Who Is Kamala Harris' Father, Stanford Economist Donald J. Harris?

Despite being the father to presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald J. Harris‘ low profile is belied by the fact that he is a prominent economic scholar.

Who is Donald J. Harris?: Harris was born in Jamaica in 1938, growing up in St. Ann Parish before studying at the University College of the West Indies. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 where he met his future wife Shyamala Gopalan.

Harris and Gopalan had two children: Kamala and Maya, an attorney. They divorced in 1971. Harris was separated from his daughters in the subsequent custody hearings, according to his 2018 essay.

“Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father,” he wrote.

Harris became the first tenured Black professor at Stanford University in 1976. He wrote several books, including “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” published in 1978. He retired in 1998 and holds the title of Professor Emeritus.

According to his Stanford bio, “His research and publications have centered on exploring the analytical conception of the process of capital accumulation and its implications for a theory of growth of the economy, with the aim of providing thereby an explanation of the intrinsic character of growth as a process of uneven development.”

He was labeled a “Marxist scholar” by the Stanford Daily in 1976. Harris is a “post-Keynesian.”

Harris’ relative obscurity is perhaps due to Kamala Harris’ infrequent mentions of him relative to other members of her family. The New York Times noted that Kamala Harris did not mention her father when she formally accepted the vice-presidential nomination. She mentions her mother, Shyamala, more frequently.

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