Kiwi Camara - Racial Controversy at Harvard

Racial Controversy At Harvard

In his first year at Harvard, Camara was involved in a racial controversy that would gain attention from the national media. Like many students, Camara posted his course outlines to a popular student-run website. Camara's, however, referred to blacks as nigs. For example, to summarize Shelley v. Kraemer, he wrote "Nigs buy land with no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?" The notes were prefaced with a disclaimer that they may contain racially offensive shorthand.

Upon discovering the outline, classmate Michelle Simpson alerted other students and professors. Camara issued an apology and the outlines were promptly removed, whereupon a third student using the pseudonym "gcrocodile" e-mailed Simpson, expressing disappointment that they were no longer available. The student was later identified as then-1L Mattias Scholl. The section's professor, Charles Nesson, proposed as a didactic solution a classroom mock trial in which he would defend Scholl's right to free speech. The Black Law Student Association at the school took offense and called for a reprimand of the professor, along with another professor, David Rosenberg, who in an unrelated incident allegedly stated that "Feminism, Marxism and the blacks have contributed nothing to the scientific pursuit of legal discourse." Nesson voluntarily withdrew from teaching the torts course, and the law school dean took over for the remainder of the semester.

The following year, students protested in favor of more transparency in the selection of the next law school dean and requested a candidate in favor of affirmative action.

In an article in The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin covered the incident and found it "striking" that a sequence of "quirky and anomalous events generated such a consensus at the law school-that racial bias was widespread and that immediate corrective action was needed." Law professor Charles Fried described it as a "hysterical, ridiculous overreaction to a couple of unfortunate incidents." The controversy is also the subject of the book The People Vs. Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech and a talk at the New England Appellate Judges’ Conference.