcome addition to the HLS faculty. However, her appointment is the first in what continues to be a painfully slow process of bringing professors of minority ethnicities to the Harvard University faculty.
Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American. The racial makeup of the HLS Faculty has been an issue before as well: in 1989, Harvard dismissed Weld Professor of Law Derrick A. Bell after 18 years of teaching because the noted expert on race and law refused to end his leave in protest of the absence of minority women on HLS faculty.
Tho I’m afraid the story has done its work in animating the lizardbrain, where Other is Bad, of the hard right. Feels very much like Palin’s “Pallin’ around with terrorists” (“HE’S A MUSLIM!!”) stuff to me.
Playing a race card, however clumsily and idiotically, by Brown’s campaign is a sign of desperation. They know they should be 20 points ahead by now with a 3-1 cash advantage, instead their funding has slowed, their candidate is reduced to emailing fake videos of himself shooting underhand baskets — fake, underhand, and congratulating himself! like a High School sophomore — and it has come out that he tried to close Fenway Park for the love of God.
But Scott Brown in 2010 reminded me of Palin, too. Remember the curling iron incident? I’ve tried to forget.
And we know who won that election.
The fact that the student-run – and diversity-supporting – Harvard Crimson never thought to mention Warren’s heritage, even in its Feb. 22, 1995 editorial praising her hiring – seems to strongly support Professor Charles Fried’s insistence that Warren’s background simply never came up in the hiring process.
Why would the student run paper have any insight into what did or did not take place during the hiring process?
Meant to blockquote that first paragraph.
If the Administration were under pressure to increase diversity in the faculty, then you would imagine that they would point to every possible available piece of evidence that they were being responsive. And if they did point to information on Ms. Warren’s Native American heritage, then you can bet a student newspaper particularly interested in such matters would raise and weigh this bit of evidence.
Instead, silence.
The silence is strong evidence that the genealogical claims never surfaced during the hiring process.
Charles Fried described the ridiculousness of all this himself.
You aren’t paying any attention to facts, evidence or truth.
I was asking about the Crimson. Do you think the Crimson knows the nitty gritty of what goes on during the hiring process? I’d think that a student paper would not have that kind of access, which makes the Crimson articles irrelevant as to what happened during the hiring process.
The defenses from Fried et al are much more persuasive.
…some 15 years later.
…traditionally the Crimson has pretty good ties within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Law School, Business School, etc.
Among other things there is overlap between past and future Crimson types, the former within business, government, as well as the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseerers.
On internal matters to the University, the Crimson is the journalistic gold standard.
I guess we’re in violent agreement. Charles Fried, more than anyone else (and certainly more than the Crimson), knows precisely “the nitty gritty of what [went on] during the hiring process”.
Despite the best efforts of the Scott Brown smear machine, there’s no scandal here.
Students often take part in hiring, especially in the context of post-graduate studies (many of the students will go on to be professors themselves and this is often the first glimpse they get into the process) and MOST ESPECIALLY in regards to a TENURED position: pulling the trigger on a tenured position means getting vast amounts of feedback from all available means.
In addition, if you’ve actually read any of the coverage before leaping to conclusions, you’ll note that prior to the tenured appointment in NINETEEN NINETY FIVE she was, for three years prior, a VISITING PROFESSOR at HARVARD. It’s not like she showed up one day asking for a job… there was an extensive ‘tryout’.
When it is claimed that her heritage was not a factor in her hiring, is that just for the tenured faculty position or also when she was initially hired as a visiting professor? Someone in another comment somewhere explained affirmative action in just that way, that a person is given a chance and then must succeed on their own.
the notion that her heritage was considered for her appointment as a visiting professor and then ignored three years later is ridiculous. There’s no way it wouldn’t have been mentioned in the numerous reports on the possibility of her coming permanently to Harvard.
at Harvard by the time she was up for the appointment – she had been a visiting professor for at least a year. Yet not a single student seems to have been aware of her ancestry – at least, none that were actively trying to get Harvard to hire more minority women. So, the point is that the information we have from inside – from Charles Fried and from Warren herself – is consistent with the evidence from the outside, namely, the articles I’ve quoted.
I would respectfully suggest that you have nothing to the contrary. But feel free to prove me wrong.
What happened to the legal directory she listed herself in being akin to Facebook? The way it seems nobody used it except as a doorstop.
Maybe you should ask someone who was on a law faculty in 1995.
Real reporting!
Time for a blogger ethics panel?
