Randall L. Kennedy | |
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Born |
Columbia, South Carolina, U.S. |
September 10, 1954
Alma mater |
Princeton University University of Oxford Yale Law School |
Occupation | Law Professor Author |
Employer | Harvard University |
Known for | The Supreme Court, Freedom of Expression, Race Relations Law, Civil Rights Legislation |
Spouse(s) | Yvedt Matory, 1986-2005 |
Website | Faculty page for Randall Kennedy at Harvard University |
Randall L. Kennedy (born September 10, 1954) is an American Law professor and author at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law and focuses his research on the intersection of racial conflict and legal institutions in American life. He supervises written work and accepts press inquiries regarding the topics of contracts, freedom of expression, race relations law, civil rights legislation, and the Supreme Court.
Kennedy has written five books: Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption; Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word; Race, Crime, and the Law; Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal and The Persistence of the Color Line. Additionally, Kennedy has published numerous collections of shorter works. Many of his articles can be found in periodicals and newspapers such as: The American Prospect, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Georgetown Law Journal, Harvard BlackLetter Journal, and The Boston Globe. His book Race, Crime, and the Law won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
Randall LeRoy Kennedy was born 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 in the Public Defender Service for Washington, D.C. Kennedy has stated 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 from South Carolina to Washington, D.C.