Voting Station

Lani Guinier

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Advocate

The Resume

    (April 19, 1950-January 7, 2022)
    Born in New York City, New York
    Civil rights theorist and legal scholar
    Birth name was Carol Lani Guinier
    Best known as President Bill Clinton's nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in April 1993
    Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1988 - 1998)
    Assumed tenure at Harvard University in 1998
    Author of 'Tyranny of the Majority' (1994), 'Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law Schools and Institutional Change' (1997), 'Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice' (1998), ' The Miner's Canary: Rethinking Race and Power' (2002), and 'The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in a Democracy' (2015)

Why she might be annoying:

    She was nicknamed 'the quota queen.'
    She was a recipient of affirmative action.
    She coined the term 'confirmative action' to prettify the concept.
    She heavily influenced Melissa Harris-Perry.
    She was accused of promoting 'race conscious redistricting.'
    She is a proponent of 'cumulative voting' similar to those used on corporate boards and school boards.
    By her own admittance, her writings were 'unclear and subject to vastly different interpretations.'
    Her nomination for assistant Attorney General was withdrawn after widespread outcry over the content of her writings, with even President Clinton saying that they 'clearly lend themselves to interpretations that do not represent the views I expressed on civil rights.'

Why she might not be annoying:

    She attended Yale with Hillary Clinton.
    She became the first black woman to hold a tenured position at Harvard University.
    She was actually against racial quotas for universities, so the 'Quota Queen' nickname would seem misplaced...
    She received the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence from Harvard Law School (2002).
    She decided to become a Civil Rights lawyer after seeing the integration of the University of Mississippi on television, as child.
    Her views were heavily distorted by the Right wing to portray her as a radical black separatist.
    She gave a feisty interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, at the height of the controversy, saying 'I'm not going to withdraw and what I want is a hearing.'
    It is strongly believed that the Clintons and other prominent Senate Democrats threw her under the bus to appease the Right.
    She was just one more prominent black woman to get flack from the US Senate during Congressional interviews.
    She said 'I would now concede Bill Clinton did me a favor when he withdrew the nomination because I was forced to find my true voice... which is in speaking out with innovative ideas about how to change things that are unfair and make it better for everybody.'

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 21 Votes: 38.10% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 338 Votes: 57.10% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 17 Votes: 82.35% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 29 Votes: 44.83% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 15 Votes: 53.33% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 49 Votes: 55.10% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 42 Votes: 54.76% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 12 Votes: 58.33% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 79 Votes: 54.43% Annoying