In Washington, it is often the response of politicians to allegations that get them into more trouble than the original allegations themselves. Harvard Professor and US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren appears to be reaffirming that rule as more information surfaced that casts serious questions about her veracity over the claim to being a Native American. The latest disclosure comes from the Boston Globe, a Democratic-leaning newspaper that has been criticized for downplaying the controversy in the past. I previously discussed how claiming to be a minority is a significant act for law professors due to reporting to the federal government, the ABA, and AALS. Warren has insisted that she was unaware that she was listed as a minority, but, as a law professor, I am skeptical how such listings can occur without a professor volunteering the information. Now, the Boston Globe is reporting that Harvard listed Warren for years as a minority in reports to the federal government. Obviously, this story has particular interest to law professors, but it is being played out in the Massachusetts senatorial race.
I do not share the view that anyone should be able to claim to be a minority, particularly when reporting responsibilities to the government and the ABA hold great importance for schools and academics. Warren is not a minority. She also does not meet that federal definition of a Native American.
Warren’s denial of knowledge of being viewed as a minority and a Cherokee has faced repeatedly contradiction including the recent disclosure by the New York Times of being claimed as a minority faculty member at her earlier law school, the University of Pennsylvania. There have also been smaller disclosures like her contributions to the “Pow Wow Cook Book” as a Cherokee woman.
The Globe reports on Warren’s pasts denial but reveals “for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school.” The school notes, as we previously discussed, such statistics are based on the reporting of the professors themselves as minorities. The newspaper states the new information “further questions about Warren’s statements that she was unaware Harvard was promoting her as Native American.”
Warren is refusing to respond to the new information and her campaign insists that she has already answered enough questions.
Alan Ray, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, was the official responsible during this period for reporting at Harvard. He is now president of Elmhurst College in Illinois and says that he did not list Warren unilaterally and never encouraged an professor to report themselves as a minority.
Warren was repeatedly identified as a minority Native American in various publications for the Harvard Crimson. As previously discussed, she was called Harvard Law’s “first woman of color” in a 1997 Fordham Law Review and in 1998, Harvard published a letter to the New York Times heralding the presence of a “Native American” on the faculty. Then again in 1998, the Crimson followed up on the New York Times publication and wrote “Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American.”
I have previously said how much I respect Warren as an academic and her intellect would be clearly be an asset in the U.S. Senate. However, I remained concerned over the denials of knowledge and the years of claims to be a minority. Whether such claims assisted her career or not, the reporting of minority hiring affects myriad of different issues and rankings. To count a minority member on a faculty, reduces pressure on the school to further diversify its ranks and elevates the status of the professor. Under any reasonable definition, Warren is not a minority and there is no documentation establishing that she is even 1/32 Cherokee. Even if she were 1/32 Cherokee, would we feel it was fine for someone to claim they are black or hispanic with 1/32 connection to that minority or asian? If so, law schools could claim a multifold increase in minorities. Clearly, we cannot have reporting data if anyone is given carte blanche in self-proclaiming themselves to be minorities.
While I do not question her pride in the family claim to have Indian blood (though tens of millions have such potential claims of a small presence of Indian blood in their families), there is a big difference between such pride and claiming to be a minority or Native American. I tend not to view these stories in partisan terms. Frankly, I am a critic of both parties. I believe that story does raise legitimate questions, particularly regarding the denials of knowledge. While I do not believe that this is the most important question in the campaign, I do believe it warrants further answers from Warren.
What do you think? Do you believe Warren should respond to these latest allegations in the Boston Globe and New York Times or is this completely irrelevant to judging Warren’s character and veracity?
Source: Boston Globe
@Matt Johnson
In my remarks I had hoped to distinguish my views on ethnic identification from discussion of Warren. I am not claiming that there is nothing to say regarding Warren and her ethnic identification. Just that we have already spent a great deal of time on a little knot of questions. I believe there is a limit to how much time we can reasonably devote to any issue. At this time I believe the questions, regarding Warren and ethnic background, are beginning to crowd out discussion on other important questions in the campaign.
That is why I tried to make it clear that my views on descriptions of ethnic background have nothing to do with Warren.
How one views ones own ethnic background is personal business. The individual is accountable to no one but them self and perhaps their family when it come to a personal view of ones own ethnic heritage.
But there are other important purposes for counting and tracking ethnic background. At the very least counting and tracking ethnic background is important in understanding how institutions deal with diversity. Those institutional purposes require something more reliable than self reporting bases on ‘if they say they are then they are’.
