Members of both the Black Students Association (BSA) and the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel are seriously assessing the damage done to their relationship after a speech on Wednesday night by a Wellesley professor who is widely criticized as being anti-Semitic.

The event, sponsored by the BSA, was entitled The Bell Curve and Other Issues of Racism," but Wellesley Professor of Africana Studies Anthony Martin devoted much of his hour-long address to what he alleged was a Jewish "tradition" of persecuting Blacks.

Martin is the author of the 1993 book The Jewish Onslaught, which alleges a pattern of Jewish racism against Blacks.

"If the future of Black leadership is that people like [BSA President] Kristen Clarke are going to invite people like Tony Martin, this is terrible," Martin Lebwohl '96, a member of Hillel's coordinating council, said yesterday.

The chair and associate chair of Hillel distributed a one-page letter denouncing Martin to the more than 60 students who attended the event at Boylston Hall Wednesday.

"We are shocked and saddened by the choice of this divisive speaker," the letter reads.

BSA officers have stood firmly behind their choice of Martin.

"In inviting him we were not trying to push the campus to one view, but to open it up to a variety of views," BSA Treasurer Joshua D. Bloodworth '97 said.

Many Hillel members have objected to the choice of Martin, saying there are a variety of other scholars who have publicly protested The Bell Curve, the controversial book by former Harvard Professor Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray '65.

The book has drawn fire from ethnic groups across the country for the links it draws between race and IQ.

"I think the fact that they know him and chose him over other people who are more qualified is abhorrent and insensitive," Scott L. Alport '98 said.

"They knew that Tony Martin was going to come here and talk about Black persecution by Jews. There's no excuse," Lebwohl emphasized.

BSA President Kristen M. Clarke defended the choice after the speech Wednesday.

"Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact," she said.

The leaders of the two organizations are unclear about their future relationship after the controversy over Martin's speech.

"It's not like we said we're never talking to each other again," Hillel Chair Elie G. Kaunfer '95 said. "The relationship remains open."