If this week is any indication, Black Jewish relations may become the dominant issue on the nation's campuses this spring.
Controversies over allegedly anti Semitic remarks by Black professors and leaders raged this week from Wellesley College to the pages of the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Columnists and leading college administrators, including the president of Wellesley, have recently denounced what they call anti-Semitism by Black leaders, most notably Minister Louis Farrakan of the nation of Islam.
America's colleges and universities have been drawn into the debate as some Afro-American Studies professors have brought allegedly anti-Semitic texts into the classroom and their research output.
And the large number of often-controversial speakers that passes through the average college campus ensures that their message is often disseminated widely to college students.
A Wellesley College professor's publication of a book seen by many as anti-Semitic has moved the Massachusetts college uncomfortably close to the middle of this increasingly heated national debate.
The book by Professor of Africana Tony Martin, The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, was published last month.
In an unusual move, the President of Wellesley College, Diana Chapman Smith criticized the book shortly after its publication in a letter to faculty, students, and alumnae.
The Jewish Onslaught details Martin's troubles with Jewish organizations since he began to include a book published by the Nation of Islam in his course on African-American history. Martin's book attacks several colleagues who opposed his use of the Nation of Islam text, and elaborates on the argument that Jews played a central role in the slave trade.
Martin defended his book in a newsletter he distributes on and off-campus, entitled Blacks Jews at Wellesley.
Martin had been using The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews: Volume One, a book published by the Nation of Islam.
That group was in the news elsewhere this week. During a speech at Kean College last fall, Khalid Abdul
Muhammad, an aide to Farrakan, attacked Jews, Catholics, and homosexuals. He said that in the antebellum South 75 percent of all slaves were owned by Jews. He also called for violence in South Africa.
Columnists A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post criticized the speech, and the Anti-Defamation League printed the speech in an advertisement to signal its objection.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus also made statements against the speech.
Under political pressure, Farrakan demoted the aide on Thursday--two months after the speech. While calling Muhammad's remarks "mean spirited" and "against the spirit of Islam," Farrakan defended the "truths that he spoke."
Kean College, where the speech was given, has a history of racial tension, including an alleged incident in which students screamed "Kill Whites."
The chair of Kean's board of trustees, Larry Lockhart, praised Farrakan's action in demoting the aide. And the leader of the group that initially invited Muhammad said he was glad the aide had been rebuked.
Even Harvard could be pulled into the fray with Wellesley and Kean. An advertisement that ran in yesterday's Crimson hints at criticism of the chair of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department for his tolerance of Jews.
The advertisement was titled "Blacks, Jews and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: A Response."
The advertisement, for a journal of Black culture, reads "Renowned Black scholars and writers, look at the new `star' of Black studies, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., not just as a scholar but as a political and cultural commentator."
Tony Martin, the Wellesley professor, is listed as a contributor.
Dispatches from the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education were used in compiling this report.
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