Leonard Jeffries

File:Jeffries BLST101.jpg map]]

Jeffries attended Lafayette College for his undergraduate work. At Lafayette, he pledged, and was accepted into, the fraternity Pi Lambda Phi.{{cite book |last1=Pendergast |first1=Sara |last2=Pendergast |first2=Tom |title=Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 56: Profiles from the International Black Community |date=2006 |publisher=Thomson Gale |location=Detroit |isbn=978-0-7876-7928-6 |page=8}}{{verify source|date=July 2017}} In his senior year, Jeffries was elected president of the fraternity. After graduating with honors in 1959, he won a Rotary International fellowship to the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. In 1961, he began study at Columbia University's School of International Affairs, from which he received a master's degree in 1965.

At the same time, Jeffries worked for Operation Crossroads Africa, allowing him to spend time in Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. He became the program coordinator for West Africa in 1965. Jeffries became a political science instructor at City College of New York (CCNY) in 1969 and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1971 with a dissertation on politics in the Ivory Coast. He became the founding chairman of Black Studies at San Jose State College in California. A year later, he became a tenured professor at CCNY and chair of its new Black Studies Department.

Jeffries chaired CCNY's Black Studies Department for over two decades, recruiting like-minded scholars and attempting to expand the number of faculty and students within or associated with the department. During his tenure, the department sponsored/hosted/organized 25 major national and international conferences and seminars. Besides administration and teaching, Jeffries often traveled to Africa and served in the African Heritage Studies Association, a group seeking to define and develop the Black Studies discipline.{{Citation needed|date=December 2016}}

Jeffries became popular among students and as a speaker at college campuses and public organizations. He is known for his Pan-African Afrocentrist views—that the role of African people in history and the accomplishments of African Americans are far more important than commonly held.

Jeffries is a proponent of the pseudoscientific melanin theory, which posits that greater skin pigmentation makes Black people inherently superior to white people.{{cite book |title=Philosophy of African American Studies: Nothing Left of Blackness |first=Stephen C. |last=Ferguson |year=2015 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=9781137549976 |pages=[{{GBurl|id=6_ldDwAAQBAJ|q=Leonard+Jeffries+melanin+theory}} 56]}} He says melanin allows Black people to "negotiate the vibrations of the universe and to deal with the ultraviolet rays of the sun".{{cite magazine |last=Calabresi |first=Massimo |date=February 14, 1994 |title=Dispatches Skin Deep 101 |magazine=Time |volume=143 |issue=7 |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,980105,00.html |access-date=January 13, 2021}} Jeffries has stated (but not published){{r|Bay}} the idea that whites are "ice people" who are violent and cruel, while blacks are "sun people" who are compassionate and peaceful;{{cite web |url=http://store.nationalreview.com/archives/detail.mhtml?an=9109092091&qblrb=Leonard%20Jeffries%09anywhere%09%09anywhere%09and%09%09%091%09%09%091%09%09rel |title=A Deafening Silence |accessdate=June 24, 2008 |date=September 9, 1991 |work=National Review |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012003609/http://store.nationalreview.com/archives/detail.mhtml?&an=9109092091&qblrb=Leonard%20Jeffries%09anywhere%09%09anywhere%09and%09%09%091%09%09%091%09%09rel |archivedate=October 12, 2008 |url-status=dead}} historian Mia Bay attributes the origins of this hypothesis to the writings of anthropologist Cheik Anta Diop as well as Michael Bradley, author of The Iceman Inheritance.{{cite book |last=Bay |first=Mia |title=The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830–1925 |date=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-988107-9 |page=[{{GBurl|id=f_uWBk43sOYC|q=%22Leonard+Jeffries%22}} 264, n. 19]}}

During a 1991 speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, Jeffries asserted that Russian Jews and the American Mafia were behind a conspiracy of Hollywood film producers to denigrate Black people, and that Jews had also controlled the Atlantic slave trade. His remarks were broadcast on cable television, drawing angry responses from Italian and Jewish Americans.{{cite book |last=Friedman |first=Saul |title=Jews and the American Slave Trade |date=2017 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-51076-9 |page=[{{GBurl|id=hm9QDwAAQBAJ|q=Leonard+Jeffries}} 1]}}

