Harris and ABC Debate Moderator Linsey Davis Are Sorority Sisters?

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 on-line alleging that the moderators had been biased in favor of Harris and towards Trump. 

Many customers on social media sites like X, TikTok and YouTube identified what they described as a serious battle of curiosity in that regard: Linsey Davis, one of many debate’s moderators, is a sorority sister of Harris’. The declare was additionally unfold within the conservative tabloid the New York Post.

(X consumer @libsoftiktok)

A number of Snopes readers wrote in asking us whether or not the sorority sisters declare was true.

We discovered that each Harris and Davis did, in truth, be a part of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority whereas in school.

If the time period “sorority sisters” is taken to confer with any two individuals who joined the identical nationwide group, whether or not or not they really knew one another personally, this declare could be true. Nonetheless, the time period “sorority sisters” might additionally indicate that Harris and Davis went to the identical school and had an in depth, private connection, so we now have rated the declare “Principally True.”

Harris joined Alpha Kappa Alpha whereas she was an undergraduate at Howard University. She graduated in 1986, transferring on to get a legislation diploma on the College of California, Hastings (now referred to as University of California College of the Law, San Francisco). In the meantime, Davis joined the sorority whereas learning on the University of Virginia, graduating with a psychology diploma in 1999. She later attended New York College and obtained a grasp’s in communications. Their instances as undergraduate college students didn’t overlap, nor did they attend the identical college. 

Snopes reached out to each the Harris marketing campaign and to Linsey Davis to ask in regards to the extent that the 2 had met, and can replace this story if we hear again. The one report we might discover of the 2 assembly previous to the 2024 presidential debate was a one-on-one sit-down interview Harris did for ABC News in 2023.

It additionally bears declaring that Alpha Kappa Alpha is an enormous nationwide group. In line with its website, the sorority has greater than 355,000 members and alumni everywhere in the world. That is a bigger group than alumni associations of Ivy League establishments just like the University of Pennsylvania — Trump’s alma mater — and Cornell University.

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