The antics of Leonard Jeffries, chairman of the black-studies department at City College of New York, noted Afrocentrist, and originator of the terms “sun people” (i.e., blacks) and “ice people” (i.e., whites), were widely reported in the press last spring. Nominally removed from his chairmanship in 1992 for incompetence, Jeffries was in fact dismissed for engaging in gross, flagrant, and—most important—public anti-Semitism. His formal evaluations by college officials had been satisfactory right up to (and, incredibly, after) the day he gave a taxpayer-supported speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in which he explained, among other things, how Jews financed the African slave trade, a revelation he had previously vouchsafed to his students. Jeffries promptly sued the City University of New York, of which CCNY is a part, claiming he had been given the boot not for being a bad chairman but for having lawfully exercised his constitutionally protected right to free speech. In May, a federal jury agreed with Jeffries, ordering CUNY to fork over four hundred thousand dollars in recompense, and Judge Kenneth Conboy subsequently ordered him restored to his chairmanship.

One of the interesting things about Jeffries is the fact that he has so few respectable defenders.

One of the interesting things about Jeffries is the fact that he has so few respectable defenders. Most of what has been written about him in the mass media since he lurched into the spotlight four years ago (Jeffries helped draft “A Curriculum of