A prominent New York professor accused of being anti-Semitic appeared during this weekend's African Heritage Studies Association conference, and association members said they support him.

According to an article featured in February's Emerge magazine, Leonard Jeffries Jr. said last July, "Jews and Italians have collaborated in Hollywood to denigrate blacks and that Jews had financed the slave trade."

The comments drew outrage from many white people who said such alleged bigotry and anti-Semitism warranted disciplinary action from the City College of New York where Jeffries was a professor.

"We do not agree with those people who say he's a racist because he is not a racist, he's a truth-teller," said William E. Nelson Jr., president of the African Heritage Studies Association. "He has been a scholar in the field for many years. He is one of the chief experts on the growth and development of African people and across many centuries. So we just fully support him, mainly because we think it is not just his struggle, but our struggle."

Jeffries has been persecuted for his strong beliefs in African progress and liberation and the struggle of African people for total freedom, Nelson said, adding that the association strongly supports him.

Jeffries denied that he targeted the Jewish community.

"We haven't singled them out. They singled themselves out because they used the charge anti-Semitism as a weapon to cloud the major issues that we've been involved in that have to do with curriculum reform and multiculturalism," Jeffries said. "That has to do with the true definition of African peoples not as Negroes in America, but Africans worldwide."

Rabbi David Sudaley, director of the Penn State B'nai B'rith/Hillel Foundation disagreed with Jeffries' theory that Jewish and Italian people have conspired to denigrate black people in the film industry.

"When you say things like that you are not talking about curriculum reform, you're not talking about multiculturalism," Sudaley said.

Writers from The New York Times, The New Republic and other publications have criticized Jeffries' speeches and called them anti-Semitic and racist, he added.

"The prejudice is there and it's clear in his speeches," Sudaley said.

Jeffries said black men with power, dignity and vision threaten white supremacy, which is one of the reasons he said he is under a "media lynching."

A couple weeks ago Pope John Paul II stood in the courtyard in the slave house of Goree where millions of Africans were killed, and begged Africans for forgiveness for Christians' involvement, Jeffries said.

That event received no news media coverage, Jeffries said, but added that his own statements made national news.

"All this garbage around me and every lie that they can tell run in every news media, but very few of you heard about this. This is a newsworthy item that they could not deal with," Jeffries said. "We now see a media lynching that they think will lead to an academic lynching, but they picked the wrong person at the wrong time."

Many agreed that the media has unfairly attacked Jeffries.

Gerard Louison (graduate-public administration) said the media chooses quotes from his speeches that portray him negatively.

"If you take out snippets here and there, George Bush would sound like a racist, but he's not portrayed that way," Louison said.

Many believe Jeffries' teachings should not be persecuted because they are historical facts.

"I think his teachings are misunderstood. I don't understand why people do not want to face the truth and the reality that Africans, Jewish people, Italians and everyone else has participated in the slave trade and that there was Jewish control over institutions that denigrated black people," Louison said.

Cyril Griffith, associate professor of African history, said, "This is the first time I ever heard him speak and all the things I heard him talk about tonight I teach in my Emerging Africa course."