Talk:Julius Lester

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"pushed out"[edit]

The use of "pushed out" is dubious. The cited source uses "forced out" but offers no further information. This is not how university departments work, is it? Was there a vote to remove a professor from a department? Did a dean decide? Maybe the professor chose to leave the department due to "shunning" from colleagues? Unclear. The source itself may be dubious as it appears to be an insignificant publication with a possible POV conflict.

2804:14D:5C54:A5B9:8891:47E:2C0F:4A5A (talk) 15:36, 20 January 2018 (UTC) "pushed out" is dubious dude[reply]

On this question I noticed that the NY Times obituary, which was already cited elsewhere in the article, offered some clarification; however, I also researched further, and copyedited the passage, adding details and additional references. Lutzv (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Wiki win! Much improved, much appreciated. 2804:14D:5C54:A5B9:D91A:3C95:415E:B2E9 (talk) 10:38, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A big omission from this article[edit]

It's an unavoidable irony that in 1968 Julius Lester played a significant role in launching modern political secular antisemitism among Blacks (as opposed to old church-based antisemitism, which was already on the decline then) into public notice by causing an anti-Jewish hate poem to be read on WBAI in connection with the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school strike. It's mentioned fairly prominently in his New York Times obituary: [1] -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:33, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"In the late '60s, during a period of acute tension between blacks and Jews in New York City, he caused a furor after he countenanced the reading of an anti-Semitic poem on a show he hosted on the radio station WBAI. ... On Mr. Lester's show, on Dec. 26, 1968, [schoolteacher Leslie R.] Campbell read a poem written by one of his black teenage students. Dedicated to Albert Shanker, the president of the teachers' union, it began: "Hey, Jew boy, with that yarmulke on your head / You pale-faced Jew boy -- I wish you were dead."

That event is clearly well-substantiated, and there aren't BLP concerns here. I think the challenge will be including it in a way that isn't WP:UNDUE. Perhaps the obituary is a good guide for how to go about doing that. But I don't think there's a silent consensus that it shouldn't be included, just that nobody's taken up the challenge yet, and I encourage you to give it a try if you would like to. - Astrophobe (talk) 23:52, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would be kind of afraid that my word-choices wouldn't be properly neutral, unless I was simply directly copying a quote from an external source. AnonMoos (talk) 16:17, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]