Who is Kamala Harris' father? Economist Donald Harris absent from the DNC
Kamala Harris’ father, her only living parent, was not in the audience with the rest of the vice president’s relatives during the most important speech of her political career Thursday night.
Donald Harris, a leftist economist who turned 86 Friday, was conspicuously absent from the row of family that included husband Doug Emhoff and his two adult children, Cole and Ella, as well as Harris’ younger sister, Maya Harris, and her family at the United Center in Chicago.
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at length about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, during her speech on the final day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention where she formally accepted the Democratic nomination for president.
She explained how her mother, a "five-foot-tall brown woman with an accent" who came to the U.S. from India at age 19, taught her and her sister, Maya, to "do something" about injustice.
Harris also mentioned her father, Donald Harris, in her speech, recalling pleasant early childhood memories.
"At the park, my mother would say, "Stay close." But my father would say, as he smiled, "Run, Kamala, run. Don't be afraid. Don't let anything stop you." From my earliest years, he taught me to be fearless," she said.
But when Harris was in elementary school, she said, her parents split up.
"It was mostly my mother who raised us," she said.
According to Harris' 2019 memoir, Donald Harris continued to see his daughters during the weekend and summer.
The estrangement between father and daughter is so pronounced, Harris has never publicly acknowledged she has a stepmother. Carol Kirlew, 70, is married to Donald Harris and is a former World Bank executive.
Who is Donald Harris, Kamala Harris' father?
Donald Harris is a post-keynesian economist who has written on Marxist theory. He is a
retired Stanford University professor who has served as an economic advisor to his home country of Jamaica. He also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In her speech, Harris described her father as a
"student from Jamaica" when he and her mother met.
Born in Jamaica, Donald Harris immigrated to the US to complete a doctorate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. That's where he met Shyamala, who was pursuing a degree in biochemistry there.
Was Kamala Harris’ father at the DNC?
Donald is Harris’ only living parent. Shyamala died of colon cancer in 2009.
But he was absent from the Democratic convention this week, as he has largely been from his daughter’s political life in general. He hasn’t weighed in on her political career since 2019, when he criticized a comment she made about whether she’s smoked marijuana before.
"Half my family's from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?" Harris had said.
Donald Harris was so annoyed by the comment, he issued a statement about it in a Jamaican publication.
“My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote in an essay for Jamaica Global.
But Kamala Harris is seemingly not present in her father’s life. When he was awarded one of Jamaica’s highest distinctions in October 2021 for his work helping the government sort out its economic woes, the senior Harris attended the ceremony with Kirlew, according to Jamaican press reports.
Donald Harris said he was “honored and humbled” to receive the country’s Order of Merit, which had been bestowed on Jamaican musicians Bob Marley and Peter Tosh as well as Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the past.
Born in Brown’s Town, Jamaica, in 1938, Harris studied at the University of the West Indies and the University of London before getting his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in 1966.
Despite the divorce, Harris took his two daughters for visits with family in Jamaica, and dedicated his 1978 book, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” to them.
Donald provided a recent picture of himself, Harris and her niece Meena for a 2019 article for Jamaica Global.
In the text, he blamed the California courts for his “hard-fought custody battle,” saying they didn’t respect his equal rights as a father, but added that he never gave up “on my love for my children or [reneged] on my responsibilities as a father.”
Doug Emhoff, Maya Harris; Kamala Harris' family at the DNC
While Donald Harris didn't appear at the Democratic convention, many other members of Harris' family were there.
They included her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, her sister Maya Harris, her stepchildren Ella and Cole Emhoff, and nieces and nephews Meena Harris, Alexander Hudlin, Jasper Emhoff, and Arden Emhoff.
More photos below.
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