Still, Counter and Reid quote people who seem to think that "The Crimson's racial agenda" is one that is decidedly pro-Jewish one and anti-Black. The Jeffries incident seems to be exhibit number one.

"Panelists at a recent Harvard Foundation program...indicated that Professor Leonard Jeffries and Professor Michael Levin (a Jewish professor also on the CUNY faculty who has written extensively and promoted the belief that 'Blacks are innately inferior to Whites' and other equally racist ideas) were invited to debate at Princeton. Levin's racist teachings (which are the same as those of David Duke) have been defended as free speech. Some of the panelists and students asked 'why The Crimson and other Jeffries detractors had given so little attention to or shown interest in Levin's demagogy.' And 'could the Crimson writer's silence on Levin possibly suggest agreement?"

Unbelievable. The anonymous people Counter and Reid quote don't seem to understand what got Jeffries into all that trouble. It wasn't his political beliefs. In fact, on February 3, The Crimson defended Jeffries' right to free speech and BSA's "right to invite people with nonmainstream" and even "racist" views of history.

But we drew the line at inviting violent, hate-mongering racists. Racists like Jeffries who say that white people should be "wipe [d]...off the face of the earth." Thugs like Jeffries who threatened to kill a Crimson reporter if he published racist and anti-Semitic comments Jeffries made and who had his bodyguards steal the reporter's tapes.

Moreover, it wasn't The Crimson who had the primary hostilities with Jeffries. It was the trustees of CUNY, who recently removed him as chair. It was, among others, the Asian-American Association, the Bisexual, Gay and lesbian Students Association, La O, the Radcliffe Union of Students, Raza, the South Asian Association--as well as Race Relations Tutor Tomni Dance, Professor of Government Martin L. Kilson and Dean Hernandez-Gravelle. The Foundation's absence from this coalition was conspicuous.

And what about Levin? The facts that he is Jewish and that Jeffries is Black are completely irrelevant unless the Foundation is trying to suggest that the Crimson singles out Blacks like Leonard Jeffries for harsher criticism that Jews like Levin.

The Crimson is interested in Jeffries more than it is interested in Levin for two reasons. We originally became interested in Jeffries when he threatened to kill our reporter and took his tapes. We remained interested in him when student groups invited him to speak on campus.

Levin never threatened to kill a Harvard student and has never spoken here, as far as we know.

Of course The Crimson condemns Levin's horribly racist teachings. And if he were invited to speak here, we would be the first to say so in print. It's The Harvard Crimson, remember. If we were The CUNY Crimson, we would cover both Levin and Jeffries extensively.

"WHILE MOST OF OUR WHITE, Black, Hispanic and Asian students are getting along admirably, our most intractable racial conflict has been between Jewish and Black students."

This is simply ridiculous.

We wonder if we attend the same school as Reid does. The white, non-Jewish students who hung Confederate flags last year weren't getting along "admirably" with Blacks, or for that matter with Hillel, which joined BSA in condemning the flag hangers. The anti-Arab sentiment expressed during the Gulf War is not "admirable." The Asian-American Association and Raza's condemnation of Jeffries were not an example of "admirable" relations between Blacks and Asians or between Blacks and Hispanics. And the recent anti-Asian slurs in Lamont and the bigoted phone calls to Asian-American students show that much work remains to be done.

In trying to prove that the prime racial problem on campus is between Blacks and Jews, Counter and Reid offer one example:

"[A]t a recent 'Open Discussion on Race Relations'..., a student leader of Hillel complained that 'Harvard's celebration of Christian Holidays such as Christmas is as offensive to Jews as is racism to Blacks' The student went on to compare the American celebration of Christmas with racism and anti-Semitism, stating that "America is not a Christian country." Unfortunately, these concerns did not promote further discussion of race relations among the students in attendance. Changing America's and Harvard's celebration of traditional Christian calendar events is beyond the mission and interest of the Harvard Foundation for Race Relations."

This is certainly true. But Counter and Reid take a statement about how both Jews and Blacks face marginalization, quote it out of context, pronounce it unhelpful and cite it as a Jewish statement that harms Black-Jewish relations. They reduce Black-Jewish tensions to a single statement by one Jewish student. Essentially, they blame such tensions on Jews alone. And who are counter and Reid to dismiss a Jewish student's apparently heartfelt discomfort as "not promot[ing] further discussion"?