Leonard Jeffries

Leonard Jeffries
Born (1937-01-19) January 19, 1937 (age 87)
Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
SpouseRosalind Jeffries
RelativesHakeem Jeffries (nephew)
Hasan Kwame Jeffries (nephew)
Academic background
EducationLafayette College (BA)
Columbia University (MA, PhD)
ThesisSub-National Politics in the Ivory Coast Republic (1972)
Academic work
InstitutionsCity College of New York
San Jose State University

Leonard Jeffries Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist and former academic. He was the departmental chair of Black Studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). He was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He is the uncle of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Ohio State University historian Hasan Kwame Jeffries.

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 has urged that public school syllabi be made less Eurocentric.[1][2] He is a founding director and a former vice president and president of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC).

Jeffries's claims that Jewish businessmen financed the Atlantic slave trade and used the movie industry to hurt black people, and that whites are "ice people" while blacks are "sun people", received national publicity in the early 1990s.[3] Jeffries was discharged from his position as chair of CUNY's Black Studies Department, leading to a long legal battle[4][5][6] that ended with the courts affirming the college's right to remove him from the position due to his incendiary remarks.[7]

  1. ^ Stanley, Alessandra (August 7, 1991). "City College Professor Assailed for Remarks on Jews". The New York Times. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
  2. ^ Morrow, Lance (June 24, 2001). "Controversies: The Provocative Professor". Time. Archived from the original on May 1, 2008. Retrieved May 14, 2009.
  3. ^ Benjamin, Richard M. (Winter 1993). "The Bizarre Classroom of Dr. Leonard Jeffries". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (2): 91–96. doi:10.2307/2962577. ISSN 1077-3711. JSTOR 2962577. Retrieved 10 January 2023.
  4. ^ Foerstel, Herbert N. (1997). "Jefferies, Leonard". Free expression and censorship in America: an encyclopedia. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 101–102, 132. ISBN 978-0-313-29231-6. LCCN 96042157. OCLC 35317918.
  5. ^ Abel, Richard L. (1999). Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech. University of Chicago Press. pp. 101–102. ISBN 0-226-00057-5.
  6. ^ David Singer, Ruth R. Seldin, ed. (1996). American Jewish Year Book 1996. New York: The American Jewish Committee. pp. 120–121. ISBN 0-87495-110-0. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
  7. ^ Perez-Pena, Richard (April 5, 1995). "In Reversal, Court Backs City College In Jeffries Lawsuit". The New York Times.