What is Kamala Harris' father, Donald J. Harris, known for?

Kamala Harris frequently mentions her upbringing and family while campaigning across the country, including referencing her father at the DNC.

During her acceptance speech at the DNC in Chicago last Thursday, Kamala Harris shared her early memories of her parents together, which were filled with joy and laughter. She remembered her mother saying "Stay close" while her father encouraged her to be fearless and run, saying "Run, Kamala, run. Don't be afraid. Don't let anything stop you."

In 1964, in Oakland, California, Harris was born to Shyamala Gopalan, a biologist who immigrated from India, and Donald Harris, an economist who immigrated from Jamaica.

When Harris was 7 years old, her parents divorced, and she spent a significant amount of her youth with her mother and sister in Canada, where their mother worked as a researcher at the McGill University School of Medicine.

After Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, Planet Chronicle Digital examined her father's academic background and legacy.

A retired Stanford University professor of economics, Donald J. Harris, is a former President Donald J. Trump's Republican rival who has a Marxist economic background and was recently described as a "combative Marxist economist" by the Economist.

The Economist described Harris' father as a clear writer who used few compound nouns or long sentences, despite being a Marxist and incorporating obscurantist theorizing into his writings. Republicans who have criticized Ms. Harris for her word-salad speeches will find a precedent in her father's writing.

In 1938, Donald J. Harris was born in Jamaica and later earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of London. He then moved to the U.S. to complete his doctorate in economics at the University of California in Berkeley in 1966. At Berkeley, he met the vice president’s mother and the pair eventually married, sharing daughters Kamala and Maya Harris.

He held teaching positions at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign before divorcing in the early 1970s. He then took a position with Stanford in 1972 as a professor of economics, having previously worked at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

In 1974, Stanford's student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, portrayed Donald Harris as a professor of "radical political economics" and a "Marxian economist." Notably, he was the first Black scholar to earn tenure in Stanford's economic school.

He retired from teaching in 1998 to focus on developing public policies to promote economic growth, unleash productive capabilities, and advance social equity, as stated in his Stanford biography. Since then, he has served as an expert on inspiring economic growth in his home country of Jamaica, according to the Washington Post.

Harris also still serves as a professor emeritus at Stanford following his retirement.

Despite his daughter's political achievements, he has kept a low profile and rarely spoken about their relationship, avoiding attending political events with her.

Kamala Harris has seldom discussed her father in her political career, stating in 2003, "My father is a good man, but we are not close," and later revealing in 2021 that she and her father had "good terms."

In her 2019 memoir "The Truths We Hold," she mentioned him only a few times, while acknowledging to the DNC audience that it was mostly her mother who raised them.

"Harris wrote in her 2019 book that her father remained a part of their lives, but it was her mother who took charge of their upbringing and was most responsible for shaping them into the women they would become."

Despite the divorce from their mother and subsequent custody battle, Donald Harris strived to maintain a relationship with his daughters, as he mentioned in a recent essay.

"Despite a contentious custody dispute in Oakland, California's family court, a court-ordered divorce settlement imposed arbitrary limits on the relationship based on the false assumption that fathers are incapable of parenting. However, the writer remained steadfast, refusing to abandon his love for his children or neglect his responsibilities as their father."

In 2019, Donald Harris responded to his daughter Kamala's discussion about smoking marijuana in February 2019.

In 2019, Kamala Harris joked that half her family is from Jamaica when asked about her past marijuana use.

The comment sparked controversy, with her father writing an essay for a Jamaican media outlet, stating that his parents would be "displeased" with the remark.

The deceased grandmothers and parents of the writer must be turning in their graves to see their family's name, reputation, and proud Jamaican identity being linked with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.

He stated that he and his immediate Jamaican family completely disassociate themselves from this tragedy.

The father of the Democratic nominee has remained silent about his daughter, following his comment to Politico after reprimanding the VP for her marijuana joke.

At the time, he wrote to Politico that he had decided to avoid political controversy by refraining from participating in any media interviews.

At the time of publication, Donald Harris had not responded to Planet Chronicle Digital's request for comment.

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