Claim:
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Linsey Davis, one of the moderators of the ABC presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump in September 2024, are sorority sisters.
Rating:
Mostly True ( About this rating? )
What's True:
Both Harris and Davis joined Alpha Kappa Alpha while undergraduates. However, the two did not attend the same university, nor were they in college at the same time.
What's Undetermined:
Although some people use the term "sorority sisters" to describe any two people who joined the same national organization, for others the term implies that both people went to the same university at the same time and had a direct connection. It is unknown whether Harris and Davis have met beyond a 2023 one-on-one interview and the 2024 presidential debate.
On Sept. 11, 2024, a day after the 2024 presidential debate between sitting U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, claims appeared online alleging that the moderators had been biased in favor of Harris and against Trump.
Many users on social media sites like X , TikTok and YouTube pointed out what they described as a major conflict of interest in that regard: Linsey Davis, one of the debate's moderators, is a sorority sister of Harris'. The claim was also spread in the conservative tabloid the New York Post .
(X user @libsoftiktok)
Several Snopes readers wrote in asking us whether the sorority sisters claim was true.
We found that both Harris and Davis did, in fact, join the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority while in college.
If the term "sorority sisters" is taken to refer to any two people who joined the same national organization, whether or not they actually knew each other personally, this claim would be true. However, the term "sorority sisters" could also imply that Harris and Davis went to the same college and had a close, personal connection, so we have rated the claim "Mostly True."
Harris joined Alpha Kappa Alpha while she was an undergraduate at Howard University . She graduated in 1986, moving on to get a law degree at the University of California, Hastings (now known as University of California College of the Law, San Francisco ). Meanwhile, Davis joined the sorority while studying at the University of Virginia , graduating with a psychology degree in 1999. She later attended New York University and received a master's in communications. Their times as undergraduate students did not overlap, nor did they attend the same university.
Snopes reached out to both the Harris campaign and to Linsey Davis to ask about the extent that the two had met, and will update this story if we hear back. The only record we could find of the two meeting prior to the 2024 presidential debate was a one-on-one sit-down interview Harris did for ABC News in 2023 .
It also bears pointing out that Alpha Kappa Alpha is a massive national organization. According to its website , the sorority has more than 355,000 members and alumni all over the world. That's a larger group than alumni associations of Ivy League institutions like the University of Pennsylvania — Trump's alma mater — and Cornell University .
Sources:
About | Linsey Davis. https://www.linseytdavis.com/about/ . Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
"Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. - About." Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., https://aka1908.com/about/ . Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
"Kamala Harris." The Dig at Howard University, https://thedig.howard.edu/featured-people/kamala-harris . Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
"Linsey Davis Held Trump's Feet to the Fire. How She Became ABC News' Rising Star." Los Angeles Times, 11 Sept. 2024, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-09-11/linsey-davis-abc-news-harris-trump-debate .
Preparation and Prayer: This Hoo Is Ready for the Presidential Debate. 9 Sept. 2024, https://news.virginia.edu/content/preparation-and-prayer-hoo-ready-presidential-debate .
Reyes, Ronny. Debate Moderator Linsey Davis, Kamala Harris Both Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Members. 12 Sept. 2024, https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/us-news/abc-debate-moderator-linsey-davis-was-a-member-of-the-same-storied-sorority-as-kamala-harris/ .
"UC Hastings Is Now UC Law SF." UC Law San Francisco (Formerly UC Hastings), https://www.uclawsf.edu/new-name/ . Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.
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