Lewis Lehe’s column on beards was one of the most inappropriate things I have ever read in… Lewis Lehe’s column on beards was one of the most inappropriate things I have ever read in The Pitt News. Last year, I had the pleasure of getting to know my neighbors who had come to Pittsburgh from Kazakhstan for graduate school. They were real people, and they didn’t appreciate people making up lies about their country.

It is not acceptable to make fun of Kazakhstan just because Sacha Baron Cohen did. If Lehe had said, “In Africa all men are required by law to grow beards,” the column would have obviously been racist.

Choosing Kazakhstan as the target does not make racism and xenophobia acceptable. I am embarrassed because what you say in The Pitt News represents the University, and I would not want a casual reader to think that all of us are racists and xenophobes just because Lewis Lehe is.

Kevin Fischer Class of 2008