Harvard Law School grants tenure to seventh black - Charles Ogletree, the seventh African American professor to be given tenure

Jet, June 28, 1993

The man who represented Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas' Senate confirmation hearings has become only the seventh Black professor to receive tenure at Harvard Law School in Cambridge.

The university's governing board voted recently to approve the law school faculty's unanimous recommendation that assistant law professor Charles J. Ogletree be granted tenure, said Wojtek Kotas, a law school spokesman.

Ogletree said the vote "certainly confirms the fact that this faculty is committed to diversity and committed to a lot of important issues."

Ogletree, a specialist in criminal law, is the fourth tenured Black professor currently at the law school. Derrick Bell, the first Black professor to get tenure at Harvard Law, was dismissed last year when the school refused to extend his leave, which was staged to protest the school's hiring practices.

Meanwhile, Ogletree is also preparing for his day in court as counsel for convicted Mafia boss John Gotti during an upcoming appeal. Ogletree will be given 20 minutes to make an oral argument on behalf of his client.