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Business Insider/ Michael Brendan Dougherty
Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed
discovered this little gem of a video, in which then-law student Barack
Obama spoke at a protest in favor of Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell.
Kaczynski explains what the protest was all about.
Bell was the
first black tenured professor at the school, and a pioneer of "critical
race theory," which insisted, controversially, on reading issues of race
and power into legal scholarship. His protest that spring was
occasioned by Harvard's denial of tenure to a black woman professor,
Regina Austin, at a time when only three of the law school's professors
were black and only five women. He told Harvard he would take a leave of
absence — a kind of academic strike — "until a woman of color is
offered and accepted a tenured position on this faculty," and he
launched a hunger strike to dramatize his point.
Obama was a
major figure on campus, the first black president of the Law Review.
Some friends, in a prescient joke, just referred to him as "the first
black president." He had a reputation as a conciliatory figure, not a
confrontational one like Bell.
Probably the most amazing thing about it is the fact that
Obama's speech-giving style is so little changed since his days at
Harvard. Obama has the same soaring cadence, dramatic pauses, and
light-hearted jokes that you find in almost every one of his speeches.
Here's the video:
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