‘if they say they are then they are’ sounds appealing and progressive. But that kind of standard is easily abused and can lead to serious misunderstandings when used to evaluate institutional performance in regard to diversity.
When it comes to understanding merit, diversity and institutions we need a better standard than ‘if they say they are then they are’.
If you have read this far Matt, then let me change the subject and return to Warren. I don’t think she meant any harm either. If this is the worst they have to throw against Warren then, in my opinion, then voters ought to elect her immediately. If this is the worst they can say against Warren then it doesn’t get much better.
Perhaps Warren ought to campaign on the premise that the worst thing she ever did was questionably report that she was NAI.
If that is the worst thing she ever did then i would vote for her right now. It would be a relief to have such an honest person in the senate.
Beside that I think she speaks truth to power in regard to financial regulation.
Reminder to self: Send yet another contribution to Warren campaign
MetroCowboy,
Most of the Native Americans stick to the Reservations. There isn’t much documentation. If she said she’s 1/32nd Cherokee, or something like that, I think she is.
To me the whole situation seems like much ado about nothing… Having said that I would be interested to know what Professor Warrens family has to say about this….if they all believe and have believed for a long period of time that the family has Native American blood in it then this needs to be dropped, if my grand or great grandparents had said that I had lets say 1/16th or even less of an Native American bloodline/heritage I would have been proud and told people but I doubt I would have ever tried to find out if the family was telling the truth or if it was just made up.
Can you be from the south and be a Boner?
Much ado about nothing. I hope she wins over incumbent Brown.
mespo727272,
Using her “heritage” this way by both Harvard and the professor in question is a subterfuge and hurts any legitimate efforts at real diversity.
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Maybe you should join Skull and Bones. Do you think that’s diversity? They might piss on you from the balcony.
In mespo’s court (pun intended) on this one.
Well clearly she has someone following her around and reporting her to be a native American! LOL
She’s been caught in a silly lie that there’s no good way to get out of. I’m sure she thought it was just some kind of liberal badge of honor that wouldn’t make a real difference. Oops!
All in all this is ridiculous. The fact that it makes a difference whether she is or is not is absurd.
importanttopics,
You don’t know she was lying. I don’t have any documentary proof either.
Bron,
There are plenty of flakes in the conservative party. I don’t think she’s lying, but if she’s only 1/32nd Cherokee, she probably shouldn’t have claimed to be Native American. But I think she had good motivation.
J. Corbett,
She isn’t shady.
bfm,
Simply accepting ‘they are if they say they are’ is not reasonable.
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What’s acceptable and what isn’t? What is politics? I’m convinced she had no ill intent.
Again, I think Warren’s extreme pro-Israel position and the pro war language regarding Iran that one can find on her own web site is a more relevant issue to the times and to the upcoming election than this.
It indicates to me that she is going to be far more willing to take Obama’s directions, regarding cat food for seniors for instance, and be far more susceptible to the pressures inherent in the office (inability to get on this committee or that one without playing ball, financial temptation/pressure of lobbyists, loyalty to Obama, etc.) than I would have imagined, given what she “says” in public. Normally, I would ignore such concerns since Brown is so obviously a tool. But the experience with Obama and the Trojan horse effect has made me a lot more cautious than I used to be.
Anyway, as with Obama, the only thing that seems to matter in this election, or to be discussed, is what tribe you belong to.
I didn’t like her story when this first came out and I don’t like it now. As I said on May 3rd:
At the least, it’s quite unseemly and flat wrong if a true minority person was passed up in the hiring process in deference to her and her rather expansive view of just what constitutes a “minority” and the disadvantaged status it undoubtedly connotes.
Using her “heritage” this way by both Harvard and the professor in question is a subterfuge and hurts any legitimate efforts at real diversity.
How many times are we going to revisit this story on Elizabeth Warren? How many readers are voters in Massachussets? Chimne in it if matters that this person who grew up in Oklahoma who says she is part Cherokee is disqualified if she can not show the Birthers her papers? Is Turley a Birther?
Would the Founding Fathers in their original intent want Scalia on the Court–he is Italian and Catolic? Or three women or an African American? The Birthers are like Originalists such as Scalia. Is Turley vying for a judgeship if Romney wins?
