Randall Kennedy facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Randall L. Kennedy
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Kennedy in 2016
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| Born |
Randall LeRoy Kennedy
September 10, 1954 Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.
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| Education | Princeton University (BA) Balliol College, Oxford Yale University (JD) |
| Occupation | Law professor |
| Spouse(s) |
Yvedt Matory
(m. 1986; died 2005) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Harvard University |
Randall LeRoy Kennedy (born September 10, 1954) is an American legal scholar. He is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University and his research focuses on the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions in American life. He specializes in contracts, freedom of expression, race relations law, civil rights legislation, and the Supreme Court.
Kennedy has written seven books: Interracial Intimacies: ..., Marriage, Identity and Adoption; ...: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word; Race, Crime, and the Law; Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal; The Persistence of the Color Line; For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law; and Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture. Kennedy has also published several collections of shorter works.
Contents
Early life and education
Randall LeRoy Kennedy was born on September 10, 1954, in Columbia, South Carolina, the middle child of Henry Kennedy Sr., a postal worker, and Rachel Kennedy, an elementary school teacher. He has two siblings, Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., a former United States District Court Judge for the District of Columbia, and Angela Kennedy, a lawyer at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Kennedy has said that tales of racial oppression and racial resistance were staples of conversation in his household. His father often spoke of watching Thurgood Marshall argue Rice vs. Elmore, the case that invalidated the rule permitting only whites to vote in South Carolina's Democratic primary. Later that decade, fleeing the abuses of Jim Crow, his parents moved to Washington, D.C.
Kennedy attended St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., and graduated cum laude with an A.B. in history from Princeton University in 1977 after completing an 135-page long senior thesis, "Richard Hofstadter: The Historian as Social Critic." He then studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, University of Oxford from 1977 to 1979 and at Yale Law School, where he received a J.D. in 1982. Kennedy served as an editor for the Yale Law Journal. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1982–83 and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court in 1983-84. He was admitted to the Washington, D.C. bar in 1983. He is a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of both the American Philosophical Association and the American Philosophical Society.
Career
Academia
In 1984 Kennedy joined the faculty at Harvard Law School, teaching courses on race, law, and freedom of expression. He first came to prominence as a legal-academic scholar when he began addressing affirmative action. In 1997, Kennedy published Race, Crime, and the Law, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1998.
Views
Kennedy is known as unafraid to tackle socially difficult issues, such as racism. He has written for academic and popular journals, published several books, and served on the editorial boards of the magazines American Prospect and The Nation. Kennedy has written extensively on interracial marriages and adoptions, and on the relationship between race and crime. His views have garnered acclaim and controversy. "One of the things they [critics] find disconcerting is that I ask questions", Kennedy told Lawrence Donegan in the London Observer. "I actually question the premise of my own thinking and push my own conclusions hard. I thought that was what intellectuals were supposed to do." Despite the firestorm created by Kennedy's published work, Donegan said that Kennedy's "colleagues variously describe him as brilliant, well-read and personable."
In March 2021, Kennedy participated in a debate hosted by Intelligence Squared US on the issue of slavery reparations, taking the position that he is "not an enemy of reparations, but has deep concerns about it". He said his principal objections were the waste of important time and energy on a "futile movement", administrative difficulties associated with reparations, that they poorly target those who are presently in need, and that reparations will likely have unintended consequences.
Current activities
Through numerous appearances on the lecture circuit, Kennedy continues to promote debate on hot-button racial issues in the public arena. "If you are socially isolated", he told Regan Goode in The New York Times, "you are more vulnerable to stereotypes and myths, you won't have the opportunity to have conversations with someone who has a different social background than you." While many critics have attempted to use Kennedy's work to advance their own agendas, he has retained his academic independence. "Against black pessimists", wrote Galston and Wasserman, "[Kennedy] argues that substantial progress has been made toward the ideal of color-blind justice. Against complacent whites, he argues that there is still a long way to go." According to Kennedy noted, the relationship between white and black America remains one of America's most perplexing problems. "Obviously there are all sorts of ethnic, racial conflicts in American society", Kennedy told Smith, "but there's one that is deeper than all the others and that's white/black racial conflict."
Kennedy served as a trustee of Princeton University from 1994 to 1998 and from 2005 to 2015. He also serves on the Board of Directors at The National Coalition Against Censorship.
In May 2023, Kennedy gave a long form interview on the Lex Fridman podcast entitled ‘The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power’.
Personal life
In 1986, Kennedy married Yvedt Matory, a cancer surgeon. They have three children. Matory died on April 15, 2005, of complications from melanoma.
Works
- 1989. "Racial Critiques of Legal Academia" 102 Harvard L. Rev. 1745-1819.
- 1997. Race, Crime, and the Law. ISBN: 9780307814654
- 2002. ...: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. ISBN: 9780375421723
- 2003. Interracial Intimacies: ..., Marriage, Identity and Adoption. ISBN: 9780375702648
- 2008. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. ISBN: 9780375425431
- 2011. The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency. ISBN: 9780307455550
- 2013. For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law. ISBN: 9780307949363
- 2021. Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture. ISBN: 9780593316047
Awards
- National Achievement scholarship, 1973–77
- Rhodes scholarship, 1977–79
- Earl Warren Legal Training scholarship, 1979–82
See also
- List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 10)
