Harvard law prof whose portrait was defaced sees harm in 'excessive vulnerability' to slights
A Harvard law professor whose portrait was among those defaced with black tape says he is neither alarmed nor hurt by the incident.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, law professor Randall Kennedy says the motives behind the incident are unclear and puzzling. The perpetrator may or may not be a law student, and may or may not be white. The tape may be intended to convey racial hate; to protest perceived marginalization of black professors; or to rebuke those who taped over the school’s seal, taken from a slaveholder’s coat of arms.
Even if the gesture was racist, its significance should be carefully calibrated, Kennedy says. “On a campus containing thousands of students, faculty members and staff,” he writes, “one should not be surprised or unglued by an instance or even a number of instances of racism. The question is whether those episodes are characteristic or outliers.”
Many believe the defacement stems from pervasive bigotry, and the aggrievement felt by students warrants close examination and possible reforms, Kennedy writes. The activists are starting conversations and generating opposition to bigotry, such as the stickers added to the defaced portraits expressing support for the professors.
“Successes, however, can generate or exacerbate destructive tendencies,” Kennedy writes. “I worry about two in particular. One involves exaggerating the scope of the racism that the activists oppose and fear. The other involves minimizing their own strength and the victories that they and their forebears have already achieved.”
He notes that dissidents complain of a lack of black professors, courses in which racial issues are marginalized, teachers who display less engagement with students of color, classmates who question the intellectual capacity of black students with disparaging remarks about affirmative action, and campus police officers who scrutinize blacks more closely than whites.
“While some of these complaints have a ring of validity, several are dubious,” Kennedy writes. “A decision by a professor to focus on a seemingly dry, technical issue rather than a more accessible, volatile subject involving race might well reflect a justifiable pedagogical strategy. Opposition to racial affirmative action can stem from a wide range of sources other than prejudice. Racism and its kindred pathologies are already big foes; there is no sustained payoff in exaggerating their presence, thus making them more formidable than they actually are.
“Disturbing, too, is a related tendency to indulge in self-diminishment by displaying an excessive vulnerability to perceived and actual slights and insults. Some activists seem to have learned that invoking the rhetoric of trauma is an effective way of hooking into the consciences of solicitous authorities. Perhaps it is useful for purposes of eliciting certain short-term gains.
“In the long run, though, reformers harm themselves by nurturing an inflated sense of victimization.”
