The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a three-volume work of pseudo-scholarship, published by the Nation of Islam. The first volume, which was released in 1991, asserts that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. The Secret Relationship has been widely criticized for being antisemitic and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. The American Historical Association issued a statement condemning claims that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade, and other historians such as Wim Klooster and Seymour Drescher concluded that the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade was in fact minimal. The book uses selective citations in order to exaggerate the role of Jews. Reception The book's thesis has been labeled an antisemitic canard by historians, including Saul S. Friedman, who contends that Jews had a minimal role in the New World slave trade. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., head of the department of Afro-American studies at Harvard University, called the book "the Bible of new antisemitism" and added that "the book massively misinterprets the historical record, largely through a process of cunningly selective quotations of often reputable sources". Other black academics came forward to condemn the book. Eugene Genovese, an American historian and expert on slavery, wrote that the book "rivals The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in fantasy and gross distortion. The absurdity of its pretenses to scholarship are outweighed by its sheer viciousness. It must be taken with deadly seriousness as a transparent attempt to foment antisemitism, irrationality, and hatred, and to subvert intellectual discourse and common decency on our campuses." Wim Klooster noted that in "no period did Jews play a leading role as financiers, shipowners, or factors in the Transatlantic or Caribbean slave trades. They possessed far fewer slaves than non-Jews in every British territory in North America and the Caribbean. Even when Jews in a handful of places owned slaves in proportions slightly above their representation among a town's families, such cases do not come close to corroborating the assertions of The Secret Relationship." The book was criticized for being antisemitic and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. Common criticisms were that the book used selective quotes, made "crude use of statistics," and was purposefully trying to exaggerate the role of Jews. Historian Ralph A. Austen criticized