Video: Obama speaks at Harvard protest in 1990 defending Derrick bell

As promised small portions of the Obama video from his Harvard days were released by Steve Bannon.

Here is the link:

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/07/video-obama-speaks-at-harvard-protest-in-1990/

Today’s Breitbart.com has announced a video to be released, showing Harvard law student Barack Obama defending Professor Derrick Bell Jr. in a protest. According to Breitbart.com, the original video has been heavily edited and more will be shown on Hannity tonight.

In the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to have a few fun facts about the late Professor in advance of the show.

This obituary, written upon his death, had some interesting points to make:


Bell was credited with developing “critical race theory,” which suggested that the U.S. legal system was inherently biased against African Americans and other minorities because it was built on an ingrained white point of view. He argued in his many books and lectures that the life experiences of black people and other minorities should be considered in hiring decisions and in applying the law.

Bell maintained that the standards for promotion and tenure at law schools – and Harvard, in particular – were inherently discriminatory and excluded a broad group of minorities. By hiring only graduates of top-tier law schools who had clerked at the Supreme Court, he argued, academia was populated by a uniform group of standard-issue professors, most of them white men.


And why are we not surprised that he was a Farrakhan supporter?



Some scholars, both black and white, challenged Bell’s ideas, as well as his strong support of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Nonetheless, Bell remained one of the country’s most outspoken public intellectuals until his death.

Author James Traub voiced this opinion in his 1993 piece on the professor:


That’s Derek Bell’s bottom line: if it comforts whites, it’s bad; if it comforts blacks–i.e., Farrakhan–it’s good. Bell, along with Farrakhan and so many others, offers victimization as a consolation.


Yes, I imagine there will be so much more to learn about the good professor.