Kennedy, Randall 1954-

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KENNEDY, Randall 1954-

PERSONAL: Born September 10, 1954, in Columbia, SC; married Yvedt Matory; children: William Henry. Education: Princeton University, B.A., 1977; Oxford University, graduate studies, 1977-79; Yale University, J.D., 1982.

ADDRESSES: Home—100 Village Ave., Dedham, MA 02026. Office—Law School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

CAREER: Law professor and author. Admitted to Washington, DC, bar, 1983. U.S. Court of Appeals, law clerk to Hon. Skelly Wright, 1982-83; U.S. Supreme Court, law clerk to Hon. Thurgood Marshall, 1983-84; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, assistant professor of law, 1984-85, associate professor, 1985-89, professor, 1989—.

MEMBER: American Law Institute.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Achievement scholar-ship, 1973-77; Rhodes scholarship, 1977-79; Earl Warren Legal Training scholarship, 1979-82.

WRITINGS:

Race, Crime, and the Law, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1997.

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2002.

Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, andAdoption, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of articles in published in scholarly journals. Member of editorial board, Nation, American Prospect, and Dissent.

SIDELIGHTS: One of the most respected voices of his generation in arguments asking for clarity of thought on issues of racial justice, Randall Kennedy began his legal career by clerking for two of the most eminent of recent American jurists, Judge Skelly Wright of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. Immediately following his clerkships, Kennedy became a faculty member of the Harvard University law school, where he has been a professor ever since. Through his writings and his teaching he has become, as a contributor to Publishers Weekly noted in a review of Kennedy's 1997 book Race, Crime, and the Law, "known for his nuanced views on racial issues."

In Race, Crime and the Law, Kennedy examines a number of important questions about justice and injustice as they bear upon African Americans in the United States at the close of the twentieth century. Among Kennedy's topics are the selective use of race as grounds for suspicion by police; the discrepancy between whites and blacks in being sentenced to the death penalty; race as a determinant for jury selection; and unequal prison sentences for blacks and whites. All of these are issues that have proven controversial, even inflammatory, over the years, but Kennedy, according to New York Times critic Richard Bernstein, subjects them uniformly to "careful, reasoned scrutiny . . . always in his scrupulous fashion weighing the known facts and arguments to come up with a workable set of guidelines."

Bernstein cited one such example: While African American males may admittedly commit a disproportionately large number of crimes in American society today, Kennedy amasses arguments to show that the use of race by police to single out blacks on the street is not the result of a compelling need, and is a social humiliation that does more harm than good to society. Kennedy's overall purpose in such examinations—a purpose which, according to Bernstein, he "never loses sight of"—is, in Kennedy's own words, "to facilitate the emergence of a polity that is overwhelmingly indifferent to racial differences, a polity that looks beyond looks." As to how well Kennedy has fulfilled his purpose, Bernstein opined, "Rarely if ever has anyone systematically and cogently addressed as many of the vexing issues persisting in American society as Randall Kennedy does in Race, Crime and the Law ...a book that is deeply informed, all encompassing in its transracial humanity, and firmly anchored in a kind of impassioned common sense." Bernstein found the book's arguments powerful enough to express wonderment that any politician, scholar, or judge could consider the issues discussed without consulting Kennedy's words.

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word is Kennedy's exploration of the history of the destructive word and its social, cultural, and legal consequences. Kennedy's idea for the book came from a search of the LexisNexis database. In an Atlantic Monthly interview, Kennedy said "I typed n-i-g-g-e-r into the . . . computer bank and asked for the citation list for any state or federal court that had reported a decision. I got thousands of entries." The contradictory uses of the word are also examined when Kennedy compares its modern usage in rap culture with the more traditional viewpoint that it should never be spoken in public. Kennedy is not afraid of addressing the troublesome nature of such a difficult issue, which as Publishers Weekly noted makes this "an important work of cultural and political criticism." Throughout it all, Kennedy assesses the controversies with candor. As he notes in the closing, "For bad or for good, nigger is . . . destined to remain with us for the foreseeable future."

In Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, Kennedy studies the history of multiracial relations in America, ranging from the social, legal, moral, and cultural implications of race and romance.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, January-February, 2002, Angela Dodson, review of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, p. 66.

Booklist, February 15, 2002, Vernon Ford, review of Nigger, p. 1004.

Boston Herald, January 29, 2002, Rob Mitchell review of Nigger, p. 034.

Chicago Reporter, April, 2002, review of Nigger, p. 16.

Criminal Justice Ethics, winter-spring, 2000, Judith A. M. Scully, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 29.

Daily Telegraph, January 12, 2002, Philip Delves Broughton, review of Nigger, p. 25.

Entertainment Weekly, January 25, 2002, "A Word's Worth: A Harvard Law Professor Attempts to Define, Deconstruct, and Demystify the N-Word," p. 22.

Esquire, March, 2002, Daniel Torday, review of Nigger, p. 61.

Harvard Law Review, March, 1998, review of Race,Crime, and the Law, p. 1306, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 1289, Paul Buther, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, pp. 1270-1288, Akhil Reed Amar, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, pp. 1256-1269.

Human Rights, spring, 1998, Fredric H. Karr, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 7.

Journal of Criminal Justice, July-August, 1998, Ronald Weitzer, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 352.

Library Journal, March 1, 2002, Edward K. Owusu-Ansah, review of Nigger, p. R6; March 1, 2002, review of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, p. S19.

Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2002, Lauren Sandler, review of Nigger, p. 126; February 3, 2002, Ishmael Reed, review of Nigger, p. R6.

Michigan Law Review, May, 1998, Jerome H. Skolnick, review Race, Crime and the Law, pp. 1474-1485.

New Crisis, January-February, 2002, Brian Gilmore, review of Nigger, p. 49.

New Republic, April 30, 1990, p. 9; January 14, 2002, John McWhorter, review of Nigger, p. 34.

New Statesman, January 28, 2002, Darcus Howe, review of Nigger, p. 27.

Newsweek, January 14, 2002, David Gates, review of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, p. 60.

New Yorker, February 11, 2002, Hilton Als, review of Nigger, p. 82.

New York Times, May 21, 1997, p. B7; December 1, 2001, David D. Kirkpatrick, review of Nigger, p. A15.

New York Times Book Review, March 5, 1998, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 25; April 26, 1998, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 36; March 3, 2002, Gerald Early, review of Nigger, p. 12.

Observer, January 20, 2002, Lawrence Donegan, review of Nigger, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, March 31, 1997, p. 49; January 21, 2002, p. 81.

Reason, December, 1998, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, p. 48.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 2002, David Steele review of Nigger, p. 2.

Time, January 21, 2002, Jack E. White, review of Nigger, p. 136.

Times Literary Supplement, January 25, 2002, Michael Anderson, review of Nigger, p. 5.

Washington Post, January 13, 2002, review of Nigger, p. T06.

Wilson Library Bulletin, June, 1991, pp. 123-124.

Yale Law Journal, June, 1998, Sheri Lynn Johnson, review of Race, Crime, and the Law, pp. 2619-2659.