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History Lesson: A Race Odyssey

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This brilliant, cogently written book details the agonies classical scholar Mary Lefkowitz encountered when she endeavored, over a 5-year period, to stand up and fight for ancient history to be taught at Wellesley college from evidence, not from the wishful thinking of Afro-centrists. (Truth in reviewing: I am a Wellesley alumna, and I never dreamed such a surreal, bizarre conflict could take place at my school.) When Lefkowitz, a mild-mannered, well-spoken professor, pointed out that all the evidence pointed to Greek philosophy being invented by Greeks, not Egyptians, she was branded as a racist, and was the subject of anti-Semitic rants. Thank God Lefkowitz stuck to her guns, although clearly, the fight took a toll on her. This book is an absolute MUST READ for anyone interested in the messes academics now find themselves embroiled in. We ALL must fight for the TRUTH to be taught in classrooms; otherwise, we will have no common ground on which to engage in learned discourse. I unqualifiedly recommend this book, and have bought SIX copies to send to friends.

Mary Lefkowitz is a classics scholar, who spent her career in ancient history and languages who is now retired. This is the story of what happens when a distinguished scholar like Lefkowitz questions the dogma of the phony scholars that hide under the mantle of political correctness.

Some writers who are trying to build an "afrocentric" history, they should not be called scholars, have argued that the Greeks stole major ideas from the Egyptians especially by taking things from the library at Alexandria. They make the specific claim that Aristotle did that. Odd thing however is that Aristotle was dead before the library was built; that is according to a well researched historical record. But in the deconstructionist world of many universities, facts don't matter, interpretations do.

Lefowitz details the perils of pointing that fact out. Her colleagues at Wellesley lacked the temerity to defend her. Lefkowitz did what a scholar should, she raised questions based on her research about these odd and fundamentally absurd notions. Unfortunately, she was not appreciated for her principled stance. Both her provost and her president, failed to defend her against the attacks from the other side who called her all sorts of names. Professor Lefkowitz, however, had the intellectual integrity to stick to her facts.

This is a chronicle of the costs of maintaining scholarly standards. It is well written and quite interesting.

The story of Mary Lefkowitz and her experiences over the last decade and a half is very important not only in terms of the facts, but as a story of how the culture wars are fought.

How a scholar of ancient history whose only concern was the teaching of facts, became a flash point in the race game is an object lesson in what happens when you ignore important principles in order to get along. The critical points in the book are early as she shows how in order to avoid confrontation people with authority choose to empower those who eschew fact, evidence, schollarship, procedure and decorum. The enablers, more than the hucksters, are the real villains of this book. Their cowardice should be a source of personal and professional disgrace as tachers and administrators. It is an excellent illustration of the cost of appeasement.

Her writing seems rather naive at times; almost as if she doesn't realize why this is happening. In the end she decides that facts were being suborned for the sake of a desired result (empowerment and pride). She argues that a noble motive doesn't justify the use of untruth and myth. It demeans those who the users would hope to empower. Lefkowitz's essential innocence to actual motive is almost incredible to read, but is no more odd that the media's unwillingness to condemn a certain reverend's from Chicago incredible statements before a select group until he publicly made those same statements in front of a national audience.

This is the book's one weakness. She doesn't realize that this is in effect a religion and its "preachers" goal is to empower not the follower but themselves for the sake of status, influence and financial reward. This can only be done if the rubes are kept angry and dependant. Her fact based argument was and is a threat to this. Thus she was attacked.

In terms of readability this is as dry as one might expect from one whose main concern is literal fact. Lefkowitz is no Shelby Foote or Will Durant but she doesn't have to be, the story itself is compelling and topical enough not to require such an author.

This fault aside this book is vital reading. It is important to reward truth and those who will stand up to it but its also a reminder to others that the price of silence will eventually have to be paid with interest.

The university is a world of its own, mostly separated from everyday life, where radical thought and intransigent ideas often germinate and gain footing; indeed, liberal arts departments are often the epitome of Donne's island, entire of itself. The university is where Noam Chomsky can speak out against neo-liberalism, where Thomas Sowell can speak out in favor of free markets, and where Howard Zinn could write his famous tractatus, A People's History of the United States. The university was also the place where one Tony Martin could teach undergraduate students that Greek philosophy was originally stolen from the Egyptians, and that the Jews were the masterminds behind the African slave trade.

