Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) writes in her new book, A Fighting Chance, scheduled for release on Tuesday, that “I never asked for special treatment when I applied to college, to law school, or for jobs.” But a mountain of factual evidence contradicts that assertion.
As far back as 1986, while she was still a professor at the University of Texas Law School, Senator Warren consciously requested special treatment by falsely self-identifying as a “Minority Law Teacher.” Her request for special treatment began with information she provided that was published in the 1986-1987 Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Directory of Faculty .
Based on false personal ancestry information which she herself provided, Warren was included in the 1986-1987 AALS List II of Minority Law Teachers found in the appendix of that directory. Organized alphabetically, Senator Warren’s name is nestled on the list between two African-American professors pictured above, Robert V. Ward, Jr. a professor at New England School of Law, and Harold R. Washington, a professor at Howard Law School.
As David Bernstein, a professor of law at George Mason University and former chairman of the AALS wrote at the Volokh Conspiracy in April 2012, “The [AALS] directories starting listing minority faculty in an appendix in 1986. There’s Elizabeth Warren, listed as a professor at Texas. I spot-checked three additional directories from when she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, including 1995-96, the year Harvard offered her a position. Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Warren.”
Bernstein concluded “we know one thing with almost 100% certainty: Elizabeth Warren identified herself as a minority law professor.”
Breitbart News has exhaustively documented that there is no credible evidence to support Senator Warren’s claim that she has Native American ancestry, a claim she repeats in her new book.
Bernstein explained why this listing benefited Senator Warren professionally at the time.
“That appendix strikes me as obviously allowing people to announce themselves as being members of minority groups in case people are looking for such members for whatever reason,” Bernstein told the Boston Herald in May 2012.
“In the old days before the Internet, you’d pull out the AALS directory and look up people. There are schools that if they were looking for a minority faculty member, would go to that list and might say, ‘I didn’t know Elizabeth Warren was a minority,’ ” Bernstein continued.
“Nowadays, if you hear about a candidate who might be available, you just do a Google search and find a resume online,” Bernstein added.
In 1987, Senator Warren was offered and accepted a job as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, a significant step up the career ladder from her position at the University of Texas.
In 1993, Warren self-identified to the authors of a study published by the Harvard Women’s Law Journal as “a woman of color.”
In 1995, Senator Warren was offered and accepted a job as a professor at Harvard Law School.
One year later, a Harvard Law School administrator publicly described Warren as a “woman of color” in two separate publications, the Harvard Crimson (1996), and the Fordham Law Review (1997).
Caught on the campaign trail in 2012 with evidence of her false claims of minority status, Warren told the Boston Herald that she added her name to the list of Minority Law Teachers from 1986 to 1995 because “she hoped to meet other people with tribal roots.”
“I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am,” Warren told the Herald at the time.
However, as William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Joel Pollak at Breitbart News pointed out, the evidence of her conduct does not support that fanciful defense.
“Something doesn’t add up here,” wrote Jacobson when news of Warren’s claims of minority status first were made public in 2012.
“Why would Elizabeth Warren, who never suffered an ounce of discrimination on the basis of her alleged Native American status, whose parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents also suffered no such discrimination, feel justified in claiming such status, which she must have known would accrue to her benefit even if such benefit were not provable?” Jacobson asked.
Breitbart’s Pollak reported in May 2012 that despite Senator Warren’s claim she wanted to “meet other people with tribal roots,” she never attended or participated in a single event sponsored by Harvard University’s Native American Program (HUNAP) at Harvard Law School before or after she landed a job there.
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