Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The Silencing of Fred Dube
Abena Ampofoa Asare
24 Jan 2024
🖨️ Print Article
Fred Dube at a 1981 UN meeting, “South African Women and Labour under Apartheid.”
Fred Dube at a 1981 UN meeting, “South African Women and Labour under Apartheid.” Image: UN Photo

Forty years ago, the exiled South African activist dared to teach Zionism critically and he was subjected to a ferocious attack. The treatment he was subjected to is being repeated today.

Originally published in Boston Review.

At the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the syllabus for an Africana Studies summer course entitled The Politics of Race includes prompts for students in need of term paper guidance. The twelve optional topics are deliberately provocative: “Can a Christian or a democrat be a racist?” “I.Q. tests are a means for blaming the victim.” “Zionism is as much racism as Nazism was racism.” A historian visiting from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University complains that the latter topic, thus the course, thus the professor are examples of anti-Semitism. An uproar ensues.

This year is 1983. The professor under scrutiny is Ernest Frederick Dube, the South African anti-apartheid activist, Robben Island survivor, Cornell-trained psychologist, husband, and father. Branded as an anti-Semite, he will be gone from the Stony Brook campus by 1987.

When I began teaching at Stony Brook, my colleagues in Africana Studies told me Dube’s story in different ways. Each time, I understood the lesson: the politics of Israel-Palestine are cordoned-off; they are an arena where you dare not tread. Even when, like Dube, your faculty peers support you, students lead protests against your dismissal, and you are a hero of the South African anti-apartheid movement, you may still end up losing your home and position.

Read the entire essay here.

 

Abena Asare is Associate Professor of Modern African Affairs at Stony Brook University. She is author of Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana and When Will the Joy Come: Black Women in the Ivory Tower.

South Africa
Israel
Zionism
Academia

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Sara Flounders
U.S./Israeli plans to destabilize Africa and Asia – Somaliland Recognition
14 January 2026
Breaking the longstanding African consensus on post-colonial borders, Israel is actively destabilizing an entire continent to serve its interes
Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team
The Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team Condemns the Israeli/U.S. Effort to Destabilize Somalia with the Recognition of Somaliland
07 January 2026
Israel's recognition of Somaliland undermines not just Somalia's sovereignty, but that of all African states. 
Jon Jeter
In South Africa, White is the New Black: The ANC’s Failures Opens the Door for the Return of a Government Led by Settlers
19 November 2025
Decades of unmet promises and endemic corruption have eroded the ANC's legitimacy, creating a surge of support for a party led by South Africa'
Michael F. Brown
Trump Ambassador Pick Vows to Pressure South Africa Over Gaza Genocide Case
05 November 2025
The nomination of an ambassador to South Africa who vows to "pressure" the country over its Gaza case confirms that the U.S.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
A Tale of Two Ceasefires: Gaza and DRC
22 October 2025
The US has negotiated ceasefires in Gaza and the DRC’s eastern Kivu Provinces, but the killing, displacement, and devastation in both continue.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: David and Goliath Collaborate in Africa, Africa Research Group, 1969
15 October 2025
“Israel has played a relatively invisible but strategically important role in Africa as a servant of the United States…”
Raïs Neza Boneza
Through an African Lens: The Israel-Iran Conflict and a Call for Peace
16 July 2025
Western cameras frame this as Israel vs.
Jon Jeter
Fleeing Imaginary Persecution at Home, South African ‘Refugees’ May Find the Grass is Not Greener in America
14 May 2025
The Trump administration’s decision to fast-track asylum for white South Africans—claiming "persecution"—is a political stunt, ignoring that th
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: White Racism and Black Consciousness, Stephen Bantu Biko, 1971
12 February 2025
Steve Biko long ago diagnosed the pathological cruelty and rot of white society.
Jon Jeter
Landless and Poor, Black South Africans Say they will Defy Trump and Move Ahead, Finally, with Land Reform
12 February 2025
A torrent of false and racist claims culminated in a presidential executive order suspending any aid to South Africa.

More Stories


  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Breaking the Silence Revisited: Gaza, Venezuela, and the Enduring Relevance of Dr. King’s Critique of Empire
    14 Jan 2026
    The annual ritual of sanitizing Martin Luther King Jr. serves to obscure his radical anti-war politics, which are urgently needed to challenge U.S. imperialism.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Autocracy in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Eric D. Walrond, 1923
    14 Jan 2026
    “[T]he United States on March 31, 1917,...acquired the three Danish West Indian isles…subsequently rechristened “the Virgin Islands of the United States.” 
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Bolivarian Legacy, from Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro
    14 Jan 2026
    Attorney Dan Kovalik is an attorney representing Colombian President Gustavo Petro. He is also author of The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US Is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil. Skyhorse…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Spinning Half-truth straw into big lie gold…
    14 Jan 2026
    "Spinning Half-truth straw into big lie gold…" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Domestic Global South and The Need for Climate and Environmental Internationalism
    14 Jan 2026
    True environmental liberation demands south-to-south solidarity against racial capitalism, linking the struggles of oppressed communities from Palestine to Louisiana under a shared framework of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us