Mary Lefkowitz's book is a memoir about the several years that she confronted Martin and her battle against the school of Afrocentrism in general. Afrocentrism is a theory that places Africa at the heart and origin of the world's culture, philosophy, and history. Specifically, Lefkowitz took issue with the notion that much of ancient Grecian culture and philosophy has its origin in Africa. This notion was propagated in Martin Bernal's series of books called Black Athena. After she wrote a book review in The New Republic critical of Bernal's work, she realized that her Wellesley College colleague Tony Martin was teaching this "myth" to his students. Lefkowitz wrote several articles against Afrocentrism in general and Martin specifically, which resulted in a libel lawsuit in which Lefkowitz was the respondent. Lefkowitz won.

Yes, the university is often the home of wacko professors who profess nonsense. Thus this book is a good discussion of the role of free speech in the university. When politics and social science/ humanities mix, the result is almost always controversial. It is also a good discussion of "postmodernism" in the liberal arts, although I think that Lefkowitz is too quick to blame Martin's theories on the spectre of postmodernism (I think it would be more correct to say that Martin is simply wacko and anti-semite; indeed, he served as an "expert" witness in the trial of the Holocaust denier Ernest Zundel). Lefkowitz is nevertheless an honest writer with a calm voice, which makes this short volume a pleasure to read. However, those looking for a solid refutation of some of the myths of Afrocentrism should definitely look elsewhere. I for one plan on reading Lefkowitz's book Not Out Of Africa sometime in the near future.

Moral of the story: be honest and stick to the facts.

As someone without any experience in the academic world (other than my own college education), this book was a brief and straight-to-the-point introduction to the intrigues that accompany the impassioned debates of this milieu.

Even if you don't want to read the entire book, the introduction can be read alone as a succinct course in the issues of Afrocentrism and post-modernism and of their polarized factions in the study of the classics. In these opening pages, the author summarizes her run-in as a professor at Wellesley with the concept that truth is relative and that the past can be rewritten -- and thus sacrified -- to promote the racial social agendas of today. To write so clearly with little of the clutter of academic thought is no small feat.

Whether or not the Greeks stole their culture and philosophy from Egypt and whether or not Egyptians can be considered Africans doesn't have a huge impact on my life. But whether the truth is relative, or whether it can be known -- and should be promoted -- is a question that has daily relevance to me. I'm glad that there are those who, like Mary Lefkowitz, are willing to defend historical facts and truth even at great personal cost.

This absorbing, short book is the tale of a very brave woman. All those who care for the survival of humane values owe her a tremendous debt, for writing the book, and for having fought the difficult, courageous fight that it recounts.

The author is a distinguished scholar of ancient Greece, and a professor emerita at Wellesley College. As part of her responsibilities at this elite institution, she was required, as were all faculty members, to scrutinize and to vote on the course descriptions of all the College's offerings. When she found that one of these courses taught racist myth as true history, she objected while many of her colleagues pretended not to notice. For her troubles she was vilified and denounced in the hate literature, one of her offenses being, according to those attacking her, that, basically, she was a Jew, one of those with hooked noses, part of an alleged "Jewish Onslaught."

She was also sued for her temerity to speak out. This litigation was ultimately found by the courts to have no merit, but not without five years of legal harassment by her tormentors.

Those pursuing the attack against her did so in the guise of alleged African-American, Afrocentric concerns. One of the heartening aspects of her story is that several of her African-American colleagues stood by her throughout her ordeal. It is also comforting to read that a number of well-established groups and institutions managed the courage to support her against an all too prevalent political correctness.

The simplistic, mythic, hateful "Afrocentric" doctrine that Lefkowitz had to confront in Massachusetts is also the inspiring ideology of Trinity United Church of Chicago, where Senator Obama worshipped for twenty years. Others left this church when the doctrine became established there, but not Obama. Unlike Lefkowitz at Wellesley, Obama in Chicago avoided his eyes.

