NEW YORK - In a warm, encyclopedic tribute to her family on Wednesday night, as she formally accepted the vice-presidential nomination, Senator Kamala Harris skimmed past any discussion of her father, Donald Harris, a Jamaican-born professor of economics at Stanford University.
"Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty," he wrote.Despite his low profile in the election cycle, Mr Harris is not an obscure figure. He was the first Black scholar to receive tenure in Stanford's economics department, and a prominent critic of mainstream economic theory from the left.
"He was certainly not shy. When I saw Kamala grill Judge Kavanaugh at his hearing," during his confirmation for the U.S. Supreme Court,"I saw echoes of her father grilling someone in a seminar." Ms Kamala Harris, their eldest daughter, has written that the two"fell in love at Berkeley while participating in the civil rights movement," and described learning about protests from a"stroller's-eye view".