"There is a quite narrow truth at the heart of the film: yes, many grifters have flourished under the guise of 'diversity work,' descending like vultures..."

"... upon guilty—or H.R.-constrained—white people hungry to be lashed for (and then duly absolved of) their supposed racial sins. To hear some of these so-called D.E.I. consultants speak is to want to rip your ears off. They speak a fuzzy, specialist language, meant to be minimally refutable and maximally emotionally manipulative. If this is anti-racism—in fact, it isn’t—you might find yourself quietly resolving to give racism another chance.... A gag that comes up a couple of times during 'Am I Racist?' is Walsh’s encounter with the 2002 book [with the N-word as its title] by the brilliant legal scholar Randall Kennedy. The joke is that it’s hard for a white person to buy the book because of how it’s hard to say the title. Get it? But Walsh never cracks the book. If he were to give Kennedy’s work a try, he might find a probing, refreshing antidote to the thinking set forward by DiAngelo’s simplistic, overly binary, and often quite patronizing work—and a total refutation of the blithe, resentful attitude of quick-twitch cultural reaction that produces a world view like his own."

Writes Vinson Cunningham, in "Is Matt Walsh Trying to Make “Am I Racist?” the “Borat” of the Right?/In his work with the Daily Wire and in a new movie, the conservative podcaster and activist tries to expose the hypocrisies of the left" (The New Yorker)

Cunningham writes out the name of Randall Kennedy's book, but I can't. Here's an Amazon Associates link to it.

34 of 38 Harvard faculty members who signed a letter supporting Professor John L. Comaroff have signed a retraction letter saying they "failed to appreciate the impact" their letter would have.

The Harvard Crimson reports. (Harvard Crimson). 

Comaroff is accused of "unwanted touching, verbal sexual harassment, and professional retaliation."

The initial letter posed a series of sharp questions about sanctions levied against Comaroff, who it described as “an excellent colleague, advisor and committed university citizen.” But professors began to pull their support for the letter after a federal lawsuit filed against Harvard on Tuesday detailed years of sexual harassment allegations against Comaroff — some of which had been reported previously.

Among those who did not retract were Harvard Law School professors David W. Kennedy, Randall L. Kennedy, and Duncan Kennedy. I think you can extrapolate their reasons if you read the retraction letter:

"Our concerns were transparency, process and university procedures, which go beyond the merits of any individual case.... We failed to appreciate the impact that this would have on our students, and we were lacking full information about the case. We are committed to all students experiencing Harvard as a safe and equitable institution for teaching and learning.”

What happened to the concerns for "transparency, process and university procedures, which go beyond the merits of any individual case"?! They openly proclaim that their interest in sound procedure for the individual should be subordinated to the emotional state of the larger group... but only when the group speaks in a loud enough voice. How did they "fail[] to appreciate the impact on... students"? It seems more likely that the professors didn't believe there would be an outcry that would make them so uncomfortable.

"Harvard Betrays a Law Professor — and Itself/Misguided students believe that defending Harvey Weinstein makes Ronald Sullivan unfit to be their dean. Apparently the university agrees."

An op-ed by Harvard lawprof Randall Kennedy (in the NYT).

In addition to his work as a professor and a lawyer, [Ronald] Sullivan, with his wife, Stephanie Robinson, has served for a decade as the faculty dean of Winthrop House, an undergraduate dormitory where some 400 students live.

As a faculty dean, Mr. Sullivan is responsible for creating a safe, fun, supportive environment in which students can pursue their collegiate ambitions. Winthrop House is meant to be a home away from home; faculty deans are in loco parentis. Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Robinson are expected to attend to the students as counselors, cheerleaders, impresarios and guardians....

Let's be clear what we're talking about: Sullivan is a law professor, but nothing is changing in his role as a law professor, and the students are not law students. These are undergraduates who were offered a special, welcoming, comforting living environment with Sullivan and his wife as their substitute parents. This wasn't about having their ideas challenged in class. This was about their home life. This was the university's idea of offering something like love and support to teenagers leaving their parents for the first time.