I have read many books similar to Mary Lefokowitz's "History Lesson". It's a genre of its own: "books about the perils of postmodernism". The classic of the field is Paul Gross and Norman Levitt's Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science. You can read about the pernicious effects of Post Modernism on science studies in Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, on history in In Defense of History and in The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past, on Women's Studies in Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies, on Middle East studies in Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Policy Papers (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), No. 58.) (Policy Papers ... Institute for Near East Policy), No. 58.), etc.

What it all amounts to is something like this: one effect of the 1960s was the spread of French Theory (works by the like of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan) to America. The French theorists and their American disciples (henceforth "the Postmodernists") abandoned traditional beliefs in truth and objectivity, and substituted them with a variety of theories, in which claims for truth are labeled "meta-narratives" and are received skeptically, as representing the point of view of the (dead, white, European) elite. The postmodernists promote instead the narrative of "the other": women, minorities, the insane, etc - and privilege those instead of the mainstream narratives.

"History Lesson" is very much inline with that of these other books. But it is no dissection of Postmodernist influence in Lefkowitz's chosen field - ancient history. Lefkowitz has already published such a book (Not Out Of Africa: How "Afrocentrism" Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History (A New Republic Book) which I haven't read). In that book Lefkowitz has challenged the claims of a Postmodernist sub-specie which goes under the name "Afrocentrism". Afrocentrists believe that Africa deserves credit for much of the West's achievements in science andd philosophy. Specifically, Afro centrists frequently claim that historical Greek figures such as Cleopatra and Sophocles were black; That Greek philosophy has Egyptian origins, and that Aristotle read his philosophy in the Library of Alexandria (which was actually constructed after he had died p. 28).

"History Lesson" is the story of Lefkowitz's confrontation with Afrocentrism, and a reflection on the meaning of the phenomena.

The villain of "History Lesson" is one Anthony "Tony" Martin, Professor of Africana Studies in Wellesley College (where Lefkowitz also teaches), an unpleasant man, a bully, and an African American prone to constantly playing the race card (I wish to stress that this is the man as depicted in "History Lesson". Until I read the book I have never heard of Dr. Martin). Dr. Martin has been teaching an Afro-centric course for quite some time when Dr. Lefkowitz, as part of a crusade against Afrocentrism, started to publicly criticize it.

Some of Lefkowitz criticism was less than politic. She has pushed to change the name of Martin's course from "Africans in Greece and Rome" to "Africans in the Greco-Roman World". An empty gesture, as the content of the course was to remain the same, but one can understand Martin's irritation at the change, which he pressured the dean into reversing (pp. 47-48).

At the time, Lefkowitz felt quite alone in her campaign against the Afrocentric claims. Martin and some colleagues and students criticized Lefkowitz, and the college administration did not feel like taking the sides of the Grecians; Historical truth was not worth fighting for.

Things changed when it came to be known that Martin's teachings included not only slander against Grecians, but also against Jews. Unlike the Grecians, attacking the Jews was not OK. The administration and fellow professors criticized Martin. Some of the criticism was heavy handed. Four Jewish groups "called upon the Trustees and administration of Wellesley to review the behavior and status of Martin" (p. 80).

The situation has gotten out of hand. Martin went on to self publish a genuine anti-Semitic tract, The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront; He also sued Lefkowitz (among others) for libel.

The trial could have been the dramatic event of the book, but it is passed over quite quickly and with little fanfare. It took five years, but Lefkowitz had support from her insurance company and from various Jewish organizations. She won.

The book continues to its anti Climatic conclusion. No great evil befell Dr. Lefkowitz. One of the Amazon reviewers calls her "very brave"; this is silly. Lefkowitz's critique did cost her some strong and unfair criticism, but there's no indication that her livelihood or her career were at any great risk. Her confrontation with Afrocentrism got her into some hot water, but it also gave her a great deal of publicity, and maybe money; Her anti-Afrocentrism book "Not Out of Africa" has at the time of this writing 154 Amazon reviews; Her Women's Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation has three. Lefkowitz was clearly on the side of the angels - but there were many more angels than adversaries in this fight.

The bigger question is what if anything should be done about Postmodernist muddleheaded-ness in the academy. Lefkowitz calls for more civil discussion with more focus on facts, which is a noble call likely to go unheeded, and for genteel tinkering with the tenure system.

