Harvard trips on roots of Elizabeth Warren’s family tree

Boston Herald ^ | 4/27/12 | Hillary Chabot

[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.

[babyfreep]

Haha...it’s probably because she’s from Oklahoma (It is “Land of the Red Man”, of course.) Once again, this shows not only how libs like to keep us all separate by race and creed, but also how they stereotype.

I would guess nearly everyone born in the USA up thru the 60s and maybe after, could find some Indian blood somewhere in their family tree.

[raccoonradio]

Yup..not sure if he’s still alive. I assume he is but getting up there. Once I visited my dad when he used to live on the Cape and I noticed a Giles E. Threadgold of Falmouth in the
phone book. (Looked up, was curious, and no I didn’t call)

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

It’s “granny Warren.” Man, if a nickname ever fit.

[blueunicorn6]

If you’ve got any oriental blood in you, claim you’re an Indian.

[heartwood]

I think most of us who are descended from the early English settlers get an Indian ancestor tacked on to the family tree. No wife’s name recorded anywhere - must have married an Indian princess!

[philled]

Why doesn’t she just have Ward Churchill just print up a tribal membership card for her?

[SamAdams76]

Sung to the tune of "Half-Breed" by Cher

My father married up a Cherokee
So it was claimed by the Harvard Faculty
I guess that makes me a minority
I feel like I just hit the Lottery!

Half-breed, that's all I ever heard
Half-breed, how I learned to love the word
Half-breed, that's my ticket to ride
All my enemies had better run and hide!

Being an Indian has been good to me
It doesn't hurt to be a Cherokee
Them Ivy Leaguers think I'm the cat's meow
"Run her for senate, she can beat Scott Brown

Half-breed, and I'm a Marxist through and through
Half-breed, and I'm coming after you
Half-breed, I'm gonna make them capitalists mourn
Scott Brown's going to wish that he was never born

There's only one thing better than being a Cherokee
And that is marrying up a Kennedy
But since there's no chance I can accomplish that feat
I'm gonna win them back their senate seat

(REPEAT CHORUS)

[raccoonradio]

great!

[Lmo56]

Aides said the tales of Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware tribe ancestors have been passed down through family lore.

Yeah - and my family's lore says that I am the Great Great Great Great Grandson of Louis XVI ...

So, I'm the King of France - Yeah ... THAT'S THE TICKET !!!

[massgopguy]

That had better be on the Chump Line!

[dfwgator]

Elizabeth is the sap.

[muir_redwoods]

Probably has as much Indian blood as a St Patricks day parade.

[SamAdams76]

I did email it to Howie Carr but no way was I going on the Chump Line to sing it!

[LadyDoc]

half of Oklahoma and a quarter of those living in Tennesee and Kentucky have an Indian ancestor, usually a Cherokee, somewhere in their geneology, but unless you have a CDIB card, you aren't an Indian.

Wikipedia article on the CDIB card...A Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood or Certificate of Degree of Alaska Native Blood (both abbreviated CDIB) is an official U.S. document that certifies an individual possesses a specific degree of Native American blood of a federally recognized Indian tribe, band, nation, pueblo, village, or community.[1]

They are issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs after the applicant supplies a completed genealogy with supporting legal documents such as birth certificates, showing their descent, through one or both birth parents, from an enrolled Indian or an Indian listed in a base roll such as the Dawes Rolls.

For example, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians requires at least 1/16 degree of Eastern Cherokee blood for tribal membership, the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Higher Education Grant for college expenses requires a 1/4 degree minimum.

...

If you have a CDIB card, you are elibigle for federal benefits, including free medical care at your local Indian Health Service clinic

My problem is that these benefits are to help those who are disadvantaged and need help, not someone from a rich family who suddenly discovers an Indian ancestory...

It's like Obama: his grandparents were upper middle class, and he was long assimilated into a multi ethnic culture, so he got all that affirmative action help that he really didn't need (whereas at least Michelle came from a working class family)_

[jessduntno]

I hear when you go to Lynn, you never came out the way you went in.

[jessduntno]

“In addition to everything else she lied about her heritage. Another professor, Ward Churchill did the same thing.”

Churchill was also famous for furthering the absolute lie that the early settlers infected their blankets intentionally with disease. That bastard will be laughing about that one with Ted Kennedy (D-HELL) someday at the weenie roast.

[Darren McCarty]

Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan

A RINO for Obama.