Do the tomahawk chop!
Posted on 04/27/2012 12:12:20 PM PDT by raccoonradio
Elizabeth Warren’s avowed Native American heritage — which the candidate rarely if ever discusses on the campaign trail — was once touted by embattled Harvard Law School officials who cited her claim as proof of their faculty’s diversity.
Warren’s claim, which surfaced yesterday after a Herald inquiry, put the candidate in an awkward position as campaign aides last night scrambled but failed to produce documents proving her family lineage. Aides said the tales of Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware tribe ancestors have been passed down through family lore.
“Like most Americans, Elizabeth learned of her heritage through conversations with her grandparents, her parents, and her aunts and uncles,” said Warren’s strategist Kyle Sullivan.
The Ivy League law school prominently touted Warren’s Native American background, however, in an effort to bolster their diversity hiring record in the ’90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male.
“Of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic,” The Harvard Crimson quotes then-Law School spokesman Mike Chmura as saying in a 1996 article. The Crimson added that 83 percent of the Law School’s students believed the number of minority women on staff was inadequate.
“Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said professor of law Elizabeth Warren is Native American,” the Crimson wrote.
The Crimson noted Warren’s heritage again in 1998 when Lani Guinier became the first black woman tenured at the law school, mentioning that Warren was “the first woman with a minority background to be tenured.”
The Warren campaign said the candidate never authorized Harvard Law to claim her as a minority hire.
Sarah Marston, the current spokeswoman at Harvard Law School, said the school has had a change of heart when it comes to discussing Warren’s heritiage.
“The Law School’s current policy is to refrain from publicly commenting about the race or ethnicity of individual faculty members,” Marston said in a statement.
Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn’t recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.
“It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn’t mention it to the faculty,” he said.
Warren’s campaign said she has no recollection of discussing her Native American heritage with Harvard Law School faculty before her hire, and that her background came out later through conversations.
Fried said he learned about Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware background later when he found a picture of Warren’s mother and asked her about it. Both Warren’s grandparents on her mother’s side had Native American lineage, her campaign said yesterday.
Christopher Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, traced back Warren’s family to her great-grandfather on her mother’s side and couldn’t find any proof of Native American heritage.
IT IS BALLOON!
>>Elizabeth Warren is Native American
So am I. I was born in Lynn, MA, which is part of the USA.
So I am a native American.
Yup Howie’s a member of the Hekawis (we not fighters, we lovers)...and Jerry Williams was a “Shmoehawk” as he used to say
I went to Walmart in Lynn and the sign on the General Edwards Bridge said “You are now leaving the American sector.”
Absolutely priceless.......dems will resort to anything to get votes.....she should also claim that she is related to dead ted, that will definetly get her votes!
Quick hand her a dream catcher!
Nearly anyone whose ancestors were in America by 1700 is likely to have a wide variety of ethnic groups in their family tree.
The Dills and Cushings of 18th-century Massachusetts who are some of my ancestors supposedly had Indian blood, but it would take a lot of research to prove that.
I’m a qualified brain surgeon. Monty Python told me so!
This promises to be one of the best hours in Howie Carr history!
Ha!
I was born in Lynn myself (though grew up in Nahant). What’s funny is Lynn Hospital (not where I was born, I was born in Union Hosp.) is now a supermarket. Stop and Shop. People can say “I was born over there—right around where the canned goods aisle now is...”
Ha, someone said same thing I did: If you’re born in this
country, you’re a Native American aren’t you?
DANCES WITH OCCUPIERS!
Someone else sang a line “Indian Outlaw”
“...slight Indian accent” (Biden joke)
DANCES WITH OCCUPIERS!
POST OF THE DAY!
Yes....another great hour was when Clinton fired surgeon general Jocelyn Elders who had said “masturbation is something that perhaps should be taught”. The news was released around 3 pm on a Friday, just late enough so that Rush couldn’t do anything with it...but Howie could. He had Giles Threadgold (remember him?) on that day and it was jokes aplenty.
Giles was a great hockey player for Boston College. He also hung out on the boat with Butch from The Cape.
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