In 1992, Jeffries first got his term shortened from three years to one, and then was removed as chair of the department of African-American studies, but allowed to stay as a professor. He sued the school, and in August 1993 a federal jury found that his First Amendment rights had been violated. But Jeffries had been unanimously reappointed as chair. He was awarded $400,000 in damages (later reduced to $360,000).{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=West's Encyclopedia of American Law |title=Academic Freedom |url=http://www.answers.com/topic/academic-freedom |accessdate=May 15, 2009 |year=1998 |publisher=The Gale Group}}{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/12/nyregion/cuny-violated-speech-rights-of-department-chief-jury-says.html |title=CUNY Violated Speech Rights Of Department Chief, Jury Says |last=Newman |first=Maria |date=May 12, 1993 |work=The New York Times |pages=A1 |accessdate=May 15, 2009 |url-access=limited}}{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/05/nyregion/judge-reinstates-jeffries-as-head-of-black-studies-for-city-college.html |title=Judge Reinstates Jeffries as Head Of Black Studies for City College |last=Bernstein |first=Richard |date=August 5, 1993 |work=The New York Times |pages=A1 |accessdate=May 15, 2009 |url-access=limited}}

The school appealed, but the federal appeals court upheld the verdict while removing the damages. The CUNY Institute for Research on the Diaspora in the Americas and Caribbean was created to do black research independent of Jeffries's department. It was headed by Edmund W. Gordon, who had led the Black Studies Department before Jeffries was reinstated.

In November 1994, the Supreme Court told the appeals court to reconsider after a related Supreme Court decision.Waters v. Churchill (114 S.Ct. 1878 [1994]), {{ussc|511|661|1994}} The appeals court reversed its decision in April 1995,Jeffries v. Harleston, 52 F.3d 9 [2nd Cir. 1995] and in June, Professor Moyibi Amodo was elected to succeed Jeffries as department chair.{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}

Jeffries's case led to debate about tenure, academic freedom and free speech.{{cite book|last=Finkin|first=Matthew W.|title=The case for tenure|publisher= Cornell University Press |year=1996|pages=[https://archive.org/details/casefortenure0000fink/page/190 190]–191|isbn=0-8014-3316-9|url=https://archive.org/details/casefortenure0000fink|url-access=registration|accessdate=May 15, 2009}}{{cite journal|last=Spitzer|first=Robert J.|year=1994|title=Tenure, Speech, and the Jeffries Case: A Functional Analysis|journal=Pace Law Review|volume=15|issue=111|page=111 |doi=10.58948/2331-3528.1357 |s2cid=142606184 |url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=info:R8GwDGmu3sEJ:scholar.google.com/&output=viewport|accessdate=May 15, 2009|doi-access=free}} He was sometimes compared to Michael Levin, a CUNY professor who outside the classroom claimed that black people are inferior, and had recently won against the school in court.

One interpretation of Jeffries's case is that while a university cannot fire a professor for opinions and speech, it has more flexibility with a position like department chair. Another is that it allows public institutions to discipline employees in general for disruptive speech.

His State of New York consultancy allowed him to produce the document [https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED338535 A Curriculum of Inclusion], calling for changing school curricula to include African, Asian and Latino families.

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{cite book |last1=Dyson |first1=Michael Eric |title=Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism |date=1993 |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |isbn=978-0-8166-2143-9 |pages=157–166 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/reflectingblacka0000dyso/page/156 |chapter-url-access=registration |jstor=10.5749/j.cttts5tr |chapter=Leonard Jeffries and the Struggle for the Black Mind|volume=9 }}

• {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090307040150/http://www.nbufront.org:80/html/MastersMuseums/LenJeffries/LenJeffriesVMuseum.html |date=March 7, 2009 |title=Leonard Jeffries Virtual Museum}} – via the National Black United Front
• [https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED338535 A Curriculum of Inclusion]
• {{C-SPAN|35272}}

{{Pan-Africanism}}

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Category:1937 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century African-American academics

Category:20th-century American academics

Category:21st-century African-American academics

Category:21st-century American academics

Category:Afrocentrists

Category:American pan-Africanists

Category:Antisemitism in New York City

Category:City College of New York faculty

Category:Lafayette College alumni

Category:Proponents of melanin theory

Category:Pseudohistorians

Category:San Jose State University faculty

Category:School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University alumni

Category:University of Lausanne alumni

Category:Writers from Newark, New Jersey

Leonard Jeffries