All About Kamala Harris' Father, Donald J. Harris

Mar. 15, 2025

Kamala Harris waits to speak at a campaign rally at United Auto Workers Local 900 on August 8, 2024 in Wayne, Michigan. ; Donald Harris and Kamala Harris in a family photo.Photo:Andrew Harnik/Getty ; Kamala Harris/Facebook

Andrew Harnik/Getty ; Kamala Harris/Facebook

Vice PresidentKamala Harrishas frequently spoken about how her parents framed her worldview and raised her to fight for human rights.

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

Vice President Kamala Harris looks on as Second gentleman Doug Emhoff speaksduring a reception celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month on May 20, 2024 in Washington, DC.Anna Moneymaker/Getty

Anna Moneymaker/Getty

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 theJamaica 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 forJamaica Globalin 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

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 toldThe New York Timesin 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

Shyamala Gopalan and Donald J. Harris.Kamala Harris/Facebook

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 toldThe 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

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

Kamala Harris and Maya Harris.Meena Harris/X

Meena Harris/X

In Kamala’s early years, her parents brought her to Brown’s Town in Jamaica, where her great-grandmother met her and blessed her, according toThe New York Times.

As Kamala got older, and while the family was living in Illinois, she sensed that her parents' relationship was coming to an end, 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.”

Donald remarried to Carol Kirlew, a former communications specialist for the World Bank. The pair have been together for over 30 years, according toThe New York Times.

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. According toThe New York Times, he did send his daughter congratulatory letters when she won elections in 2016 and 2020.

In February 2019, Donald spoke out 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 with 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.

source: people.com