I be with my Left Ahead chum. This is absurd. The Boston rags are chasing Pulitzers and manufacturing issues. http://bit.ly/JVTCjo
Warren should apologize to anyone who may have been offended by her on-again, off-again attempts to portray herself as a “Native American” when in actuality she is predominantly (as in 31/32) “Euro-American”. And for not stepping in to correct them when Harvard identified her as such. Then the whole thing will hopefully go away. All this name-calling, crying, and rationalizing will not make the issue disappear, I’m afraid.
I hardly think it’s a scandal. I do think that the campaign hasn’t handled it well, which is too bad. But the point of my post is to make the case that, however she may have portrayed herself at various times, the issue of her heritage appears to have had zero impact on her being hired at Harvard.
The issue is not whether Warren used her alleged minority status to obtain her Harvard position, but rather whether she used it for decades prior to that time. For a noted attorney, she has provided nothing of substance to back up her claim to minority status beyond Aunt Bea and Po Pa and a picture on the wall. The following website http://www.oklahomaheritage.com/Portals/0/docs/Elizabeth%20Warren.pdf provides information when she was entered into the Oklahoma Heritage Hall of Fame, at which time it was said “Warren… can track both sides of her family in Oklahoma long before statehood”. Yet she has provided nothing.
But fear not, the research has been done, and it appears likely that she has no Native American heritage at all. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/06/no-credible-evidence-for-warrens-claim-to-native-american-ancestry
Now, you may not like the source, but if anyone can refute the information, let’s hear it!
I have neither the time nor the interest to read anything posted at breitbart.com. I made that mistake once and couldn’t decide whether I should laugh or cry, the stuff was so ludicrous. Won’t do it again.
Nice. Do you have any Fox News stories to go with that? How about a hand-written note from Richard Mellon Scaife? I heard this was a crumpled piece of paper found behind a file cabinet at the Olin Foundation that could shed some light, too.
nt
Brietbart isn’t even alive any more. What possible credibility can the site have?
When people have mixed heritage, as it gets more caucasian, it seems there’s a Rule that says whiteness MUST be the borg identity to which all other “minority” strains submit.
As many say all the time, lots of people have a Native American great grandparent somewhere, or a slave ancestor, even if you seem the whitest of white.
In some families, that history/identity may be lost to time, or suppressed in shame, or buried in secrecy, for personal and/or historical reasons.
In other families, even with the addition of More White to the bloodline, the link to the “ethnic” (nonwhite) ancestors is kept alive, thru stories, traditions, to greater or lesser degrees.
Why is this a problem? She is part cherokee. She is. This is the truth that her family told her. This is the truth that she lived as part of an unquestioned feature of her identity. Maybe in YOUR family you’ve lost all connection to “ethnic” past. But that’s YOUR story, not hers, or anyone else’s.
I’ve recently been asked if I have “used” my part-minority heritage to get advantages. Maybe that makes sense to someone like you. But it doesn’t make sense to me. I AM part minority. Every minute of every day since my birth. So yeah, I “use” it because I AM it. I should NOT be part minority because… because what, exactly?
Furthermore, we’re asked all the time to self-identify on forms. I remember there was a time when you could only pick one box, and how inordinately psyched I was when you could start picking multiple boxes. Now, you put a box in front of me to check, and I’ll check all that apply, white and not-white.
The politics of Passing (for WHITE, of course, you ALWAYS *want* to be white if you possibly can!!, natch!) are subtle, complex, fraught, charged. The skin you live in is destiny… if you look white, you HAVE to be 100% white…? Right? What?
Dog forbid race and identity be complicated, frustrating, nuanced and surprising.
This rooting around in her family history is unseemly at best, and darned right birther-mad at worst. DOES SHE HAVE ONE DROP OF BLOOD or many? Ugh, the parallels with a century ago…
I have been profoundly saddened by this whole episode. I’d like to say we’re better than this, and it seems I cannot.
Back in the day, 1/32 heritage was enough for conservatives to make you a slave. How things change.
–
Bob Maginn, the MA GOP chair, today called for Harvard to investigate this business. In his letter to Harvard President Drew Faust, he writes:
But, as this post has demonstrated, Maginn is incorrect: at the time Warren was hired as a tenured professor in 1995, there is no public mention of Warren’s heritage. Unless he has a source that he’s not revealing (and none is indicated in his letter), the first public mention by or at Harvard that anyone has found is the October, 1996 article noted above – well over a year after Warren was hired.
to the repeated assertions on this web site by apologists for Scott Brown that he has not questioned Warren’s qualifications. In his letter Maginn accuses Warren of committing academic fraud, in which case she would certainly not be qualified.
Are these Brown apologists now going to claim that Maginn acted independently? As the article makes clear, Maginn was appointed with the support of Brown and Romney. His company has held fund raisers for Brown.
