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Lights, Camara, No Action
Kiwi Camara is the youngest person to ever graduated Harvard Law School, at age 19. He’s won several Olin fellowships, he currently teaches at Northwestern, and he’s even been published in the Yale Law Journal. And he’s only 22.
And yet, brilliant though he is, Mr. Camara is having a helluva time securing a tenure-tract teaching position. Last week, in fact, he was quickly removed from the candidate pool for a tenure-tract position at George Mason University, and he’s been denied from several other positions for the same reason.
And what is that reason? Well, when Camara was a first year law student, the incredibly intelligent dumbass not only used “nig” as shorthand for black people in his law school notes (“”Nigs buy land with no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?”), but he also posted those notes to a student-run website for everyone to see.
At the time, controversy erupted at Harvard - things got so bent out of shape that Charles Nesson, one of the section’s professors (also noteworthy for admitting he smokes up before class – good on you), had to withdraw from teaching the class after he suggested an in-class mock trial in which he would defend Camara’s right to free speech. Camara has, of course, apologized many, many times since the incident, but, as he should know, no amount of apologizing will erase his mens rea.
At any rate, that controversy still dogs Camara today — two years ago, in fact, Yale’s law school dean and future Supreme Court Justice, Harold Koh, was among many who protested Camara’s talk after his article was accepted into the law review. And now poor, racist Kiwi Camara still can’t find a job in academia. So he’s thinking of going into private practice for a few years, where racist shorthand is apparently acceptable.
