Science Fiction

TWO WEEKS AGO, the Black Students Association (BSA) invited Dorothy Blake Fardan to speak as part of a Black Awareness Lecture Series. This was an insensitive mistake that only opens the organization up to ridicule.

The BSA sponsored an outlandish speaker. Why aren't its members embarrassed?

Fardan--who is white--is a confused, scientifically ignorant and racially offensive person. According to The Crimson's report, she argued that white Europeans are "mutants," created by a dissatisfied being called Yakub "through stages of grafting recessive and dominant genes."

Fardan's remarks were ridiculous fictions, and could have been extremely damagaging if they weren't so comic. The grafting of genes has made major strides only in the last few years, and I don't believe that even Fardan would argue that white people are a 20th century phenomenon.

I don't think that Fardan's views are illegal. I don't think she should have been banned from talking on campus. She has every right to think whatever she wants and speak wherever she wants. BSA even has every right to invite her to whatever they want.

But they shouldn't. Their invitation gives the impression that they support--or at least condone--her opinions. And although I can't imagine that any Harvard students would believe that whites are mutants grafted by Yakub, the remarks of BSA leaders only detract further from the organization's credibility.

"I thought [Fardan's lecture] was very enlightening for both Blacks and whites," Nelson B. Boyce '92, the Minority Student Alliance representative to the BSA, told The Crimson. "However, I would have liked to have seen more whites present."

I would have thought the BSA's reaction to such an outlandish speaker would have been immediate outrage. I would have thought it would have been embarrassed and shocked that the speaker it had brought to campus was such a quack.

Instead, BSA President Art A. Hall '93 told The Crimson: "Basically, what [Fardan] has done is to educate us..."

The BSA has opened itself up to derision. It should quickly and publicly disassociate itself from the science fiction that Fardan espoused at their invitation.