Harvard Touted Its High-Cheekboned Minority Hire In Letter To the Editor of the NYT

Elizabeth Warren says she didn't tell Harvard she was a minority. But somehow, they found out.

Harvard, for its part, says that her minority heritage (ahem) played no part in her hiring.

And yet, they seem to have been very sensitive to minority-hiring issues at the time.

Warren got tenured at Harvard -- the Golden Ticket -- in 1995. Around this time, Harvard was talking up its Tenured Native American Cherokee Lady.

The Herald's story relied heavily on archived Crimson articles about the Law School from the mid-1990s, a time when HLS weathered much criticism about its lack of diversity.

"Of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic," then-Law School spokesman Mike Chmura told The Crimson in 1996, with Elizabeth Warren being that one Native American.

A Crimson editorial from 1998 refers to Warren as the Law School's "one tenured minority woman."

The one. The one that proves they don't refuse tenure to minority women.

Now Morgan Richmond has Harvard bragging about their diversity scalps (I'm so sorry) to the NYT in 1998.

To the Editor:

Re the Jan. 29 Op-Ed article on hiring at Harvard Law School: Since 1989 the school has appointed to the faculty or voted tenure for four African-Americans, a Hispanic professor and eight women, including a Native America

Are you sure you didn't consider this at all when giving her tenure? You sure seem to have thought about it an awful lot, at all other times.

And did Elizabeth Warren not realize her Fauxcahontas story would have exactly this effect? Did she really not seek professional advancement by pretending to be that which she is not?

Flamin' Injun Skull courtesy of The Mega Independent, who just did this parody Time Magazine cover.

posted by Ace at 01:45 PM

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