“Tori Anderson, a third-year Law School
student, shows her support by adding a sticky note to the portrait of a black Law
School professor on Thursday afternoon after black tape was found covering the photos
in the morning. Anderson said, ‘This [the post-its] shows the outpouring of support
for the faculty. I wish we had a greater and more robust response from the administration
and a greater focus on creating, not only community inclusion, but institutional
inclusion.’” Jennifer Y. Yao, The Harvard Crimson
“Black tape, stuck systematically
across the portraits of black law professors, spurred on Thursday a police investigation
into vandalism and a pronouncement from the dean of Harvard Law School that the
school has a ‘serious problem’ with racism.
Law School students and
teachers who walked into Harvard’s Wasserstein Hall on Thursday morning found pieces
of black tape covering some of the faculty portraits that hang on walls inside the
building—specifically on the faces of black professors depicted there.
The incident prompted
outrage from Law School students who were quick to condemn it as racist vandalism,
and police are now investigating.
Harvard University Police
Department spokesperson Steven G. Catalano said Thursday evening that the investigation
is ‘active and ongoing,’ and although he declined to comment further, Law School
Dean Martha L. Minow wrote in a statement that police are investigating the incident
as a hate crime….”
…Leland S. Shelton, the
president of the Harvard Black Law Student Association, described it as ‘actually
one of the most clear-cut, overt instances of very, very vile and disrespectful
behavior from somebody’; second-year Law School student Michele D. Hall, who posted
photographs of the vandalized portraits in a post on the website Blavity, wrote, ‘This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a
hate crime.’
After the tape was removed
from the portraits, students posted notes with words of support for the black professors
alongside their photographs.
…The incident and subsequent
hate crime allegations follows incidents at Yale and the University of Missouri
at Columbia that have prompted protests against racism at colleges across the country,
including a march and rally at Harvard on Wednesday.
It also comes as a group
of Harvard Law School students who call themselves Royall Must Fall has requested
the removal of the school’s seal because it features the crest of a family that
owned slaves.
That group of students denounced the vandalism as ‘an overt act
of racial hatred’ in an open letter published in the Harvard Law Record, a student
publication. They also claimed in their letter that the Thursday incident could
be a reaction to their activism: They had placed several pieces of black tape over
several depictions of the school’s seal around campus on Wednesday night, they wrote,
alleging that someone had removed those pieces of tape and then placed them on the
portraits of black faculty members….” Andrew M. Duehren with Claire E. Parker, The Harvard Crimson
To whoever put black tape over the portraits of all the black Harvard Law faculty:
What you did is being investigated by the police as a hate crime. Which makessense, because when I saw the pictures, I felt hated by you. It was an acute reminder of something I have long known, that any of us at elite academic institutions know intimately: that this place was not built for us. These institutions were built on the backs of slaves, of indigenous people, armored with the exclusion of people of color, of Jewish people, of women, of undocumented people. We know that. I know that. But the reminder hurt, and it made me cry. It made me look in the mirror and say out loud, to remind myself, “I belong here.”
It is no coincidence that you chose to desecrate images of these particular faculty members. Perhaps it was a crime of opportunity, but perhaps you also felt threatened and afraid because black faculty at Harvard Law have historically been some of the most dogged and determined warriors against racism and inequity, not only on this campus, but in the country. That scares you. These faculty, like the students they inspire to come study at this university, have spent their lives outpacing their colleagues and working twice as hard to prove themselves in an environment that believes them unworthy of the mantle they bear. It scares you. I scare you, and my friends scare you. We have worked harder than you to climb a steeper hill and we are still steadily, steadily ascending. And that scares you. And what scares you most is that you know when we get to the top we will not sit idly, as you do, enjoying the view. We will send down ropes, and ladders, and then we will forge a path, and then we will steadily erode the hill altogether because we were raised by communities who taught us that this work is not about us. It’s about our people. And that scares you.
I am not sorry that I have frightened you in this way. I am not sorry that Lani Guinier and Charles Ogletree scare you. I am not sorry that a vision of an equitable future, where we don’t have so many hills to climb, is frightening to your sense of security.
I spoke with the dean of my program, a black woman who has done a lot of climbing to be where she is. I said that as I think about the next phase of my career, it is very discouraging to think that this is the kind of reception I will face as a black faculty member. She said, “You didn’t come here for fun. Yes, it’s hard, and sometimes you will want to go home and not talk to anybody. But you’ve been at this a long time. You didn’t just wake up black today. You’ve been preparing for this your whole life.” And then she gave me a big hug.
And now, I have a lot of work to do and a lot of people to do it for. I’m going to go be as excellent as I can.
P.S. I hope you also remembered to tape over the security cameras.
A valley in Wisconsin brimming with fluorescent fireflies. Photographer Adam Dorn, 29, had to wait
for the sky to be dark and clear enough to capture the milky way, while
it also had to be warm and humid enough for the fireflies to be active. The result of perfect timing and careful
preparation, the photos were taken over a one-and-a-half
year period without any artificial lighting or flash required.
Today In Black History: February 6, 1990 - Harvard student Barack Obama becomes the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review; this role is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.
In 2010, third-year Harvard Law student and Review editor Stephanie Grace circulated an email that began “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.” The email was forwarded to the entire Black Law Students’ Association.
The Harvard Law School has been described as a “racist breeding ground,” and Stephanie Grace’s email represents just one of many more incidents that still contribute to a hostile climate for students of color at Harvard Law and other college campuses nationwide.
