Black Tape at Harvard Law
28th November 2015
A black Harvard Law Professor gets it right.
Questioners often seem to assume that I should feel deeply alarmed and hurt. I don’t.
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.
At least they have grownups teaching at Harvard Law, regardless of the arrested adolescence of the students.
What I find puzzling is how so sensible a piece got published in the New York Times.