Racial Coverup at Harvard Law Suspected

WASHINGTON - Dec. 14, 2015 - PRLog -- It has now been almost a month since Harvard Law School very publicly denounced actions by one or more persons who placed easily-removed black tape over the photos of several of its black law professors, and referred the incident to the police for investigation as a possible hate crime, but there has been absolutely no followup announcement of who the perpetrators or even persons of interest are, or why their identities haven't yet been discovered.

        This is especially suspicious, not only because of the large amount of time which has elapsed without any update on the incident from Harvard, but also because final exams has begun and students will soon thereafter leave for winter break; both circumstances making further investigation much more difficult.

        This seems very strange and indeed downright suspicious since the number of likely suspects - those who had both a motive and also access to the building late at night when the taping apparently occurred - seems quite small, and the culprits behind similar racial incidents at other schools have often been uncovered within only a few days.

        Although it is possible that the tape was applied by racist white law students late in the evening as Harvard seems to believe, many, including some black commentators, have suggested that the action was much more likely to have been a simple retaliation for one or both earlier defacements at the school by black law students; defacements which suspiciously also involved black tape, but no punishments.

        In the first, black law students had in a very similar manner used black tape to cover the pictures of black law professors. Then, just before the incident now under investigation, the well known seal of Harvard Law School itself was covered up by an organization of black law students using exactly the same black tape as that used in the most recent incident now being investigated as a possible hate crime.

        Perhaps that’s why Randall Kennedy, a black professor at Harvard Law, has now written that the act may simply have been "a rebuke to those who have recently been taping over the law school’s seal.”

        Another theory which has been mentioned for the most recent defacement is that it was a hoax by one or more black students, similar to other campus situations in which black or Jewish students had themselves posted symbols allegedly aimed at their own groups in order to create controversy.

        For example, just about at the same time as the incident at Harvard, a black student was arrested after allegedly using Yik Yak to post a threat about shooting “every black person” at Saginaw Valley State University.  Just one day earlier, a black student was arrested for leaving a rally about racial issues to use a library computer to post messages threatening to shoot black students before returning to the rally.

         Kennedy also said of the incident: "maybe it was meant to protest the perceived marginalization of black professors, or was a hoax meant to look like a racial insult in order to provoke a crisis."

        Also, Elie Mystal, a black columnist writing in AboveTheLaw, lends support to this hoax theory, writing: "Other people think that it was done by a black student to protest black professors who aren’t using their positions to do enough to help black students at the school.”

        If, in fact, the new taping over of black professors was done by one or more racist white students, the great majority of law students who seem to oppose the racist message they were trying to send should have been able to identify the most likely suspects, since it would have been very difficult for them to completely suppress such strong racist feelings from fellow students for months.  Moreover, it appears that only a very few would have no alibi, and may have been in Wasserstein Hall when the defacement occurred.

        But if the identity of one or more of such racist law students has been discovered, Harvard may have a very good reason for keeping the information secret from its students and the public.

         If the Law School now sought to punish these white racist students, it would then have to explain why it took no similar action a year ago when black law students similarly defaced the pictures of black professors, or more recently when a black law student organization openly and proudly similarly defaced, with exactly the same black tape, the seal of the Harvard Law School.

        If, on the other hand, this newest taping now under investigation was done by students simply retaliating for either or both of the two earlier instances of similar defacement done by black students, Harvard would be in an even more embarrassing position if it sought to punish them, since those who engaged in the two earlier defacement actions did so openly and faced no university discipline, much less a request that the incidents be investigated by the police as a possible a hate crime.

        Finally, if the defacement now under investigation was the work of black law students,Harvard would be in an even more embarrassing predicament.

        Having very strongly and publicly condemned this recent taping, it would be very difficult to now seek to excuse it solely because the perpetrators turned out to be blacks rather than white racists, or simply because the Law School’s administration happened to sympathize with their message.