Randall Kennedy, the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at HLS, addressed members of Phi Theta Kappa at the 2009 Honors Institute at the University of Richmond in Virginia in June.
Phi Theta Kappa, currently the largest honor society in American higher education, hosts its annual week-long Honors Institute to give chapter members and advisors the opportunity to intensively study specific topics. During this year’s program, participants examined the “The Paradox of Affluence: Choices, Challenges, and Consequences.”
Kennedy’s speech, “Sell Out: Race and the Paradox of Affluence,” presented on Wednesday, June 24, addressed the synergy of race and wealth by analyzing the effects of wealth on race relations and public perceptions.
Since joining the HLS faculty in 1984, Kennedy has taught contracts, race relations, expressions of freedoms, and civil rights. He’s written several books, including “Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal” (2008), “Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption” (2003), and “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word” (2002).
A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, Kennedy also graduated from Oxford University where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.