Letter Bearing Swastika Shocks HLS First-Years

Nearly 80 first-year Harvard Law School students found a white sheet of paper with a swastika, profanities and anti-Semitic statements stuffed in their mailboxes yesterday morning.

“I hope you all rot [in] hell with your yamukas [sic],” the flier reads.

Also printed on the flier was the text of an anonymous e-mail that first-year law student F. Michelle Simpson had received.

Simpson, a member of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA), had previously filed a complaint with the administration about a post on a Law School course website by classmate Kiwi A. Camara.

Camara had used the racial slur “nig” in a posted course outline.

The anonymous e-mail, which had also been sent to Camara and a third student, Olufunke Bankole, said people at the Law School should be free to use the word “nigger.”

The flier also predicted the administration would respond to the flier itself, thereby proving Jewish students are a “politically and economically favored group” at Harvard.

The fliers were distributed in the Law School’s Harkness Commons student center, where student mailboxes are easily accessible to passersby.

The “section” (a group of law students who take introductory courses together) who received the flier met yesterday for class with Weld Professor of Law Charles R. Nesson.

Nesson said he gave them the opportunity to propose in writing how the section, the faculty and the administration should deal with the situation.

After the class, Nesson and other faculty members who teach classes for the section met with Dean of the J.D. Program Todd D. Rakoff ’67 and Dean of Students Suzanne Richardson to discuss how to proceed.

The group decided that during Nesson’s class today, the section will spend time talking about the flier and related issues in a discussion moderated by Rakoff.

All the faculty for the section—including Professor of Law Randall L. Kennedy, who recently authored Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—are scheduled to be present, Nesson said.

According to students, the administration filed a police report yesterday about the flier with the Harvard University Police Department.

The incidents in the section have shocked the Law School campus, which students and faculty say is generally free of overt racism and anti-Semitism.

“Nothing like this has happened that I’m aware of since I’ve been here,” said third-year law student Deidre A. Downes, a vice-president of the BLSA. “This is the first time that I’ve ever seen any blatant racism at the Law School. It’s really disturbing.”

“[Anti-Semitism] has certainly never happened to me in anything like this form,” Nesson said.

Camara said last night that he did not author the flier students received yesterday. He also e-mailed his section to say that he had not written the flier.

“I’m not the author. I don’t know who the author is. I disapprove of how the author is phrasing their ideas,” Camara said.

Twelve students from the section declined to comment on the flier, saying that they did not want to get involved with the issue.

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.