Cartoonist Forced Out Over Image of African Famine

"One of our members, she is actually Ethiopian, so this hit home to her," he said.

High-level university officials -- including the U-Va. vice president and chief student affairs officer, the interim dean of students and the dean of African American affairs -- condemned the cartoon in an open campus letter, saying that more than 60 people had contacted a university Web site to report bias.

About a third of this year's freshmen at U-Va. identify themselves as minorities or international students in what school officials describe as their most diverse class ever.

Deborah McDowell, interim director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute, which oversees the university's African American studies program, said she learned about the cartoon when two students came to see her during her office hours.

"I thought it was highly offensive," she said of the cartoon. "It draws on a variety of stereotypes about African people presumed to be barbaric or outside the realm of civilization. . . . I don't know what the point was. That's part of the problem. Humor is always risky. When one takes a risk about something so sensitive . . . one has to take their lumps."

Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor for the New Yorker, which specializes in drawings that mock human foibles, looked at Woolard's cartoon after a reporter e-mailed it to him.

He said that it is important for cartoonists to confront serious topics but that they should be careful when depicting a race or ethnicity that has been caricatured in demeaning ways.

"The New Yorker magazine would not have published it," Mankoff said. "It doesn't sound on the face of it that his intention was to offend, but there is liability there by not being aware of these issues. We live in a very polarized society in which there are long-running grievances."

So how does an artist make a funny cartoon about Ethiopian famine? "You might make fun of people and models who aspire to this emaciated look and show their fatuousness," Mankoff said. "It's a more sophisticated approach."

Woolard said he wants to continue cartooning, even if it means he has to start his own Web site or publication.

He already has his next subject: global warming.