Trading Places: From Black Power Activist to "Anti-Negro Negro"

In March of 1988, the faculty of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst unanimously demanded that the University remove one of its most distinguished members, Professor Julius Lester. The official reason given for this unprecedented request was that Lester had become an "anti-Negro-Negro." In making this extraordinary demand, Lester's colleagues were reacting to the recent publication of his autobiography. Entitled Loves ong: On Becoming a Jew (1988a), the book tells the story of Lester's conversion to Judaism and details his growing alienation from Black politics. The faculty's lengthy report concluded, "Professor Lester would be infinitely more comfortable at a different location in the University" (Lester 1988b, 178). Elaborating on the written account, one of the authors pointedly remarked that retaining Lester in Afro-American Studies is "like having Yassir Arafat teaching in the Jewish Studies Department." The University eventually complied with the request and transferred Professor Lester to another department. This bit of academic infighting soon became national news. Journalists reminded their readers that back in the late 1960s, when he was a prominent Black Power activist, Lester gained notoriety as an anti-Semite. The Los Angeles Times maintained that now Lester was himself a victim of anti-Semitism. Despite the University's intervention, or perhaps because of it, the scandal refused to die. Lester himself contributed to the prolonged life of this affair by