Elizabeth Warren is still on the defensive over questions for once listing herself as a minority (Native American) law teacher. Warren maintains that she was not aware the school was describing her in that way and says she did not use her ethnicity to her advantage. But a report from Politico details a 1997 Fordham Law Review issue describing the Massaschusetts Senate candidate as Harvard Law’s “first woman of color”:
The mention was in the middle of a lengthy and heavily-annotated Fordham piece on diversity and affirmative action and women. The title of the piece, by Laura Padilla, was “Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue.”
“There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries,” the piece says. “This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reaons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.”
