The Politics of Presidential Appointment. Sheldon Hackney

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working on a very tough problem that the broader society had not yet begun to face in a serious way. That is ironic but true.

      I remember a conversation I had with a Penn alumnus in San Francisco who I hoped would become a major donor. Finally, he said that he did not want to make a major gift to Penn because he had experienced a lot of anti-Semitism when he was there in the 1930s. Instead, he was thinking about making a gift to Harvard. I wanted to say, but didn’t, that the reason he had experienced anti-Semitism at Penn in the 1930s and not at Harvard was that Penn had admitted him while Harvard had a quota that kept him out. Indeed, one of the things Penn can be proud of is that it never had a Jewish quota, as other elite eastern universities did in the first half of the twentieth century. That is the origin of the strong Jewish presence that is a characteristic of Penn.

      Still raw in contemporary Penn memory were the wounds inflicted by the controversial visit of Minister Louis Farrakhan to speak on the Penn campus on April 13, 1988. The visit was the masterwork of Conrad Tillard, an especially dynamic and articulate black student leader, who is now Conrad X, one of Minister Farrakhan’s lieutenants in New York. At Penn, he dedicated himself to bringing Minister Farrakhan to campus to speak. The invitation from the Black Student League (BSL) that he engineered was as legitimate as the countless other invitations to outside speakers from Penn organizations that the University accommodates on a regular basis. The BSL had a right to invite him, and the University had an obligation to make it possible for him to be heard. There were several worrisome aspects, however.

      One problem was that Farrakhan would attract a large number of people from off-campus: friends, enemies, and the curious. We worried particularly about a confrontation between the Jewish Defense League and the Fruit of Islam. The potential for violence was huge. A bigger problem was presented, however, when we learned that the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan’s organization, wanted to dictate the security arrangements, and in particular insisted on searching everyone who came into the auditorium. That required an extended public discussion on campus that I thought was very healthy. An informed and public decision to use metal detectors at the entrances to Irvine Auditorium made it less likely that the devices would spark hostile reaction or chill debate. We eventually worked out an understanding about security that satisfied the Nation of Islam and that also left us in control of the situation.

      What was not avoidable was the animosity stimulated between Jewish students and black students. There was much discussion in the DP, and there were even meetings between black student leaders and students from Hillel, where the opposition to Farrakhan was being organized. The most disturbing thing to me, as I told the New York Times at the time, was that white students “really do have a hard time understanding how deeply offended and angry black students get when they run into racial stereotypes and insensitive remarks on campus. That is what I hear from my students and faculty all the time.” That, of course, is why someone like Minister Farrakhan appealed to them.

      “At the same time,” I said, “I think black students just don’t understand why Minister Farrakhan is so incredibly offensive to whites and to Jewish students in particular.”[1] The run-up to the speech was tense.

      One day Conrad Tillard burst into my office (with a DP reporter in tow) and denounced the anti-Farrakhan demonstrators who were out in front of College Hall and elsewhere on campus. He demanded that I have them dispersed. I replied that he would probably not want to be part of a university in which the president had the power to disperse peaceful demonstrators or otherwise to prevent dissent. He stalked out, probably pleased that he had ratcheted up the confrontation a bit.

      The day before the event itself, I issued a statement making clear my disapproval of Minister Farrakhan’s black nationalism, and especially denouncing his anti-Semitism, but asserting the overriding interest the University had in remaining an open forum for debate and for the expression of ideas.[2] There was no other issue during my tenure as president of Penn on which I got more mail from outraged alumni than the appearance of Louis Farrakhan. “I believe in free speech,” ran the logic of the typical letter, “but Farrakhan’s brand of hate doesn’t merit protection.”

      On the evening of the speech, I had a regularly scheduled dinner meeting of the senior officers at my house. We went through our discussions of long-range plans, while across campus a potential disaster impended. We had taken elaborate security precautions, and we had the cooperation and participation of the Philadelphia police, but such events are unpredictable. In conversation with the Jewish student groups, we had reached agreement about how the counter-demonstration was to occur. They wished to minimize the chance for violence, but they also wanted to make their presence and disapproval known. The uncontrollable factors had most to do with off-campus folks, and with things that might happen spontaneously inside the hall.

      I remember what a huge relief it was to get the call from the student-life official in charge that night. We were still sitting around the dinner table talking about seemingly safe and distant resource allocations. The report was that the event had gone off with a minimum of problems and that the area around the auditorium was now clear. There had been a huge amount of tension in the auditorium and outside, but there had been no incident that might constitute a violation of University rules. I thanked the community in a public letter the next day, saying that as difficult as the event was in every way, it was the University at its best.

      So, yes, we had problems with race relations, and we had them because we had worked hard and very successfully to attract a diverse student body.[3] I admired what the military, the army in particular, had been able to do to include members of racial minorities on a basis of equality. Even there, after years of effort, there are differential rates of advancement for blacks, Latinos, and whites, and there are large disparities in the way the members of those groups perceive their treatment.[4]

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