Former Hillel Chair

Other students say Black and Jewish student leaders are playing out national issues on the stage of a more confined and volatile, campus environment.

"I think that [the tensions have] to do with things on this campus," Lewis says. "It's the intellectual and academic atmosphere. Leaders make some things a big issue and that informs what people think."

Although many students say the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities on campus may in fact be over-hyped, members of both groups say tonight's program-in the absence of immediate conflict--is a chance to engage in constructive dialogue.

And even if some believe the issue of Black-Jewish relations has gotten a disproportionate share of attention both on and off campus, they still maintain the problem deserves the attention it has been getting.

Held says Black-Jewish tensions have become a lightning rod for discussion of all interracial conflict.

He says the exploration of Black-Jewish conflict has encouraged increased openness in discussing tensions among other groups.

"It is viewed as a problem in American society, but I do not see a danger of overemphasis," Held says. "I do not think we have reached the point in the attempt to make Harvard the paradigm and not the model reflective of the problems in the real world."