The Pacifica Forum is not a stranger to controversy. With discussion topics titled “Swastikas: A personal passion,” the group has been the target of University concern for several years.
However, after being named an official hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Pacifica Forum is dealing with an entirely new onslaught of dissenters.
“There are a lot of organizations that register hate groups, but the Southern Poverty Law Center is the most comprehensive and certainly the best funded study there is out there,” Anti-Hate Eugene Representative Michael Williams said. “I can imagine that the release of this information is gonna put more pressure on the group than they have experienced in past.”
The Pacifica Forum, founded and led by retired University professor Orval Etter, meets in the Walnut room of the EMU on Fridays at 4 p.m. to discuss topics the SPLC calls “anti-semitic and racist.”
Etter argues that his group is not racist, but exists to generate intellectual dialect about controversial racial topics.
“I hardly know how to respond to accusations that the Pacifica Forum is a hate group,” he said. “Apparently the Pacifica Forum has received some designation as racist, but I can assure you that it must just be someone connected with the forum that is racist; I don’t ascribe to that ideology.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center produced its annual investigative report of hate groups in the United States for 2008, and reported that the number of hate groups increased by 4 percent since 2007. The Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Study also says the number of hate groups has increased dramatically in the last decade, with a total growth of 54 percent.
Dawn Coslow, a member of the Pacifica Forum, does not agree with SPLC’s claim that her group is a hate group and argues that the SPLC is trying to make money by adding more hate groups to their annual investigative report.
“They were not basing their information on anything but hearsay. I am very surprised they would generate a false accusation just to make money,” she said. “I intent to confront them and find out what their real reasons for labeling us a hate group were.”
University spokeswoman Julie Brown said she wants to make it clear that the group is not supported in any way by the University and the group only has access to the Walnut room because of a University policy that allows retired professors to rent space on campus to hold public meetings.
Many community members, professors and students have expressed their concern about holding such controversial meetings on University ground.
“I do understand that banning someone from meeting on the campus would infringe on free speech. I just find it hard to believe the administrations think allowing such groups to operate on campus is appropriate,” German professor Jeffrey Librett said. “I am not terribly worried about the group being dangerous, but it certainly is not a good thing to have them meeting at the EMU.”
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