Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Harvard Student Group Triggered Campus Outrage, Protests With Controversial Invite

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was involved in a Harvard University student group that promoted a speaker known for his anti-Semitic remarks, according to a new report.

Jackson was a member of Harvard’s Black Students Association during her senior year when Leonard Jeffries was invited as a speaker. Harvard’s chapter of Hillel, a Jewish advocacy group, and other student organizations protested his invitation due to his anti-Semitic past, according to a report on Monday by Fox News, citing a 1992 Harvard Crimson article.

“The Crimson reported on Feb. 6 that Jeffries denied he was an anti-Semite and claimed that Black people valued peace and equality more than the ‘people of the ice’ – his term for White people – do,” the report noted.

Fox News also cited a report by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) released in 1991 concerning Jeffries that referred to him “and the Anti-Semitic Branch of the Afrocentrism Movement,” highlighting several of his alleged anti-Semitic claims:

The report, released the year before Jeffries spoke at Harvard, said that he “preaches Jew-hatred like a religion.” The report noted that Jeffries organized a 1990 conference for Black teachers that featured anti-Semitic rhetoric and reading materials. 

According to the report, Jeffries also claimed that Jesus, Moses, and Buddha were all Black. The report noted that “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-Semitic Czarist forgery that alleges a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and which fueled many pogroms, was sold at the conference.” 

The ADL investigated Jeffries in a lengthy report on black academics espousing anti-Semitic views:

The New York Times reported that in an April 1990 class on African heritage, Jeffries said that “rich Jews who financed the development of Europe also financed the slave trade,” and that “the Jewish Holocaust is raised as the only Holocaust.” The Times also reported that Jeffries has taught students in his classes that Blacks are “sun people,” humanistic and communal, and whites are “ice people,” cold, unfeeling oppressors.

Jeffries exploded onto the public scene in August 1991, when the New York Post published an account of a vitriolic anti-Semitic and racist speech he made on July 20 at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York. Jeffries asserted that “rich Jews” controlled the Black slave trade, and that Hollywood was the site of a Jewish-dominated conspiracy to systematically denigrate Blacks. He called then-Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch the “ultimate, supreme, sophisticated, debonair racist” and a “Texas Jew.”

Despite the past concerns related to anti-Semitism, President Joe Biden announced Jackson last month as his nominee for the Supreme Court to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, a Clinton-era appointee who recently announced his retirement. The president referred to Jackson in a Twitter post as “a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, and a distinguished jurist.”

Judge Jackson is a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, and a distinguished jurist. She deserves to be confirmed as the next justice of the Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/JRU8EDmqL7

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 2, 2022

“She deserves to be confirmed as the next justice of the Supreme Court,” he added.

In addition to allegations of supporting an anti-Semitic speaker during her senior year at Harvard, however, Jackson has raised concerns among conservatives over her far-left views.

“Conservatives should firmly oppose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Judge Jackson is a hand-picked selection from far-Left groups like Demand Justice, who fully expect her to rule according to their progressive judicial philosophy rather than uphold the Constitution. During her tenure on the D.C. Court of Appeals, she has assembled a judicial record that prioritizes the abortion industry and illegal immigration interest groups ahead of a faithful interpretation of the law. Not only is Judge Jackson the wrong pick for the Court, but Biden’s timing of the announcement is shameful given Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica Anderson wrote, according to a statement shared with The Daily Wire.

“Conservatives should use the confirmation process to expose the disastrous effect of liberal judges on the nation. For decades, the Left-wing judicial activism machine has installed judges who are out of touch with the American people and who disregard the meaning of the Constitution and precedent in favor of special interests and their personal political leanings,” she added.

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