The Swift-Canoe controversy continues (copyright: Mike Potemra). According to Harvard Law School’s records, one of its professors identifies as Native American, but they’re not saying if it’s Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The Boston Herald reports:
Warren — who has been dogged by questions about whether she used her claims of Cherokee lineage to further her career — has insisted she never authorized Harvard Law to count her as a Native American in the mid-1990s, when the school was under fire for not having enough minority professors.
Prior to that, from 1986 to 1995, Warren had listed herself as a minority in a law school directory administrators then used as a tip sheet when making diversity hires. But by 1996, when Harvard Law was boasting that Warren was the faculty’s first minority female, she had stopped appearing in the law school directory.
Harvard Law’s 2011 diversity report does not indicate who the Native American professor is. And the school refused to say whether it’s Warren. . . . The 2011 report indicates that “Race/Ethnicity designations are from self-report data,” meaning whoever is listed as a Native American told the school of their tribal lineage.
Robert C. Clark, a professor and former Harvard Law School dean, is listed as part Choctaw in a 1999 Harvard Magazine article. Clark has worked for the law school since 1989 but wasn’t named in a 1996 Harvard Crimson article when law school officials sought to defend their minority hires. Clark did not return requests for comment.
Former law school spokesman Mike Chmura said in the 1996 article that out of 71 professors, only one was Native American and that was Warren.
An Oklahoma native, Warren said this week she used the law school directory to meet other “people who are like I am” with similar tribal roots — even though the directory does not specify which minority professors belong to.