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July/August 2008—Book Reviews
Backstabbing in the Ivory Tower
Leo Goldberger
History Lesson: A Race Odyssey |
This short but important book is the personal account of an acrid controversy that erupted at Wellesley College during the culture wars of the early and mid-1990s, when the potential for explosive upheaval in academia was at its zenith. Multiculturalism, Afrocentrism and postmodernism were the &ldquot;isms&rdquot; of the day, challenging the Western canon. Although one would not think any of these &ldquot;isms&rdquot; had a high probability of disrupting the ivory-tower discipline of classical studies, the experience of the noted classicist Mary Lefkowitz, Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Wellesley, proves otherwise. She recounts her &ldquot;cautionary tale&rdquot; in lucid and riveting detail.
Lefkowitz’s troubles began innocently enough with an assignment by The New Republic to write a review of Black Athena by Martin Bernal, now professor emeritus of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Cornell. In his work, Bernal claimed that the classical civilization of Ancient Greece depends upon African and Semitic cultures. He called his theory the “Revised Ancient Model” because classical historians—Herodotus and others—recognized this cultural debt, while the European-centered model, which he branded the “Aryan Model,” stemmed from the arrogance and racism that, he wrote, developed in the late 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. Lefkowitz’s review also focused on several earlier but thematically related books that shared the Afrocentric perspective, such as Stolen Legacy by George James and Africa: Mother of Western Civilization by Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan. Commonly assigned as readings in African Studies classrooms, these works often argue the case that Greek philosophy had been stolen from the Egyptians; that Socrates and Cleopatra each had an African heritage; and that Aristotle had lifted his philosophical works from the Great Library at Alexandria (which, in fact, was not established until 30 years after his death). Although Bernal and other writers offered ingenious arguments, according to Lefkowitz, they seemed unabashedly political, embracing dubious evidence that served social ends rather than furthering scholarly knowledge. Her scathing review was published in February 1992. In 1995, an expanded version appeared as a book, Not Out of Africa, in which Lefkowitz provided a detailed and documented refutation of Afrocentrism as it applies to the classics.
Although Lefkowitz recapitulates here the main arguments of her earlier book, the thrust of History Lesson is something different: It exposes the strategies used by her opponents to transform what was essentially an intellectual controversy into a racial as well as anti-Semitic diatribe. She vividly recalls how she increasingly became the target of racist, anti-Semitic slurs, unpleasant confrontations and a barrage of ad hominem epithets, such as being called &ldquot;a hook-nosed, lox-eating...so-called Jew&rdquot; by Dr. Khalid Muhammad of the Nation of Islam in an incendiary speech at San Diego State University. Increasingly isolated in the academic community, she was deeply disappointed in her colleagues, most of whom stuck their heads in the sand of political correctness.
A Wellesley campus incident involving Professor Anthony Martin, a black colleague who reportedly embraced Afrocentrism as well as anti-Semitic propaganda in his Africana Studies classes, triggered what happened next. In Lefkowitz's account, Professor Martin had been confronted by a student dorm officer with the mandatory question asked of all unescorted males: &ldquot;Excuse me, sir, who are you with?&rdquot; Martin, misinterpreting her question as an instance of &ldquot;racial profiling,&rdquot; flew into a violent rage, calling the student a &ldquot;white bigot.&rdquot; He created such a fracas that the police were called. Invited to comment on the incident for a college newsletter, Lefkowitz not only condemned Martin’s outburst as irresponsible but also summarized her formal scholarly objections about his course content, which she had already raised through the appropriate faculty committee channels. The newsletter article became the basis for a five-year (and ultimately unsuccessful) slander suit brought by Martin against Lefkowitz. In 1993, Martin self-published his account of the affair in The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, which reprised his attacks against Lefkowitz and also aired some of the more hair-raising allegations found in The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a book published by the Nation of Islam in 1991 that indicted Jews for their involvement in slave trading and other exploitation of blacks and called for an apology and financial reparations.
Such was life in the ivory tower.
In an epilogue, Lefkowitz offers her views on academic freedom, tenure and the educational mission. She strongly affirms the conviction that educators must keep clear the distinction between evidence-based facts on one hand and myths and opinions on the other. Controversial issues, such as those dealing with race, must be presented in such a way &ldquot;that students can make use of scholarly values and arrive at an independent judgment.&rdquot; She underscores the ethical imperative for all academics to speak out against the teaching of falsehood and hatred and calls for a more vigilant and routine scrutiny of professors' course contents and standards of scholarship. To her credit, she acknowledges that she might have made a greater effort to contain the flames on the Wellesley campus by applying the Socratic tradition of open discourse, dialogue and persuasive argument in an atmosphere of mutual respect and civility. Finally, one overriding lesson learned by Lefkowitz, and an important lesson for all of us, is that myths, to quote the great scholar Joseph Campbell, &ldquot;address themselves to the innermost depths of the psyche&rdquot; and are not easily challenged.
Leo Goldberger is a professor emeritus of psychology at New York University. He has written on the topics of stress, coping and identity.