Alternate title: I was wrong about Elizabeth Warren.
I hate to admit being wrong, of course, but I’m pretty much stuck here. You see, last week I RedHotted a post where in passing I more or less indicated that I didn’t think that it was particularly fair to ding MA senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren for her claims of Native American ancestry. When I read the story, it seemed that she had merely repeated it as an anecdote from her family history – which is to say, something that I’ve done myself (family history claims a Huron great-grandmother; I have no evidence whatsoever for this). I also didn’t really think that it was all that big a deal that Harvard University was claiming minority status for her for a time; universities do weird things for publicity, she wasn’t running for office when it happened, and besides, Harvard stopped doing that a while back anyway. I figured that there were more important things that I could be doing with my time.
Well. This is what happens when you trust the ethical sense of a progressive politician. It turns out that Elizabeth Warren in fact claimed minority status: specifically, in the “Association of American Law Schools’ annual directory of minority law teachers” (H/T: @CoonDawg68) from 1986 to 1995 (more about this at The Volokh Conspiracy (via Instapundit), which also has some interesting details about ‘racial fraud’ as a legal concept in Massachusetts). As the Boston Herald helpfully notes, universities would have had access to this information… which, presumably, would include their hiring committees. Are we really expected to believe that Harvard University didn’t consult the AALS minority directory as part of their vetting process? In fact, are really expected to believe that the University of Pennsylvania didn’t, either? – Because I don’t, and that means, again, that I was wrong. And I’m sorry about that.
