By Richard Cohen

Thursday, March 1, 2001; Page A19

Among Bill Clinton's last-minute acts, one is as troubling as it is obscure. I am not referring, of course, to the pardon of Marc Rich but to the appointment of Maya Angelou to the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1995 Angelou spoke for Louis Farrakhan. Six years later, she's on the board of a museum dedicated to an event Farrakhan ain't so sure ever happened.

Do not misunderstand. I am not accusing Angelou of either antisemitism or racism -- the twin pillars of Farrakhan's demagoguery -- or of being a supporter of his. I am saying, though, that when asked to appear at Farrakhan's Million Man March, she did not say no, as some principled African Americans did, nor did she offer any sort of rebuke. Instead, she recited a poem as forgettable as her appearance was not.

Of course, Angelou was hardly the only prominent African American there that day. Jesse Jackson spoke and he, despite what you may have heard, is no antisemite. Rep. Charles Rangel spoke and, cliches aside for the moment, it's probably true that some of his best friends are Jews.

But Angelou was a different matter. She is no politician or political leader. She would not have suffered at the polls if she told Farrakhan to get into his flying saucer and get the hell off the National Mall. But she chose to speak anyway. She did so either because the considerable ham in her could not turn down such an immense audience or because, as the import of her poem suggests, she cares deeply about racial unity.

Whatever the case, she bestowed her name and prestige upon a man whose antisemitism and racism were by then unquestionable, and who referred to the murder of Europe's Jews as "the so-called Holocaust of the so-called Jew, the imposter Jew." In doing so, she sold out those African Americans who refused to speak, who stayed away -- who understood that no message is grander, bigger or more important than the fight against bigotry.

For the Holocaust Museum, Angelou's appointment is yet another stain on an already blemished record. I happen to believe that this museum does not belong adjacent to the National Mall in the first place, since the Holocaust was not an American event.

What's more, the museum has been used for political purposes. First came the invitation to Croatia's then-president, Franjo Tudjman, to attend the opening -- a bit of redundancy there since antisemites were already well-represented in the displays. And then came the invitation to Yasser Arafat to tour the museum -- not a bad idea in itself, just that it was proffered as part of the Middle East peace process.

More recently, the board's chairman, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, used his official Holocaust Museum stationery to ask Bill Clinton to "perform one of the most God-like actions that anyone can ever do" -- the pardon of Marc Rich, as it turns out. To use the moral authority of the museum in a lobbying effort for a fugitive is -- or ought to be -- reprehensible. But Greenberg, like Rich, seems to have been pardoned for his actions.

As for Angelou, I could not find out who sponsored her appointment. I do know the board was seeking to diversify its membership and, in particular, was casting about for more African Americans. Former representative William H. Gray III, once chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was chosen; Vernon Jordan and Coretta Scott King were approached. The effort is a good one. The Holocaust Museum is supported by the taxpayer; it ought to have the broadest possible support.

But not so broad as to include people who seem from their behavior not to have the slightest clue of how the Holocaust happened. There were many causes -- chief among them, of course, Hitler's demonic antisemitism. But in the beginning, at least, that would not have been enough. He needed the approval or the mere indifference of people who had a cause greater or more urgent than ethnic tolerance. Germany had to be rebuilt. Communism had to be fought. Modernity had to be reversed. Supper had to be made.

Just as America is no Nazi Germany, Farrakhan is no Hitler. The stakes are different, so different that I might, if I were in the mood for soggy poetry, pick up something by Angelou. But a museum dedicated to those murdered in the name of hate is a different matter altogether. Maya Angelou doesn't belong in its board room. She belongs, instead, in the museum's exhibition rooms. She has lots to learn.