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Dear Editor:

We, the undersigned History faculty members, want to take responsibility for explaining to the University community an incident that took place in our department last week, and express our disgust with the article that was distributed in a core curriculum American history course. The article, "Remembering the Zebra Killings," by James Lubinskas, was downloaded from a site containing links to racially charged and anti-Semitic Web sites. The professor abridged it in a way that disguised its full context and photocopied it for his teaching assistants to distribute.

The article is distorted and inaccurate. It quotes questionable sources without documentation, uses unsubstantiated statistics and repeats inflammatory rumors. Its combination of falsehood and innuendo presented as objective historical commentary seems designed to take advantage of those who may not be trained to analyze sources critically.

As history professors we believe that teaching controversy and using controversial course materials is a vital part of teaching, and we all should do it. It is also crucial, however, to clearly distinguish between documents that illustrate racism in the American past from present-day racist propaganda.

We strongly believe in the rights of academic freedom and in a professor's right to choose course material. Academic responsibility, however, demands that professors promote the free exchange of ideas without creating a hostile environment, running the risk of nurturing racist attitudes among their students, and putting their teaching assistants in an untenable position. Moreover, it is our academic responsibility as history professors to disassociate ourselves from this irresponsible use of objectionable and inflammatory material. We call on the University community to open a dialogue about the issues raised by this incident.

Kay J. Carr
Germaine Etienne
Robbie Lieberman
Mary McGuire
Rachel Stocking
Natasha Zaretsky