New York, NY, January 31, 1996...The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today said it was shocked to learn that Time Warner, Inc. will feature Chicago conspiracy theorist Steve Cokely and Nation of Islam minister Conrad Muhammad at the "Our Roots Run Deep" lecture series.

In a letter to Time Warner, Inc. Chairman, Gerald Levin, ADL National Director, Abraham H. Foxman, said, "While we commend you on your efforts to commemorate Black History Month, we are stunned that you consider Cokely and Muhammad to be appropriate speakers for a respectable lecture series." Mr. Foxman said that an invitation extended to Mr. Cokely and Mr. Muhammad to participate in the lecture, "implies that their outlandish, repugnant beliefs are credible and worthy of public attention."

In past lectures Steve Cokely has expressed the belief that the "AIDS epidemic is a result of doctors, especially Jewish ones, who inject the AIDS virus in blacks" and, at a recent appearance at a Virginia college, he told students that the white man comes from the filth and darkness of the caves and African Americans should try to "beat them back down to where they came from."

Mr. Foxman describes Conrad Muhammad's "similarly offensive" rhetoric as an echo of the "racist and anti-Semitic teachings of his mentor, Louis Farrakhan." Mr. Muhammad has said that, "Christians practice a dirty religion," has called Jews "bloodsuckers," and claimed that drugs, cancer and AIDS were introduced to the Black community in "white plots against Black people."

"Including these two men in your program does a disservice to the Black community," said Mr. Foxman, "because it suggests that the community would consider Cokely and Muhammad's views suitable for such a forum, when the majority of African Americans actually reject them."

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.