Two obvious types of reform may be attempted for improving academic standards. One is weakening Tenure. There is an inevitable trade off between independence and accountability. Under the current system, tenured professors are independent. This relieves them from outside pressures, both proper and improper. That at least some would abuse these pressures is inevitable. Weakening tenure would make Professors more accountable, and therefore probably better; but it would weaken their independence, and would make them more thralls of the zeitgeist, and potentially slaves to nefarious interests.

More promising is a reform of the various ethnic, gender, and region studies units of various institutes of higher education. I do not know what goes on in the average women's studies center or Jewish studies department, etc, but it seems that the worst abuses come from those units. This is probably inevitable - the gathering of like minded people of similar backgrounds is likely to promote group solidarity and groupthink. Making sure that these centers are well integrated to the mainstream of the university life would not only reduce the occasions (which may be rare already) of absurdist anti Intellectual Fads - it would also allow the majority of students and faculty to benefit from more perspectives. (See the discussion of the attempt to partially reintegrate Cornell University in Richard Thompson Ford's masterly The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse).

Or perhaps we should do nothing; There is already a strong backlash against Post Modernism. Much of it is not measured and targeted but constitutes right wing paranoia as substitute for left wing inanity. Perhaps we should leave the various combatants to fight it out in the marketplace of ideas.

This is a very interesting book on how ideology can pervert the goals of a college education. My daughter was a student at Wellesley College during some of the time covered by the book, so I have independent verification of a number of the points covered. It is a cautionary tale that should be ever on the minds of college administrators and the general public.

In this brief volume, classicist Mary Lefkowitz tells the story of how she "got in a lot of trouble" for exposing the vicious irrationality of Afrocentricism in general and that of her Wellesley colleague Tony Martin in specific. She also correctly indicts a lazy postmodernism for the continued academic indifference to professors who indoctrinate their students with socially satisfying myths.

Lefkowitz has been justly praised for her defense of historical truth, and she continues to believe that her personal struggle enabled her to "convince quite a few people that myth shouldn't be taught as history." (149) Nevertheless, she takes as much refuge as possible from the protective coloration of the academy, firmly supporting tenure even for professors who turn history into fiction or into hate.

Lefkowitz has been through the wringer on this issue, but it might have been a lot worse. In defending herself from anti-Semitic Afrocentrists, Lefkowitz retained the politically correct high ground, and she also received significant financial and legal backing from Jewish advocacy groups. What if the Afrocentrists had defamed a different minority, such as fundamentalist Christians?

this small (160 page. YET, heavy) book is about a professor ( lefkowitz ) that thought it would be prudent to go against one of the schools curriculum - african history.
the motive of her action was not that she was against that subject (she's far beyond that ignorance). but, against the mythical tools that martin was making his students eat.
i will soon discover, it was not historical reality that mattered to tony martin or his faction. What mattered to them simply race - lefkowitz p. 9 ( it became overt ( the smell of racism ) to understand WHY martin overreacted ( failed to use 4th grade reasoning. ) when a student ( white ) asked him ( black ) a known sincere valid question. p. 18.

* i postulate that martin was thinking about one of farrkahn's ( fake leader of the nation of islam - FAKE MUSLIMS) BENT / hateful / "justified" racial speeches that he gladly attended, before the student posed the question. Or that lefkowitz IS ON POINT with the psyche of certain unfortunate mind( s ) p. 21 ).

the reader( s ) of this sweat book will respect why / how lefkowitz rolled up her sleeves and took some action ( while too many ( staff / faculty ) sat on their behind and sucked their thumbs - typical behaviorism of fear ) by using her unavoidable intelligence.
i couldn't help wondering why we were talking about feelings instead of historical values - lefkowitz p. 55

make no mistake; lefkowitz delightful actions will not end racism in universities - wishful thinking. however, i / reader( s )will appreciate that her BRAVE actions have put a dent into certain BENT curriculum's / professor(s).

if the reader(s) is interested in the environment of pathetic racism / mythical views / how some students are tricked / bent pride and a sound action against the grain by an eminent fearless scholar ( that makes her points clear), this little cheap book is for you.

* to add a smooth rhythmic joy to the brain, i highly suggest that the reader(s) pore her other book, NOT OUT OF AFRICA.
kick your feet up and enjoy lefkowitz splendid book ( s).

Peace.