JTA – Kristen Clarke, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, said it was a mistake to have invited the anti-Semitic screed writer to speak at Harvard when she was leading a black student group there.
In 1994, as head of a Black Student Association, Clarke invited Tony Martin, author of a book called “The Jewish Onslaught,” to speak and then defend him. The Jews on campus at the time were appalled by the invitation.
“I wouldn’t do it again to give someone like him a platform,” she told the striker on Thursday.
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Clarke, the president of the Civil Rights Advocacy Committee, has worked closely with Jewish groups for the past several years to fight white supremacists.
Biden announced his choice of Clarke on Monday, which was lauded by the Anti-Defamation League.
The following day, Tucker Carlson, a Fox News Channel host, exposed stories of the Martin Controversy at Harvard Crimson in 1994. As a result, statements by liberal Jewish groups who supported Clarke turned down offers to stigmatize her with measures taken as a student.
“This week, Kristen Clarke admitted a mistake when she was a Harvard student giving a platform to a professor who promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” Bend the Arc: Jewish Action said on Twitter Thursday. “She clearly denounces anti-Semitism – and acts according to this obligation in the fight against religious discrimination.”
Clarke also praised the National Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Democratic Council of America and Joel Rubin, the executive director of the American Jewish Congress, for their work to combat anti-Semitism on Thursday.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who heads T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights group, said in an interview that Clarke’s testimony this week was a “model of teshuvah,” or repentance, and mocked those on the right who would stigmatize someone for something They said like a teenager.
Some of Carlson’s attacks on Clarke include remarks by Clarke, taken out of context, about white supremacy during her Harvard years when she contrasted it with black supremacy.
“It’s no coincidence that the people on the right are deliberately chasing after women with color and trying to get something out of their past, even if it’s something that happened when they were 19,” Jacobs said.
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