Updated

The Hyatt hotel chain has come under fire for agreeing to host a conference this weekend sponsored by a white supremacist group.

The conference in the Washington suburb of Herndon is sponsored by the Oakton, Va.-based New Century Foundation, whose leader says the white race is losing its identity in the United States because of multiculturalism and immigration.

Students at George Mason University organized a phone campaign to urge the Hyatt to shut its doors to the conference, which it has hosted in previous years.

"We're not taking away their freedom of speech. We're letting people know that Hyatt is supporting these people," student activist Tariq Khan said.

Hyatt spokeswoman Lori Armon said the opinions of those at the conference do not necessarily reflect those of the Hyatt Corp. "However, we do not discriminate against any of our guests or organizations with which our guests are affiliated," she said.

The foundation's leader, Jared Taylor, expects about 250 people to attend.

Taylor said he does not view himself as a white supremacist even though he believes whites are genetically superior to blacks.

"If anything, we're yellow supremacists because the IQ data, the general social dysfunction data, suggest that Asians are superior to whites," he said in a telephone interview.

Writing last year in a magazine article, Taylor said the chaos in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina showed that "When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears."