SENSITIVITY WATCH : Ugly Letter

Students have the right to invite almost anyone they want to speak on campus--in a sense that’s the whole idea of the university. But the Black Student Union at Cal State Northridge generated plenty of anxiety by inviting Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to speak there last Thursday night.

Farrakhan’s past virulently anti-Semitic statements were well-known, so the response of the Jewish student group Hillel was understandable; it sponsored a separate “Gathering of People for Understanding” during Farrakhan’s speech. But that bit of appropriate campus organizing was protested in a wholly unwarranted public letter from Black Student Union President Leslie Small. Titled “The Jews Attempt a Coup,” it accused Hillel of “Hitlerian tactics” and Jews of supporting apartheid in South Africa and mistreating Palestinians. Under pressure, Small later issued a lame apology for his letter.

CSUN has had too much of this sort of thing, including a fraternity party invitation that referred to a stupid song about a “Mexican whore” and other fraternity insults to women. To that, why add a Farrakhan speech that, although it barely mentioned Jews, insulted homosexuals, black men, black women? It also insulted the unemployed by maintaining that black lesbians would turn away from their women if only they could find a real black man, one with a job.

For such comments, Farrakhan’s entourage received $19,300. The question of which was worse, Small’s letter or Farrakhan’s speech, is the one matter left for debate.