Is Brown now going to repudiate this letter? I’m not holding my breath.
Her 2L course in Academic Fraud is one of the most popular courses on campus.
The great Louis Armstrong sang it best (at 2:19):
“I don’t lie, baby, I’m just careless with the truth”.
Mr. Maginn is more than “incorrect”, he is careless with the truth.
Anecdotal but hey
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75960.html
Given her Native American heritage.
How true, how true….of Elizabeth Warren!
For those of you willing to search for the truth, Elizabeth Warren is 1/64 Cherokee at most, and perhaps not at all.
The issue is not an attack on her heritage, it is her use of a dubious qualification to receive minority status. The widespread use of entitlements is a major factor in the decline of the middle class that she pretends to represent.
But, in 1978 when she embarked upon her career she was, being a woman, already a minority, both in her particular chosen profession and in the workforce as an entirety. I guess it’s progress, of a sort, that we’ve forgotten this, but it’s not by very much, it seems. Do you assert that she was trying to go for a twofer?
In 1978, let us also remember, Samuel Alito was a member of the “Concerned Alumni of Princeton.” What were they concerned about?? Women… what else? It was, to put it bluntly, an entirely different world.
I believe it was on the first thread to discuss this that I said that rightwingers were seemingly making both the accusation that she is lying about her heritage and that she benefited from it. The above comment actually manages to do both at once!
I don’t care at all whether she is or isn’t.
I don’t care about this issue AT ALL.
But why can’t both be true? Lies often benefit the liar, no?
What benefit has E. Warren accrued by checking that box on a form?
Christopher mentioned that rightwingers were claiming both that she lied and received benefit from being a minority, and that both could not be true. I was just saying that they are not mutually exclusive.
I was making no statement about Ms. Warren.
Harvard benefited by claiming to be more diversified, we know that. If Harvard benefited, then Warren benefited, it made her more valuable. We don’t know whether any schools gave her extra compensation or consideration when hiring her, but we do know that schools were facing pressure to hire minorities. She certainly knew that checking that box made her more valuable and might improve her career track. There is every reason to believe it did improve her career, perhaps she wouldn’t have had a career at all, she might have been passed over for another minority at that first law school and wound up a minion in a firm or corporation.
None of that means she isn’t eminently qualified to be a law professor. Heck, I’m qualified to be a law professor.
Here, you go from mind-reading, to assertions of facts not in evidence, to assertions in direct opposition to established facts. Have you no shame?
I think not.
n/t
:-p
She started her career in 1978. She ‘checked the box’ in 1986 and, after not getting out of it what she thought, unchecked the box some years later. I case you’re royal cuteness doesn’t extend to chronological linearity let me clear it up for you: 1986 comes AFTER 1978 so it’s physically impossible for her actions in 1986 to have affect in 1978.
I thought you were? Aren’t you the Kenneth Starr Professor of Puerile Logic at the University of Unintended Masculinity?
So here we see again that the great cause of Elizabeth Warren is Elizabeth Warren’s bank account. Must have been fun to be her first husband, or her creditors. Anyhow, at some point she decided her career would be improved if she claimed to be a minority. She certainly wasn’t settled in to her final job when she started listing herself as a minority, she was moving from school to school during that time, presumably moving up in pay at each stop. It is impossible that her career wasn’t helped by that, knowing what we know about how schools used those numbers to bolster their own status. Which isn’t, of course, to say that she wasn’t or isn’t qualified for any of her jobs.
merrimack
so maybe that only includes slots.
default swap derivatives.
Is really sad. Warren is in trouble.
wild and wooly things like this?
Paddy McTammany was hoping that the scribble that was borrowed from would afford a beyond-the-boondocks view of the Great Race, but obviously it does not, comin’, as it does, from the keyboard of “Edward Mason, former Statehouse bureau chief for the _Eagle-Tribune_ (North Andover) during the Romney administration.”
(( Paddy has never actually seen a copy of the E-T, but am prepared to believe whicherver Blue Blazer it was that just pronounced it godawful. ))
Anyway, the Salon article is intended to make Herself’s provincial handlers look amateurish bordering on incompetent. After Mister X, we get, in the same vein,
Most of those scraps are attributed to named persons other than Citizen Mason, but there is little doubt that he thinks it and wants his readers to think it too.
Do you suppose he might be right?
Happy days.
…is an interesting read. I don’t know how accurate the observations are, but if “Elizabeth has been straightforward and open about her heritage” is typical…..not very! Thus far, her only comments have been about Aunt Bea, Po-Paw, and a picture on the wall. Hardly what one would expect from a renowned lawyer who “can track both sides of her family in Oklahoma long before statehood”.