History Lesson: A Race Odyssey | 
 enlarge | Author: Mary Lefkowitz
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 66684
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 030012659X
Dewey Decimal Number: 907.117447
EAN: 9780300126594
ASIN: 030012659X
Publication Date: April 28, 2008
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Product Description
In the early 1990s, Classics professor Mary Lefkowitz discovered that one of her faculty colleagues at Wellesley College was teaching his students that Greek culture had been stolen from Africa and that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. This book tells the disturbing story of what happened when she spoke out. Lefkowitz quickly learned that to investigate the origin and meaning of myths composed by people who have for centuries been dead and buried is one thing, but it is quite another to critique myths that living people take very seriously. She also found that many in academia were reluctant to challenge the fashionable idea that truth is merely a form of opinion. For her insistent defense of obvious truths about the Greeks and the Jews, Lefkowitz was embroiled in turmoil for a decade. She faced institutional indifference, angry colleagues, reverse racism, anti-Semitism, and even a lawsuit intended to silence her. In History Lesson Lefkowitz describes what it was like to experience directly the power of both postmodernism and compensatory politics. She offers personal insights into important issues of academic values and political correctness, and she suggests practical solutions for the divisive and painful problems that arise when a political agenda takes precedence over objective scholarship. Her forthright tale uncovers surprising features in the landscape of higher education and an unexpected need for courage from those who venture there.
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The truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable June 20, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Political Correctness Run Amok May 17, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
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.
A must-read May 12, 2008
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
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.
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