Senators vote on legislation that affects all of us regardless of what state we live in. So, I have an interest, and therefore a right to express my opinion on who is elected to serve in the Senate from Massachusetts. That said, if I were a resident of Massachusetts I would vote for Elizabeth Warren if no other shoes drop.
“if she says she’s cherokee- she is”
Independently of anything we may say regarding Warren, I think the position ‘you are if you say your are’ is a glib answer that ignores the potential for real problems.
On type of problem is that unscrupulous individuals might try to game the system for personal gain. This situation has two types of negative consequences. In the first consequence, a person who is undeserving might gain advantage. In the second consequence, in a time of limited resources, a person who really does deserve some benefit will be denied. But this kind of mis-representation might be the least of our worries.
Perhaps a more important type of problem has to do with evaluating the even handedness of institutions and society in general.
I believe many of us who really care about diversity would have to conclude that monitoring the performance of institutions is essential now and perhaps for many decades to come. The attitude ‘they are if they say they are’ raises serious issues relating to the evaluation of performance of institutions. How can we ever make sense of what institutions are doing in regard to diverse groups if it is permissible to increase or decrease counts based on nothing more than one person’s word?
Some might argue that it is unnecessary to keep track of group counts because merit ought to be the only criteria. I agree that merit ought to be the criteria. If only evaluating and assuring choice on the basis of merit were that simple. The fact is that abuse of merit is sometimes revealed first and most convincingly by examination of ethnic distribution. Some times the statistical improbability of the supposed distribution of merit is the first warning we have of institutions going seriously off track.
We need to find reasonable ways to keep track of how institutions deal with diverse groups. Simply accepting ‘they are if they say they are’ is not reasonable.
You’re not going to get any credit for attempting to address this question objectively. Expect to get the same ideological knee-jerk reaction that Nader got in 2004 from the so-called progressive left when he pointed out then what has become increasingly and painfully clear: the democratic party is just as corrupt as the republican party. The democrats and the republicans both sell themselves to the money interests. Note how so-called progressives ignore the hideous record of President Obama in continuing and even extending, yes doubling down on, the Bush/Cheney war on the Bill of Rights. So-called progressive pundits have sold out completely and continue to delude themselves that voting for the “lesser of two evils” is a morally defensible position. It isn’t even defensible a practical position. We’ve be doing it for years, and all it has gotten us is further and further into settling for a corrupt and evil system. Elizabeth Warren may or may not have claimed a minority status she was not entitled to claim. If nothing else arises I think this will become a non-issue. However, if something else of a similar nature comes out, it will sink her candidacy. She either did something shady with this or she didn’t. If she did, there is almost no doubt that she would have done other things in her past of questionable honesty, and such things have a way of eventually surfacing. If she honestly felt she was entitled to claim minority status, but was simply wrong, that can be forgiven. Better for sure would be that she was entitled to the cliam because she actually qualifies for the status. That would be my hope because if she in fact is the honest person she portrays herself to be, standing up for “the little people,” the Senate sure needs such a person. If she’s a crook like all the rest of them, than what a pity. With nothing else I would certainly and easily vote for her over Scott Brown.
I dont like the woman’s economic philosophy so I am partisan. But I think this goes to character and credibility. If she were a conservative, I would be shaking my head and wondering where the hell the party is finding flakes like this.
By the way, I am not a fan of Scott Brown.
@wege claiming to be a minority when you clearly aren’t isn’t an attempt to gain some sort of advantage? Are you serious? Why else would someone lie about something like that?
Elizabeth Warren doesn’t look like a Native American. But I don’t look like one either. According to what I’ve been told, I’m 1/16th Osage. I don’t have any documentation to prove it, so I don’t report it. I don’t think this is relevant to judging Warren’s character and veracity?
You cite the Boston Globe but it’s the über-Republican Boston Herald that’s beating this one to death.
Warren has never used her ancestry as leverage to gain any advantage in life. Her family is proud of that heritage, and I think the key word here is “pride.”
I’m disappointed you picked up on this. It’s a manufactured hissy fit from the intolerant right, and not a legit news story.
the white man is still trying to dissapear the red man. Were told we’re extinct, were told were not red enough, that we dont have our govt indian papers. Its cultural eliminatonism pure and simple. Natives had babies with whites and their kids had better opportunities. Now you cant even check your proper race on an eeoc form without getting questioned. Shes native, just like much of this country west of the mississippi is. I dont care if shes blonde and blue eyed, if she says she’s cherokee- she is. Plus she has the nose.