the-perks-of-being-black:“Tori Anderson, a third-year Law Schoolstudent, shows her support by adding
the-perks-of-being-black:“Tori Anderson, a third-year Law Schoolstudent, shows her support by adding a sticky note to the portrait of a black LawSchool professor on Thursday afternoon after black tape was found covering the photosin the morning. Anderson said, ‘This [the post-its] shows the outpouring of supportfor the faculty. I wish we had a greater and more robust response from the administrationand a greater focus on creating, not only community inclusion, but institutionalinclusion.’” Jennifer Y. Yao, The Harvard Crimson“Black tape, stuck systematicallyacross the portraits of black law professors, spurred on Thursday a police investigationinto vandalism and a pronouncement from the dean of Harvard Law School that theschool has a ‘serious problem’ with racism.Law School students andteachers who walked into Harvard’s Wasserstein Hall on Thursday morning found piecesof black tape covering some of the faculty portraits that hang on walls inside thebuilding—specifically on the faces of black professors depicted there.The incident promptedoutrage from Law School students who were quick to condemn it as racist vandalism,and police are now investigating.Harvard University PoliceDepartment spokesperson Steven G. Catalano said Thursday evening that the investigationis ‘active and ongoing,’ and although he declined to comment further, Law SchoolDean Martha L. Minow wrote in a statement that police are investigating the incidentas a hate crime….”…Leland S. Shelton, thepresident of the Harvard Black Law Student Association, described it as ‘actuallyone of the most clear-cut, overt instances of very, very vile and disrespectfulbehavior from somebody’; second-year Law School student Michele D. Hall, who postedphotographs of the vandalized portraits in a post on the website Blavity, wrote, ‘This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to ahate crime.’After the tape was removedfrom the portraits, students posted notes with words of support for the black professorsalongside their photographs.…The incident and subsequenthate crime allegations follows incidents at Yale and the University of Missouriat Columbia that have prompted protests against racism at colleges across the country,including a march and rally at Harvard on Wednesday.It also comes as a groupof Harvard Law School students who call themselves Royall Must Fall has requestedthe removal of the school’s seal because it features the crest of a family thatowned slaves.That group of students denounced the vandalism as ‘an overt actof racial hatred’ in an open letter published in the Harvard Law Record, a studentpublication. They also claimed in their letter that the Thursday incident couldbe a reaction to their activism: They had placed several pieces of black tape overseveral depictions of the school’s seal around campus on Wednesday night, they wrote,alleging that someone had removed those pieces of tape and then placed them on theportraits of black faculty members….” Andrew M. Duehren with Claire E. Parker, The Harvard CrimsonRead more:The Harvard CrimsonThe New York TimesThe Boston GlobeBlavityThe RootThe Huffington Post -- source link