The Southern Poverty Law Center, which last year visited CSULB to interview faculty, has issued a report stating that tenured Professor Kevin MacDonald "pumps out pages and pages of material on how Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies."

MacDonald, who joined CSULB in 1985, said the report did not fairly represent his views.

According to the report by the Montgomery, Ala.-based nonprofit civil-rights group, MacDonald believes that Jews, because they typically have been in the minority in countries, "are compelled by an evolutionary strategy that makes them push for liberal policies, like immigration and diversity, with the intent of weakening the power of the majority that rules them."

He told the Press-Telegram that his research shows that the interests of the "organized Jewish community" are in conflict with those of other ethnicities and ultimately aim to "lessen the power of the European-derived majority."

He claims that a major "Jewish interest" is a "liberal" immigration policy that has led to a "fragmentation of America," putting the country at risk of ethnic conflict as the formerly white majority becomes the minority.

The result is "an uncertain, but nevertheless dangerous future that will develop as white people become a minority, where they are just another group subjected to the whims of people in power," he said.

"Groups that put themselves in the minority are putting themselves in a dangerous position," he added.

MacDonald's views of Jews competing against other ethnicities for resources and power disturb CSULB history professor Don Schwartz.

"Certainly when he talks about Jews as a group having a genetic strategy to win out in the struggle for other groups, this is similar to what other, clearly anti-Semitic groups have said," Schwartz said.

"It's similar to some of the things that Hitler said in `Mein Kampf,' and it's similar to what some white supremacist groups have been saying," he added.

The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center stated that MacDonald's work has been cited favorably by white supremacist David Duke.

MacDonald said that he is not a "genetic determinist" and that his research is focused on ethnic competition and identity.

Although his research has been cited by Duke, that "doesn't mean I agree with David Duke's material," he said.

"But there not really anything I can do to prevent" people like Duke from citing his research for their own purposes, MacDonald added.

Beach Hillel, a campus Jewish youth group, trusts "that the university will take appropriate measures based on these findings to ensure that Long Beach State is an open and welcome place for all minorities and religious groups," said Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, the spiritual advisor to Beach Hillel.

MacDonald has drawn criticism for serving as an expert witness in 2000 in support of a London libel lawsuit brought by David Irving, who last year was found guilty by an Austrian jury of the crime of denying the Holocaust and sentenced to jail.

Irving had sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt and publisher Penguin Books, alleging she libeled him by writing that he had falsified documents in order to deny the scale of the Holocaust.

Irving lost and was rebuked by the judge, who called him an "active Holocaust denier."

MacDonald told the Press-Telegram that he agreed to testify in support of "free speech" and did not mean for his testimony to signal agreement with Irving's views.

MacDonald this semester is teaching a class in child and adolescent development and a class in social personality development, according to the university class schedule.

The Southern Poverty Law Center report links MacDonald to "white supremacist circles," noting that the professor received a $10,000 award from the Occidental Quarterly, which has been labeled a white nationalist journal.

MacDonald said that the publication is "open to articles that view white interests" the same way that Jews writing "Zionist articles" discuss their own interests.

The report also criticizes the university administration for promoting MacDonald to full professor in 1994 and questions the administration's commitment to diversity.

CSULB issued a statement on the controversy: "It is this university's position that academic freedom does not constrain or constrict the spectrum of knowledge, whether that knowledge should be popular or unpopular."

"The personal and academic opinions presented by individuals do not necessarily represent the opinions or beliefs of the university or the faculty as a whole," according to the statement, which added that the university believes in tolerance and diversity.

Kevin Butler can be reached at kevin.butler@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1308.