Randall Kennedy

Interesting.

What?

I don't know how widespread it is.

I know there was a very good article in the New York Times a couple of days ago about these positionality statements.

And in fact, that's what sort of tipped me off.

Somebody had told me there's a law review at my home institution.

And I had a friend who sort of mentioned this offhandedly and who said, well, I submitted an article to this journal called

And I was a little bit taken aback insofar as they did have me fill out a questionnaire in which I was required to state my race, state this, state that, state the other.

And, you know, as far as I'm concerned, well,

What does that have to do with a proper assessment of somebody's work?

This concerns me.

I'm concerned about the fact, you know, a little while ago you mentioned the word negro.

Negro.

I was talking with colleagues a couple months ago and somebody mentioned that this word had come up in their class because what happened was one student was reading from a Supreme Court decision and the word Negro was part of what they read out and another student held up

his hand and said to the student who was reading, A, you should be careful because, you know, I find the word Negro offensive and you need to be careful about even saying a word that would be offensive to someone.

And this person, and then, you know, the teacher was, you know, well, you know, what should I say in those circumstances?

You know, what should I have said?

And I volunteered, you know, and I said, well, guys, that's really interesting because, see, if that had come up in my class, I would have said, well, frankly, I don't even see what the big deal is because I use the word Negro.

And, you know, Harvard University is not, you know, on some island that is –

apart from everything else that's happening in the world, if these things are happening in other places, if they're happening at Stanford, if they're happening at Yale, if they're happening at Columbia, they're going to happen at Harvard.