Word: jeffriesism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Gates is concerned about the anti-semitism he has seen recently amid the work of some scholars, such as City University of New York Professor Leonard Jeffries. Gates says he must be a "powerful voice against vulger impulses in the discipline."
Leonard Jeffries, chairman of African-American studies at New York's City College, put on a surreal performance. For long stretches of his speech before an Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany last month, Jeffries made an intense and affecting case for blacks to study African history...
Diane Ravitch, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education, is a "sophisticated Texas Jew," Jeffries said, "a debonair racist." He repeatedly called her "Miss Daisy." Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who has written against Afrocentrism, is "a weakling . . . slick and devilish." White people, including "very nice white folks," "distort history in what I...
At first, Jeffries' speech escaped wider public attention. Then NY-SCAN, the state's cable-television channel, broadcast the performance, and the New York Post published a long account of it. That set off an indignant debate that had larger implications.
The first question: Are Jeffries' moments of flamboyant malice protected as exercises of academic freedom? New York Governor Mario Cuomo was not sure. First he said Jeffries' rant was "so egregious that the City University ought to take action or explain why it doesn't." Cuomo later backtracked and defended...