Ogletree to Moderate 'Liberators' Panel

When Charles J. Ogletree Jr. was president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association in 1978, he worked to promote affirmative action and agitated against Harvard's investments in South Africa.

"The issues have changed, but the level of intensity on political and social issues is the same," he says.

Now Ogletree remains in the thick of things as an assistant professor at the Law School.

He is a faculty member of the committee charged last spring with healing tensions on the Law School campus. He heads a project which proposes broad-ranging reforms of South Africa's criminal justice system.

And tonight, Ogletree will turn his attentions to improving Black-Jewish tensions at the University.

Ogletree, who will moderate the panel discussion after the movie 'Liberators,' hopes the event will begin a dialogue to reconcile Blacks and Jews. He says the primary purpose of the panel is to "eliminate ignorance."

Ogletree, who is also a Johnston lecturer, emphasizes that Blacks and Jews used to be allies in the civil rights movement.

"The differences between Blacks and Jews are in no sense different than between Blacks and other groups," says Ogletree. "What is significant is that there is a history of oppression and a history of working together to overcome those obstacles."

While their common history has often brought them together, ties between the two groups have been strained in recent times, Ogletree says, because of intolerance, ignorance and "an absence of effective leadership."

Ogletree says tonight's panel discussion is a continuation of earlier dialogue begun when events last year inflamed racial tensions at Harvard.

"The point is to try to learn from experiences and to grow from them," he says. "The one thing that is absolutely critical at the University is tolerance."

Ogletree says the speech last February by City University of New York Professor Leonard Jeffries, who has sparked controversy for his racially charged comments about Jews and whites, was important in bringing issues of race relations to the campus' attention.

"What the University does is to expose all its warts to the wider community," says Ogletree. "It tolerates the most offensive, obnoxious, obscene, irreverent and irrelevant speakers."

And while the discussion focuses upon relations between African and Jewish-Americans, Ogletree said he hopes that the discussion will include an audience which will represent "every facet of America and beyond."

The importance of the panel, he said, is to bring the audience to look at each other not as types, but as individuals.

"People should not have their primary focus on their race, their religion or their gender," says Ogletree. "When we see each other as individuals, we will have made tremendous progress."

And he is optimistic that the panel will encourage more communication at the University.

"My sense is that people are coming together not to be entertained, but to be challenged, to be educated, and to be heard," says Ogletree.