When confirmation hearings begin next week, on March 21, one issue that could come up dates back to 1992, when the Black Students Association invited anti-semitic professor Leonard Jeffries to speak. He was invited by the student group despite a public record of making wildly racist remarks about “rich Jews” and similar tropes.
Robert Knight, a columnist for The Washington Times, tells AFN the incident is worth bringing up at the hearings because the speaker was known for his anti-Jewish views.
“And although there's no evidence that [Brown Jackson] took part in any of the events, including his appearance,” Knight says, “it's an indicator of where her values lie.”
Jeffries’ guest appearance on campus was not a little-know issue, either: Students and professors criticized the invitation, and he was protested on campus by Jewish group Hillel and by Harvard’s chapter of the College Democrats.
Brown Jackson is expected to be grilled by Republican senators, and fawned over by Democrats, over three days of confirmation hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee includes 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans, and Democrats only need to peel off one GOP vote to send her nomination to the full Senate.
Biden nominated Brown Jackson after vowing to name a female minority to the court, and GOP senators will likely be challenged next week to stand in the way of putting a black female on the bench.
