All About Kamala Harris' Father, Donald J. Harris (2024)

Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently spoken about how her parents framed her worldview and raised her to fight for human rights.

The 2024 Democratic presidential nominee was born to her father, Donald J. Harris, and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, on Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, Calif. Kamala's younger sister, Maya, followed in 1967. However, by 1972, the couple split and Donald remained in Illinois, where the family was living at the time, while Shyamala and their two daughters moved back to California.

As she accepted her nomination to be president at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Kamala spoke of her father's encouragement of her from a young age.

“At the park, my mother would say, 'Stay close,' " she recalled. "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."

From his initial emigration from Jamaica to how he's stayed out of Kamala's political career, here's everything to know about Kamala Harris' father, Donald J. Harris.

He was raised in Jamaica

Donald was born in 1938 and grew up in Jamaica before the country gained independence from the United Kingdom. He has remained proud of his heritage, even earning the country's third-highest honor in August 2021 when he was conferred with the Order of Merit, per the Jamaica Observer.

He earned the award for international recognition for his contributions to the field of science, the arts or literature, according to the site.

Donald has spoken about taking his children to visit his home country when they were young, writing in a personal essay for Jamaica Global in 2018 that one of his "fondest" memories was a 1970 visit to Orange Hill, Jamaica, with Kamala and Maya.

"We trudged through the cow dung and rusted iron gates, up-hill and down-hill, along narrow unkempt paths, to the very end of the family property, all in my eagerness to show to the girls the terrain over which I had wandered daily for hours as a boy," he wrote.

Donald came to the U.S. to study at the University of California, Berkeley

When Donald was awarded a prestigious scholarship administered by the British colonial government, he broke from the usual recipients' tradition of attending school in Britain to move to the U.S.

He decided to pursue a doctorate in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, choosing the school after reading about a group of activists traveling to the South to campaign for civil rights, he told The New York Times in September 2020.

“Further investigation of information about this University convinced me I had to go there,” he said.

He met Kamala's mother in school

At U.C. Berkeley, Donald joined the Afro American Association, where he felt like he was introduced to “the realities of African-American life in its truest and rawest form, its richness and complexity, wealth and poverty, hope and despair," he told The New York Times.

It was there, in the fall of 1962, that he met Shyamala, who was part of the group as a fellow student of color.

"We talked then, continued to talk at a subsequent meeting, and at another, and another,” Donald said.

The following year, the two got married.

Donald was a professor of economics at Stanford University

Following his graduation from U.C. Berkeley, Donald took temporary teaching positions at two Illinois colleges: Northwestern University and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He soon became a tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before returning to California in 1972 to become a professor of economics at Stanford University.

There, he taught “radical political economics," and was described as a “Marxian economist” byThe Stanford Dailyin 1974. Shortly after, he became the first Black man to earn tenure at the school, teaching there for over two decades before retiring in 1998.

During his time as a professor, Donald continued to hold true to his roots in Jamaica and served as an economics policy consultant to the country’s government and as an economics advisor to a number of Jamaican prime ministers.

He was less present in Kamala and her sister's lives after his divorce

While the family was living in Illinois, Kamala sensed that her parents' relationship was coming to an end when she was just 5 years old, she wrote in her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold. Eventually, her mom moved back to California with Kamala and Maya, and Donald soon followed.

However, in 1972, Kamala's parents officially split, and Kamala continued to live primarily with her mother, visiting Donald on weekends and summers.

Donald reflected on the change in his relationship with his daughters in his personal essay for Jamaica Global, writing that he felt it came to an "abrupt halt."

"After a hard-fought custody battle in the family court of Oakland, California, the context of the relationship was placed within arbitrary limits imposed by a court-ordered divorce settlement based on the false assumption by the State of California that fathers cannot handle parenting," he wrote. "Nevertheless, I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father."

Donald has not spoken publicly about Kamala's campaign

Since Kamala entered the public eye at a national level with her presidential bid — and eventual vice presidential nomination — in 2020, Donald has not commented on her political campaign or shown up to any rallies or events.

He made an exception in February 2019 after Kamala made a joke about marijuana, sharing in a radio interview that she did smoke weed when she was younger. “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” she said.

Donald made a rare public comment condemning her joke in a statement shared to Jamaica Global.

“My dear departed grandmothers...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.

“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” Donald added.

Kamala did not respond to the statement at the time. Since then, Donald has continued to stay out of the public eye, sharing in an email reviewed by Politico in 2019 that he "decided to stay out of all the political hullabaloo by not engaging in any interviews with the media."