This Morning at Harvard Law School We Woke Up to a Hate Crime

[tishaLA]

The hallways of Harvard Law School are lined with portraits of every tenured professor in the history of the university. As a first-year law student, the first time that I walked down those hallways I was painfully aware of the white men that take up most of the space on the walls, but also proud to see black professors hanging right beside them. The portraits make me feel a strange tension of pain yet promise. I am constantly reminded of the legacy of white supremacy that founded this school and still breathes through every classroom and lecture hall. I am also shown the small inroads that professors of color have made, breaking apart the notion that whiteness is the epitome of legal scholarship. This is how I felt yesterday walking through those hallways.

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The portraits of black professors, the ones that bring me and so many other black students feelings of pride and promise, were defaced. Their faces were covered with a single piece of black tape, crossing them out of Harvard Law School’s legacy of legal scholarship. Their faces were slashed through, X-ing them out, marking them as maybe unwanted or maybe unworthy or maybe simply too antithetical to the legacy of white supremacy on which Harvard Law School has been built. Harvard Law School was, after all, founded with the money from the sale of over 100 Antiguan enslaved people (because they were not slaves but people who were brutally and inhumanely enslaved) by the Royall family. To this day, the Royall family crest is the seal for Harvard Law School, and their legacy of white supremacy drips from every corner of the campus, like the blood of the 77 enslaved people murdered after a slave revolt on the Royall plantation. The defacing of the portraits of black professors this morning is a further reminder that white supremacy built this place, is the foundation of this place, and that we never have and still do not belong here.

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This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a hate crime. And tomorrow you will wake up to a hate crime on your campus too. And they — the cowards who deface the portraits of black professors, who hang nooses in front of black dorms, who draw swatstikas with human feces — want for that to be the end of the story. But we, black students on campus, are not afraid of what you do under the covers of darkness and hatred and cowardice. We will march and scream and sit in and walk out and shout our demands and make ourselves heard and tear down these hallways of white supremacy because we belong here too. And no longer can you make us feel that we do not belong here. Because our sweat and blood and death and courage is what really built these hallways.

This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a hate crime. And what we do next will shake white supremacy at Harvard Law School to its core.

http://blavity.com/this-morning-at-harvard-law-school-we-woke-up-to-a-hate-crime/

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Yes, that is a hate crime.

[smirkymonkey]

2. That's horrible!

That is not something I would expect in Cambridge, MA of all places.

[Journeyman]

3. Odd, to put pieces of removable tape on the photos, instead of crossing them out with a marker . . .

Seems a considerate hater, one who didn't want the university to incur too much expense to rectify their vandalism. Took a greater risk, too, as tape would have taken a little longer to apply.

Wonder what that's all about.

[TipTok]

6. Odd indeed...

[Bonx]

12. Looks like electrical tape

which typically doesn't even leave any residue when removed.

[jberryhill]

14. or on wood, too

Also found at Harvard today:

[jberryhill]

4. It reminds me of the people who keep doing this...

Nobody seems to be able to catch the people who do this to protesters:





Is it outside of the realm of possibility that someone put the tape there in order to send a symbolic message of another kind? Something along the lines of a statement that the contributions of African Americans are being marginalized?

If that is not possible, then what, specifically, renders that not possible?

One thing to note about law students, incidentally, is that every one of them provided a fingerprint to take the LSAT. Additionally, should they graduate and attempt to pass the bar and become an attorney, they have to provide a full set of prints as part of the background check, and these prints aren't thrown away.

[B2G]

7. Nice article all queued up and ready to go too. nt

[jberryhill]

13. That tape is popular at Harvard, apparently

That tape was used in a pro BLM statement as well.

And also including mention of the Royall family connections cited in the article.

[B2G]

15. Wow

That's all folks.

[jberryhill]

16. Mm hmm

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

21. As I pointed out in another thread....

This could be a direct response to the writer's prior blog. Counter the black tape over the crest with black tape over the pictures.

[TipTok]

8. I'd check the author of this article..

She seems to have some real issues...

[hifiguy]

24. That is a possibility that no thoughtful person would dismiss.

[romanic]

9. This is defintiely a hate crime.

But I cannot shake the feeling that this could also be the work of an activist instilling fear for the cause. It all seems to neat for vandalism.

[B2G]

10. If so, it's not a hate crime.

Athough is should be a crime of some sort.

[hifiguy]

25. Vandalism of private property

is almost certainly the correct description, in legal terms.

[notadmblnd]

26. If an activist did it- it's still a hate crime

nt

[starroute]

11. This comes amid rising tensions -- more from ThinkProgress

That Harvard Law Review item it mentions is a still broader issue. It expresses a typical young conservative attempt to smear the Yale protesters -- and the author was quickly invited to do his thing on Fox News. Anyone who doesn't recognize there's a coordinated effort on the right to shut down Black Lives Matter is awfully naive.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/11/19/3723998/black-professors-harvard-defaced/

Students walked out of classes Wednesday afternoon and gathered in solidarity with anti-racism protests sweeping other colleges like University of Missouri and Yale. They were joined by Harvard officials including University President Drew Faust and Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana.

Besides sharing the broader concerns raised by students at other colleges, Harvard Law students have some specific demands. They are calling for changes in the law school’s official seal, which features the family crest of Isaac Royall Jr., a prominent slaveowner who helped found the school.

Shelton said that these efforts have been met by hostility from some quarters, citing an op-ed in the Harvard Law Record earlier this month describing efforts to combat racism as “fascist.”

[jberryhill]

17. Looks like the Royall connection was pointed out in an interesting protest today as well

...as this also appeared at Harvard Law today:



I guess there was a pretty good sale on black tape at the campus store.

[starroute]

18. Any particular reason you posted the same image three times?

I assume you think you're making a point, but I can't tell what it is.

[jberryhill]

20. In reply to different people

People don't often go back to check threads they've commented upon, unless there is a reply to one of their own posts.

I thought the image might be of interest to the various people to whom I posted it in reply.

It is brought up in the thread at the original blog post, and I thought that others who may not have read the thread there would find it interesting.

Incidentally, it is a requirement of taking the LSAT to provide fingerprints, as is admission to the bar. Should any prints be taken in this incident, and should the perpetrator(s) be law students who pass and then proceed to the bar, this will catch up with them.

[Heeeeers Johnny]

19. Racist, or activist; white or black

Doesn't make much sense that someone attending one of the most elite, prestigious universities in the world, would be willing
to risk it all over a stunt like that.

Janitor or maintenance person perhaps?

They'd have the best opportunity to do that and not be seen.

[Tipperary]

22. Has anyone seen this story

on mainstream media?

[hifiguy]

23. I spent three years at the School

(yes, I graduated - same class as Michelle Obama) and am going to have to withhold any judgment on this. I can't imagine a student doing this though I suppose it's possible. It is a disgraceful act and should be punished to the extent of the possible by both the University and the appropriate authorities. But it is, technically, vandalism and nothing more. It's hard to imagine something like this happening at the place where I spent three quite happy years.

As for the "legacy" it was founded in 1817. The rhetoric in this piece is rather overheated and highly selective. Most of the nation's elite universities were given huge donations by families whose money-making activities were morally or ethically dubious. There is not one thing unique about Harvard or the Law School in that respect. Duke was re-named for its benefactors and Stanford was named for its.