Harvard Law School in Cambridge.
Photographer: Sophie Park/Bloomberg
Why Harvard Law Is Losing Black Students
A year after the Supreme Court banned race-based admissions, the law school’s first-year Black student enrollment plummeted — with repercussions way beyond the classroom.
Harvard Law School has a long history of catapulting Black students into the American elite. Barack Obama graduated in 1991. Kenneth Chenault led American Express Co., while Ken Frazier rose to CEO at Merck & Co. and investment bank Lazard Inc. tapped Ray McGuire as its president.
A generation before them, Conrad Harper became the first Black partner at Wall Street law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Decades later as president, Obama would appoint Ketanji Brown Jackson (class of 1996) as a federal judge on her way to becoming the first Black woman to join the US Supreme Court.