Muhammad displayed his kinder, gentlerrnside to reporters of the city’s blackrnnewspaper: “When he issued his diatribesrnagainst Jews, Dr. Khallid said hernwas hurt and angry because Jewishrnprotestors were attempting to stop Blackrnstudents from entering the auditorium,rnand even more inciteful, were chantingrn’Kill Farrakhan.'” Khallid added: “Theyrnshould consider themselves lucky theyrnjust got words from me. They’re luckyrnwe didn’t leave the auditorium and bumrnrush them.”rnIn April, Khallid Muhammad raisedrnhis rhetoric in a speech at Howard University.rnSponsored by Unity Nation,rnwhich is headed by a Howard law student,rnthe program included an addressrnby CCNY’s black nationalist ProfessorrnLeonard Jeffries. Featured speaker KhallidrnMuhammad roused a number ofrngasps from his otherwise sympatheticrnaudience when he declared that hern”loved” Colin Ferguson, the black racistrnmurderer who had shot and killed manyrnwhites and an Asian on a New York commuterrntrain last December. According tornKhallid, “God spoke to Colin Fergusonrnand said, ‘Catch the train, Colin, catchrnthe train.'” Presumably, Cod also toldrnFerguson, “Shoot the whites! Shoot thernAsians!” Of course, many in the HowardrnUniversity audience applauded Khallid’srnpraise of Ferguson (as many applaudedrnwhen Minister Farrakhan merely mentionedrnFerguson’s name at a massive Nationrnof Islam rally last December).rnWhile Howard University studentsrnwere given the opportunity to hear Khallidrntwice in early 1994, the university deniedrnthem the chance to hear one of thernforemost scholars on the subject of slavery,rnYale professor David Brion Davis,rnwho is a convert to Judaism. As MaryrnCage reported in the Chronicle of HigherrnEducation in May, “Howard officialsrnhad decided to cancel the talk becausernthey said the atmosphere was ‘volatile.'”rnRather than control or expel the disruptivernelements that made the campusrnvolatile, the Howard leadership simplyrncanceled Davis’s lecture. It was announcedrnsoon thereafter that Howard’srnpresident would become president of thernUniversity of Texas in Dallas.rnIn May, Khallid Muhammad spokernbefore yet another university audience,rnthis time in Riverside, California, afterrnwhich a man described as a former NOIrnminister attempted to assassinate him.rnThe crowd then turned on the blackrnwould-be assassin, the Reverend JamesrnBess, and would have lynched him hadrnpolice not intervened with drawn weapons.rnClearly, universities are no longerrnivory towers of reason. They are battlegroundsrnwhere scholars are silencedrnwhile preachers of hate duel for students’rnallegiance, both literally and figuratively.rnHugh Murray has published widely onrnissues concerning race. He writes fromrnMilwaukee, Wisconsin.rnDefining Racismrnby Daniel R. Vining,Ji.rna V. acism” and its derivative,rn”racist,” are oft-used words, andrnso we ought to know what they mean.rnBut often we don’t, and we just flingrnthem at each other, hoping they willrnwound, if not kill, the offensive person.rnOne of my dictionaries {Standard CollegernDictionary, 1963) defines racism thisrnway: ” 1. An excessive or irrational beliefrnin or advocacy of the superiority of a givenrngroup, people, or nation, usually one’srnown, on the basis of racial differencesrnhaving no scientific validity. 2. Social actionrnor government policy based uponrnsuch assumed differences.” Anotherrn{Webster’s College Dictionary, 1991) definesrnit this way: “LA belief or doctrinernthat inherent differences among the variousrnhuman races determine cultural orrnindividual achievement, usually involvingrnthe idea that one’s own race is superior.rn2. A policy, system of government,rnetc., based on such a doctrine. 3. Hatredrnor intolerance of another race or otherrnraces.” Look how the definition ofrnracism has changed between 1963 andrn1991. Cone from the 1991 definition isrnany notion of rationality or scientific validity,rnwhich are virtually the same thing.rnBy the 1991 definition (please noterncarefully its use of the word usually; itrndoesn’t say always), if I note in speech orrnwriting that sickle-cell anemia is likely tornemerge in the black population but is virtuallyrnabsent from the white population,rnthen I will be guilty of racism; if I observernthat about 80 percent of the NBA’s playersrnare black, then I am a racist; similarly,rnif I remark that none of the finalists inrnthe Olympic 100-meter dash are everrnEast Asians, or that out of the top hundredrn100-meter runners in the UnitedrnStates only one (or is it two or none?) isrnwhite, that the vast majority of the runningrnbacks and wide receivers in thernNFL are black, that whites dominate thernthrowing events in track and field, etc.,rnthen I am a racist. If I say that almost allrnserial killers, mass murderers, and politicalrnassassins (e.g., Bundy, Darhman, Oswald,rnSon of Sam) are white, then I amrnalso a racist. The guy who told me whenrnI was an undergraduate that all the professorsrnin the mathematics departmentrnwere either Jewish or Japanese was arnracist. And when Martin Peretz wrote inrnthe New Republic, as he did on Februaryrn10,1992, “that the number of AmericanrnPh.D.’s in mathematics… fell from 619rnin 1978 to 341 ten years later… [and] ofrnthese only one was black,” he was arnracist.rnNote that all of the above are based onrnobservation and hard numbers, that theyrnare therefore “scientific” by any definitionrnof the term, that they do not implyrnthe superiority or inferiority of any race,rnbut that they would still be labeled racistrnby the 1991 definition of racism givenrnabove. So, in effect, our usage (as revealedrnin the definition in Webster’s CollegernDictionary, which reflects currentrnusage pretty well) of the word “racism” isrndirectly opposed to the mission of thernuniversity, which is to make scientificrnstatements about any phenomenon underrnthe sun (and even beyond). So whatrndo we do?rnIn the early 1980’s, historian WilliamrnMcNeil wrote as follows:rnPolyethnic lamination—clusteringrndifferent groups in particular occupationsrnand arranging them in arnmore or less formal hierarchy ofrndignity and wealth—is again assertingrnitself in the Soviet Unionrnas much as in France, Cermany,rnGreat Britain, and the UnitedrnStates.rnThis constitutes a reversion tornthe civilized pattern of the deeperrnpast when the world’s great empiresrncomprised a small rulingrngroup—itself often recruited fromrna multiplicity of ethnic backgroundsrn—presiding over a hierarchyrnof specialized occupations,rneach of which tended to be dominatedrnby a particular ethnic group.rnSuch social arrangements do notrnaccord well with liberal theory.rnWhen such differences do in factrnexist, theory gets into difficulty.rnSurely, the gap between theoryrn46/CHRONICLESrnrnrn