CSUN Won’t Discipline Campus Group : Education: Review of letter accusing Jewish organization of ‘Hitlerian tactics’ finds no basis for action against Black Students Union.

Administrators at Cal State Northridge will take no disciplinary action against the campus’ black student group for a letter that accused a Jewish student group of using “Hitlerian tactics” to reduce attendance at a scheduled speech by Minister Louis Farrakhan, controversial head of the Nation of Islam.

University officials have decried the letter, and it has inflamed tensions between black and Jewish students on the eve of Farrakhan’s speech Thursday.

However, a legal review of its content showed no basis for action against the campus’ Black Students Union, said university Vice President Ronald Kopita.

That decision came as the university’s student Senate, during an at-times heated three-hour session attended by more than 150 students, failed to decide on proposals to condemn the controversial letter and instead referred the issue to a committee. The Senate did, however, deny a BSU request for $2,924 in student funds to help subsidize Farrakhan’s appearance.

The debate made frequent references to last year’s episode in which the university suspended the campus’ chapter of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity for distributing a party flyer that many Latinos and others found offensive. When the fraternity challenged the suspension in court, the university lifted the suspension on the advice of its lawyers that a court would probably declare the suspension a violation of the fraternity’s constitutional free speech rights.

“We could not really move in any direction,” said Kopita, vice president for student affairs, of the BSU letter. Just as the university is a place where controversial speakers such as Farrakhan can present their views, student groups also have free speech rights, Kopita said.

The university could have taken a range of actions against the BSU, from a letter of reprimand to permanent expulsion from the campus, Kopita said. Now, the university’s official response will remain a prior statement by school President Blenda Wilson, who called the letter “insulting and disrespectful to Jews.”

The dispute originated with the BSU’s sponsorship of a speech by Farrakhan, a black separatist who has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks in the past, commemorating the 25th anniversary Thursday of a famous campus protest that helped lead to the creation of the school’s black studies department in 1969.

When the Hillel Jewish Student Center, CSUN’s Jewish student group, and other organizations announced plans recently to hold an alternate gathering on the same night, BSU President Leslie Small fired off a letter titled “The Jews Attempt a Coup” that accused Hillel of “blatantly undermining and disrespecting” the BSU’s celebration with “low life tactics.”

At the student Senate meeting, Small again apologized for the harsh tone of the letter, but stood by his historical allegations that Jews participated in the murder of 250 million Africans, engaged in the “genocide” of American Indians and were “murderers and robbers” of Palestinians.

Campus Jewish leaders dismissed the allegations, calling them baseless and anti-Semitic. “Jews are not the devil, and Jews did not enslave the African people,” countered Rabbi Jerrold Goldstein of the Hillel center. But Goldstein said of the BSU leader, “Leslie Small still doesn’t get the message.”