It appears so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain >Roth described in a 2012 piece for The New Yorker

It appears so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Stain >Roth described in a 2012 piece for The New Yorker how his novel was inspired by an event in the life of his friend Melvin Tumin, a "professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years". Tumin was subject to a "witch hunt" but was ultimately found blameless in a matter involving use of allegedly racial language concerning two African American students. ... >In the reviews of the book in both the daily and the Sunday New York Times in 2000, Kakutani and Lorrie Moore suggested that the central character of Coleman Silk might have been inspired by Anatole Broyard, a well-known New York literary editor of the Times. Other writers in the academic and mainstream press made the same suggestion. After Broyard's death in 1990, it had been revealed that he racially passed during his many years employed as a critic at The New York Times. He was of Louisiana Creole ancestry. However, Roth himself has stated that he had not known of Broyard's ancestry when he started writing the book and only learned of it months later.