Students responded to this lure, and some of them got a man who has made it his work to construct legal arguments to further the ends of someone who they have reason to see as a human monster. Of course, in our system, the monsters get legal representation and their lawyers are doing difficult and ethical work, but meanwhile, these kids had a promise of a home, and Sullivan and his wife must have represented themselves as lovingly parental or they wouldn't have been given this position — or at least that's what Harvard entitled the students to think.

On Saturday, [dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana] announced that Mr. Sullivan and [his wife Stephanie] Robinson would no longer be deans of the college, citing their “ineffective” efforts to improve “the climate” at Winthrop....

The upshot is that Harvard College appears to have ratified the proposition that it is inappropriate for a faculty dean to defend a person reviled by a substantial number of students — a position that would disqualify a long list of stalwart defenders of civil liberties and civil rights, including Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.

It doesn't appear that way to me. I'd say it just appears that the special parental role of the faculty dean requires some fact-specific analysis. Kennedy sets up the category "a person reviled by a substantial number of students" as what is disqualifying (and then names 2 great men who fit his category). [CLARIFICATION: By "fit his category," I meant to say that, like Sullivan, they defended  persons in the category.]

But what is the fact-specific analysis? Did the college cater to doctrinaire snowflakes? Or were the students justified in objecting to Sullivan as their counselor and substitute father? I'm just relying on the details as Kennedy presents them — that students said "they would not feel safe confiding in Mr. Sullivan about matters having to do with sexual harassment." Kennedy says he wishes the college would push the students to think hard about why they feel afraid and whether there's any indication that Sullivan has failed in performing his duties.

"One would hope, in short, that Harvard would seek to educate its students and not simply defer to vague apprehensions or pander to the imperatives of misguided rage," Kennedy writes.

The phrasing of that sentence is cagey. Kennedy doesn't and probably can't say that Harvard failed to try to educate its students or that it simply deferred or pandered to imperatives. And he doesn't say that the students' apprehensions were vague or that their dissatisfaction rose to the level of rage and that the rage was misguided. You see the intro "One would hope," and if you go to the op-ed, you'll see that this sentence is in a paragraph with hypotheticals, and the hypotheticals are not even about sexual violence. (He asks about atheist students objecting to a Christian faculty dean and conservative students objecting to a big leftist.)

Kennedy asserts that "Harvard officials are certainly capable of withstanding student pressure," but they just "don’t want to" because they think — or at least "have an affinity for the belief" — "that Mr. Sullivan’s representation of Mr. Weinstein constituted a betrayal of enlightened judgment." I think it's fair to characterize that as an accusation that the Harvard officials were being politically correct. Kennedy adds the very insulting, "Others have simply been willing to be mau-maued."

I'm not taking a position on the outcome here. I don't know enough about it. I think the "faculty dean" system is interesting. What does Harvard tell incoming students they'll get from it? Do the students arrive with an inappropriately inflated sense of entitlement or did Harvard give them this entitlement? If Harvard gave it, if the students accepted an offer to feel extra-safe and enfolded in the loving arms of a father figure, Harvard needs to follow through somehow.

But I don't know all the details. I'm not surprised to see professors championing their colleagues, and it's too easy to scoff at the students and their expectations. I'd like to get to the origins of the expectations and the role of faculty in creating those expectations.

ADDED: After writing this, I checked to see if I was consistent with what I wrote when a similar matter arose at Yale:

Harvard Law School was looking for women when it hired Elizabeth Warren.

I'm reading "Ethnicity not a factor in Elizabeth Warren’s rise in law" by Annie Linskey, in The Boston Globe.

Harvard Law School’s internal statistics from the time showed the institution was looking for female professors and had set a goal of hiring a tenured woman that year. Oddly, the law school’s internal metrics found that they believed they had sufficient minorities on staff, despite employing only five.

One area that 30 of the 31 professors interviewed by the Globe agreed on: There was no talk about her Native American claims during the meetings over her appointment. One professor emeritus, Lloyd Weinreb, said he believes her Native American ancestry was discussed. But, in an e-mail he questioned his own recollection: “I am not sure enough for you to rely on me,” he wrote.

If it were discussed, in what way would it have been discussed?

It’s not even clear that Warren would have been accepted as a true minority hire if she’d been pitched to the faculty that way. “It wouldn’t have even worked in the most diehard communities,” said [David] Wilkins, who was one of the only black law professors on staff. “Let’s be blunt. Elizabeth Warren is a white woman. She may have some Native American roots, but so do most people.”

That one comment is more significant, I think, than the fact that  30 out of 31 Harvard lawprofs affirmed to the Globe that there was "no talk about her Native American claims during the meetings over her appointment."

By the way, did the Globe ask these professors if there was any talk outside of the meetings? Was there any written communication? Were the professors asked if they knew that Warren was listed as Native American in the American Association of Law Schools book that all law professors get a copy of every year? Did they know and did they think about it? There could be a decorum according to which you don't openly talk about it in meetings but everyone knows and is taking it into account. And one reason not to talk about is that you know that — as Professor Wilkins clearly stated — the black law professors would have objected if her case had been presented as a minority hire. But those voting on the case may nevertheless have considered it a plus that the school would be able to say that it had a Native American law professor — which in fact it went on to do.

The Harvard Law School students who were clamoring for more diversity also did not view her as a woman of color when she was offered a job.

“In order to show a real commitment to diversity they need to do more than pass a resolution and bring in white women,” said Julie A. Su, then a second-year Harvard Law student who was quoted in the Harvard Crimson the day after Warren was offered the job.

I believe this.

And, remarkably, Warren doesn’t even remember getting the offer. “I guess it should have been a big moment,” Warren said, reflecting on her inability to recall the details.

That's weird, but it's doesn't affect the matter under discussion. If her putative Native American ancestry were a factor in hiring her, I can't believe it would be part of the communication of the offer.

I mean, at my school, this sort of thing was out and proud. Under our chancellor Donna Shalala, we had "The Madison Plan," which funded 4 hires in one year. Our hires included a Native American whom Professor Wilkins might have looked at and called "a white man," but he was — and this was considered crucial — a citizen of the Cherokee nation.

Perhaps most telling was the role of Randall Kennedy, a law professor who was on the Harvard appointments committee at the time, and was in charge of recruiting minority candidates.

“She was not on the radar screen at all in terms of a racial minority hire,” Kennedy told the Globe. “It was just not an issue. I can’t remember anybody ever mentioning her in this context.”

Kennedy says he remembers no mentions, and that seems to refer to discussions outside of meetings as opposed to meetings alone, which tweaks my suspicion about what "30 of the 31 professors" told the Globe.

If you're wondering whether Professor Kennedy is a member of a minority group, I refer you to this book he wrote, the title of which I won't write. (I'd read that book, but I would not listen to the audio version.)

The Boston Globe takes care to give us quotes from Harvard Law School professors Warren antagonists probably know and like — Alan Dershowitz ("occasional Trump defender")....

“This is a made-up issue... This is not an issue that’s worthy of the president or anyone else.”

... and Charles Fried ("the former solicitor general to president Ronald Reagan")...

“It had nothing to do with our consideration and deliberation... How many times do you have to have the same thing explained to you?”

They sound testy! And imperious. Like people are idiots who don't understand their words — when really it's that people don't believe them. Actually, the testy, imperious denial may heighten suspicion.  And race is something that can affect decisionmaking without anyone needing to say it explicitly. Later, maybe no one remembers anything. They may not even see it at the time. But that's too complex and unknowable to see and talk about, unless it's one of those times when we're told we must.

