BSA Hypocrisy

LEONARD JEFFRIES WILL come to Harvard on Wednesday fresh from a conference this past weekend on Holocaust "revisionism."

Perhaps he will talk about how all the male Jewish professors at City University of New York are members of some mysterious "cabala." Maybe he will bring data to prove why whites should be "wipe[d]...off the face of the earth." Maybe his bodyguard "Brother Larry" will hassle someone for fun.

Jeffries, as we have said before, is a racist, anti-Semitic hatemonger. He believes in bogus, discredited theories that link skin pigmentation and climate to personality traits. He cites white conspiracies as the roots of African-Americans' problems. Anyone who disagrees with him is liable to be dismissed as Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was--as "a faggot and a punk."

Recently, Jeffries has turned violent. Last fall, during an interview with Crimson editor J. Eliot Morgan '92, he ordered his bodyguards to take Morgan's tapes. when Jeffries found out that many Crimson executives have Jewish surnames. Then he threatened to kill Morgan if the interview were published.

After months of refusing to take any real action for fear of rankling Jeffries supporters on campus, even the City University of New York said last week they would remove Jeffries from his bully pulpit as chair of the Afro-American Studies Department.

All of which makes the decision to invite Jeffries both offensive and outrageous.

ALTHOUGH JEFFRIES HAS the full right to espouse ridiculous theories on race and race relations, he has no right to threaten a life and he has no place in the Harvard community.

The Black Students Association (BSA), which invited Jeffries along with the Black Law Students Association and the DuBois Graduate Society, has defended the invitation with an endorsement of Jeffries' "Blackness as a Black individual and a Black intellectual..." They also say they seek to educate the campus about "diverse perspectives about Black history and Black culture." That's fine, and the BSA has fulfilled this goal in many ways in the past by inviting a diverse and important range of speakers.

The BSA has every right to invite people with non-mainstream views of history. In fact, they even have the right to invite someone with a racist view of history.

But they must take responsibility for the effects that such invitations will have on other members of the community. Inviting someone who discriminates against--or even wishes for the elimination of--other groups of people is at least insensitive and potentially disastrous. The line between the need to learn about racism from its propagators and the need to combat such ideas by not giving them a forum can be a tricky one to draw. Generally, we believe combating such ideas is impossible without first hearing them clearly, forcefully and freely expressed.

But the decision on this particular racist is an easy one. The BSA should not have invited him. Because of his actions of hatred and violence, the Jeffries debate should not be about free speech and divergent views of history but about whether someone who issues death threats deserves a forum at Harvard.

Last year, a Confederate flag appeared in a Harvard dorm window. To some, the flag represented Southern pride. To others, it was a hateful symbol of Black slavery. BSA protested the hanging of the flag and even called for its removal. Now, the same group has invited Leonard jeffries, a man whose views to some represent Black pride and to others hateful bigotry. Consistent standards would dictate BSA's condemnation of Jeffries' appearance. Instead, they have hypocritically invited him.

The speech will serve no constructive purpose for anyone on campus. It will only strain BSA's relationships with other student groups and set back efforts to build much-needed coalitions with those groups on other issues.

The BSA can invite whomever they want. But Leonard Jeffries should appear in a court on Wednesday, not at Harvard.