History Lesson: A Race Odyssey
by Mary Lefkowitz
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Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 907.117447
EAN: 9780300126594
ISBN: 030012659X
Label: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2008-04-28
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: RAGE Odyssey
Comment: "History Lesson" by Mary Lefkowitz.
Subtitled: "A Race Odyssey".
Yale University Press, 2008.
My conception was that Wellesley College (1875) was one of those WASP institutions in New England, filled with waspish young ladies taught by WASP professors. This book, "History Lesson", has turned that into a MISconception. My second misconception was that faculty discussions were quiet, almost dull meetings in a large board room, with a big mahogany table, and a fire roaring in the fireplace. Tea and crumpets were served. Voices were NEVER raised as the faculty spoke about the correct translation (from the ancient Greek) of line number so and so on page such and such of Homer's "Odyssey". The third misconception was that there were no riots, no sit-ins, no demonstrations on the placid and beautiful Wellesley campus.
This book, "History Lesson", by Professor Mary Lefkowitz, has shown me that all my ideas about Wellesley were misconceptions. Years ago, Professor Lefkowitz became embroiled in a controversy about the validity of certain aspects of Africana studies. The good Africana professor, male and black, viewed the world through black glasses and, therefore, considered various Greek philosophers as thieves who stolen their great ideas from black men (notably from the famous ancient library at Alexandria). Professor Lefkowitz, who is Jewish, began to write corrections about the obvious mistakes. Clearly, the protagonists, the black male professor and the Jewish female professor, do not qualify as WASPs. (Neither do I. When I was working on my MA, History, at a state college in Massachusetts, I had to remind the Professor of "The American West", that some of us, with blue eyes, and fair skin, and blond hair [when I had hair] do NOT want to be called "Anglos". I am Celtic by descent. )
As the good author then records, the discourse was hardly civil and elegant. In fact, the author writes of an incidence in which the black professor, tall and masculine, intimidates a young lady student so greatly that she withdraws from Wellesley. The "exchange of ideas", if it can be called that, goes back and forth in various journals and articles, resulting in name calling by the black professor ... whose actions can objectively be termed anti-Semitic. This then results in the black professor taking the Jewish professor to court. The law suit, the appeals, etc. are described in excoriating detail by Professor Lefkowitz in this book. Heaven help us, Mary Lefkowitz actually writes that her assigned lawyer, Michael Gallagher, understood "...why I objected to the notion that Aristotle had stolen his philosophy from the library at Alexandria. Gallagher had majored in classics at Holy Cross." (page 98). Of course, Holy Cross is a Jesuit college, founded in1843 by Irishmen in Worcester, Massachusetts. Professor Lefkowitz had to look outside of Wellesley for succor.
One of the interesting descriptions by Mary Lefkowitz is that of then Wellesley President, Nan Keohane, born in Arkansas. President Keohane did not appear to understand the objections of Professor Lefkowitz to untrue history of philosophy. Ms. Keohane did little to tamp the fires of rhetoric and return the discussion into my conception of the board room with tea and crumpets and quiet tones. Keohane went on to the presidency of Duke University. Controversy continued at Wellesley.
There were sit-ins and loud lack of decorum at various meetings and presentations about the controversy ... not only at Wellesley College, but also at other institutions of "higher' learning. If you want to discover who won the law suits, and who won the appeals, and who apologized to whom ....you'll have to read her book. As for me, I am happy that my undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, from the only Catholic engineering college in New York City. Thirty five years in the engineering business appears milder than the "Rage Odyssey" that the two professors experienced. By the way, both of them are now retied.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A strike against political correctness
Comment: 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?
Customer Rating:
Summary: History in Black and White
Comment: 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).
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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Very Brave Woman
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An interesting book
Comment: 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.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: RAGE Odyssey
Comment: "History Lesson" by Mary Lefkowitz.
Subtitled: "A Race Odyssey".
Yale University Press, 2008.
My conception was that Wellesley College (1875) was one of those WASP institutions in New England, filled with waspish young ladies taught by WASP professors. This book, "History Lesson", has turned that into a MISconception. My second misconception was that faculty discussions were quiet, almost dull meetings in a large board room, with a big mahogany table, and a fire roaring in the fireplace. Tea and crumpets were served. Voices were NEVER raised as the faculty spoke about the correct translation (from the ancient Greek) of line number so and so on page such and such of Homer's "Odyssey". The third misconception was that there were no riots, no sit-ins, no demonstrations on the placid and beautiful Wellesley campus.
This book, "History Lesson", by Professor Mary Lefkowitz, has shown me that all my ideas about Wellesley were misconceptions. Years ago, Professor Lefkowitz became embroiled in a controversy about the validity of certain aspects of Africana studies. The good Africana professor, male and black, viewed the world through black glasses and, therefore, considered various Greek philosophers as thieves who stolen their great ideas from black men (notably from the famous ancient library at Alexandria). Professor Lefkowitz, who is Jewish, began to write corrections about the obvious mistakes. Clearly, the protagonists, the black male professor and the Jewish female professor, do not qualify as WASPs. (Neither do I. When I was working on my MA, History, at a state college in Massachusetts, I had to remind the Professor of "The American West", that some of us, with blue eyes, and fair skin, and blond hair [when I had hair] do NOT want to be called "Anglos". I am Celtic by descent. )
As the good author then records, the discourse was hardly civil and elegant. In fact, the author writes of an incidence in which the black professor, tall and masculine, intimidates a young lady student so greatly that she withdraws from Wellesley. The "exchange of ideas", if it can be called that, goes back and forth in various journals and articles, resulting in name calling by the black professor ... whose actions can objectively be termed anti-Semitic. This then results in the black professor taking the Jewish professor to court. The law suit, the appeals, etc. are described in excoriating detail by Professor Lefkowitz in this book. Heaven help us, Mary Lefkowitz actually writes that her assigned lawyer, Michael Gallagher, understood "...why I objected to the notion that Aristotle had stolen his philosophy from the library at Alexandria. Gallagher had majored in classics at Holy Cross." (page 98). Of course, Holy Cross is a Jesuit college, founded in1843 by Irishmen in Worcester, Massachusetts. Professor Lefkowitz had to look outside of Wellesley for succor.
One of the interesting descriptions by Mary Lefkowitz is that of then Wellesley President, Nan Keohane, born in Arkansas. President Keohane did not appear to understand the objections of Professor Lefkowitz to untrue history of philosophy. Ms. Keohane did little to tamp the fires of rhetoric and return the discussion into my conception of the board room with tea and crumpets and quiet tones. Keohane went on to the presidency of Duke University. Controversy continued at Wellesley.
There were sit-ins and loud lack of decorum at various meetings and presentations about the controversy ... not only at Wellesley College, but also at other institutions of "higher' learning. If you want to discover who won the law suits, and who won the appeals, and who apologized to whom ....you'll have to read her book. As for me, I am happy that my undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, from the only Catholic engineering college in New York City. Thirty five years in the engineering business appears milder than the "Rage Odyssey" that the two professors experienced. By the way, both of them are now retied.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A strike against political correctness
Comment: 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?
Customer Rating:
Summary: History in Black and White
Comment: 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).
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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Very Brave Woman
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An interesting book
Comment: 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 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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