ADDED: Are the last 11 words of this post too enigmatic? I'm thinking of the many calls for a "conversation on race" that are about getting ordinary people to understand the "systemic racism" and "white privilege" they're supposedly failing to see.

"While the white-savior complex and, yes, orientalism of some adoptive parents can be disturbing..."

The Nation's advice columnist concedes, but presents this as the better view:

Harvard professor Randall Kennedy, author of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, declared that trying to pair children with adoptive parents of the same race “buttresses the notion that people of different racial backgrounds really are different in some moral, unbridgeable, permanent sense. It affirms the notion that race should be a cage to which people are assigned at birth…. [It] instructs us that our affections are and should be bounded by the color line regardless of our efforts.” 

One of the black Harvard lawprofs whose photos were covered with black tape writes a thoughtful op-ed in the NYT.

There's a lot of detail to this, by Randall Kennedy, so read the whole thing. I'll just excerpt his reaction to the tape:

The identity and motives of the person or people behind the taping have not been determined. Perhaps the defacer is part of the law school community. But maybe not. Perhaps the defacer is white. But maybe not. Perhaps the taping is meant to convey anti-black contempt or hatred for the African-American professors. But maybe it was meant to protest the perceived marginalization of black professors, or was a hoax meant to look like a racial insult in order to provoke a crisis, or was a rebuke to those who have recently been taping over the law school’s seal, which memorializes a family of slaveholders from colonial times. Some observers, bristling with certainty, insist that the message conveyed by the taping of the photographs is obvious. To me it is puzzling.

Assuming that it was a racist gesture, there is a need to calibrate carefully its significance....

And one more sentence from the last paragraph: "In the long run, though, reformers harm themselves by nurturing an inflated sense of victimization."

Prof. Chemerinsky says Justice Ginsburg "has in her power the ability to prevent a real shift in the balance of power on the court."

"On the other hand, there's the personal. How do you decide to leave the United States Supreme Court?"

Wow! How much of this kind of moral pressure is being applied to the venerable Justice?

Democrats and liberals have a nightmare vision of the Supreme Court's future: President Barack Obama is defeated for re-election next year and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 78 the oldest justice, soon finds her health will not allow her to continue on the bench.

The new Republican president appoints Ginsburg's successor, cementing conservative domination of the court, and soon the justices roll back decisions in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.

Abortion and affirmative action. Abortion and affirmative action. That's the fixed point in constitutional law for a lot of people: it must work out in favor of abortion and affirmative action.

[S]ome on the left say ... Ginsburg needs to put self-interest aside and act for the good of the issues they believe in, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote recently. Kennedy said 72-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer should leave, too....

Get out, you selfish oldies — say some on the left — Obama needs to appoint some liberal ideologues before its too late!

David Garrow, a Cambridge University historian who follows the court, said Ginsburg's situation points to an institutional problem for the court, "the arguably narcissistic attitude that longer is better."

Narcissist!

Justices sometimes look at electoral projections when considering retirement, he said, adding that Ginsburg probably still could decide to retire next summer if Obama's electoral prospects seem shaky.

The rest of the article is a history lesson about how waiting too long doesn't work. Earl Warren, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Warren Burger and all that. The message is clear. The liberal media want Ruth Bader Ginsburg out now.

I know that sounds mean, but it's not me saying it. I'm just paraphrasing for clarity.

"The true measure of affirmative action's staying power is that its absence now is virtually inconceivable."

Writes Harvard lawprof Randall Kennedy:

Liberalism has made racial homogeneity uncool and unacceptable. Even many conservatives are made uncomfortable by lily-white gatherings -- hence the enhanced value to the right of Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Condoleezza Rice, Linda Chavez, and any well-spoken Negro or Latino who consorts with the Tea Party crowd. That conservatives practice affirmative action even as they condemn it is a tribute to liberalism's handiwork.