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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:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 49401
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 History in Black and White September 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read many books of 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).
Things have 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.
 A Very Brave Woman September 20, 2008
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.
An interesting book September 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Good but Not Great July 11, 2008
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R19HJT0DG54NOF This was a decent book that I recommend, but I did have a few reservations in terms of perspective.
The truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable June 20, 2008
7 out of 7 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.
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