Black Harvard Law Professor Repeats 'N-Word' Several Times on CNN

Randall Kennedy, a black Harvard University law professor, said the 'N'-word' multiple times on CNN during a live interview about the use of the slur in academic environments.

During an interview on "Smerconish," Kennedy said using the N-word during an academic exchange is acceptable. Prior to the segment, show host Michael Smerconish played a series of professors who faced criticism for saying the word.

“Is it acceptable to enunciate, for pedagogical reasons, a racial epithet that some find deeply upsetting?” Smerconish asked.

“Sure, you should be able to enunciate the term n----- for pedagogical reasons,” Kennedy said. “In the instances that you mentioned in your introduction, you had teachers who were seeking to drive home as vividly as possible the depth and the centrality and the influence of racism in American life. And one of the ways in which these teachers sought to do that was to quote from important figures in American history.”

Smerconish said he was caught off guard when Kennedy's repeated use of the N-word, which the two had not discussed prior to the segment.

Kennedy said, "If you are in a discussion and you are talking about the way in which until relatively recently there were politicians who routinely used the infamous 'N-word' to refer to black people. And if you were sort of talking about this and saying, you know, until relatively recently there are politicians that in the United States Congress who would use n-----. And if you were to say that over dinner, would it be right for somebody to condemn you for having made a statement, the purpose of which was to underline the problem of American racism?”

Kennedy also said the race of the person using the N-word is not important.

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