Review

"Lefkowitz makes a passionate and well-reasoned case for the importance of traditional virtues in the writing of history: close attention to evidence, clear argument, the refusal to substitute wish for reality. She also discusses with some subtlety the vexed issue of civility on campus."-Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago (Martha Nussbaum 20080504)

"A clear-eyed look at the perils-and promise-of contemporary academic life."-Booklist (Booklist 20080609)

"[Lefkowitz''s] account asks-and answers-provocative questions about the limits of [academic] freedom and about what scholars owe to their disciplines, their students and their colleagues."-Amanda Heller, Boston Sunday Globe (Amanda Heller Boston Sunday Globe 20080415)

"Lefkowitz''s painful struggle and ultimate victory are edifying-and, perhaps, a hopeful sign for higher education."-Robert Whitcomb, The Weekly Standard (Robert Whitcomb The Weekly Standard 20080301)

"[Mary Lefkowitz] has advanced the intellectual case against Afrocentrism before, in Not Out of Africa; here she takes a more personal approach, at one point mentioning the strain of the controversy as she battled breast cancer."-John Leo, Wall Street Journal (John Leo Wall Street Journal 20080528)

"[Lefkowitz''] forthright tale uncovers surprising features in the landscape of higher education and an unexpected need for courage from those who venture there."-Greek America Magazine (Greek America Magazine 20080801)

"[Lefkowitz] is a courageous woman who deserves commendation for instructing us that academic freedom is not a license to tell lies in the classroom."-Morton I. Teicher, National Jewish Post & Opinion (Morton I. Teicher National Jewish Post & Opinion )

"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. . . . [Lefkowitz] recounts her ''cautionary tale'' in lucid and riveting detail."-Leo Goldberger, Moment Magazine (Leo Goldberger Moment Magazine )

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.

(20080401)

Mary Lefkowitz, one of the best-known classical scholars in this country, is a graduate of the Brearley School in New York and Wellesley College (1957, Phi Beta Kappa, with honors in Greek). She received her Ph.D. in Classical Philology at Radcliffe College (a.k.a Harvard University) in 1961. She returned to her alma mater as an instructor in Greek in 1959 and, after serving in various other academic ranks, in 1979 became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, a position she held until her retirement in 2005.

Dr. Lefkowitz holds an honorary degree from Trinity College/Hartford (1996), which cited her “deep concern for intellectual integrity,” and also from the University of Patras in Greece (1999) and from Grinnell College (2000). In 2004 she received a Radcliffe Graduate Society Medal. In 2006 she was awarded a National Humanities Medal “for outstanding excellence in scholarship and teaching.” In 2008 she was the recipient of a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award.

Dr. Lefkowitz’s articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, and she has been asked to contribute op-eds to The New York Times. She is the author of Not Out of Africa, 1996 (paperback, June 1997) and co-editor with a Wellesley colleague, Guy MacLean Rogers, of Black Athena Revisited, a collection of essays by various scholars (1996). Because they deal with highly controversial theories about the origin of ancient Greek civilization, both books were widely reviewed and generated considerable discussion. Dr. Lefkowitz appeared on national radio talk shows, on CBS television’s 60 Minutes, and was the subject of interviews in The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. History Lesson (2008), her book about the intellectual issues raised by the controversy, is according to Booklist: “A clear-eyed look at the perils—and promise—of contemporary academic life.”

In her recent work Lefkowitz has sought to restore to the gods to their ever-important role in ancient narratives. According to The New York Times Book Review, the “thought-provoking Greek Gods, Human Lives (2003) is precisely an attempt to write the gods back into Greek myths.” The Los Angeles Times Book Review noted, “It is, among other things, a salutary tract for our times.” She is also known for her work on women in antiquity: Heroines and Hysterics (1981); Women in Greek Myth (1986, 2nd Ed. 2007); and Women's Life in Greece and Rome, co-edited with Maureen B. Fant, (1st Ed. 1982, 2nd Ed. 1992; 3rd Ed. 2005), the standard source book in the field. Dr. Lefkowitz has also written about the 5th century B.C. Greek lyric poet Pindar (The Victory Ode (1976) and First-Person Fictions (1991) and about fiction in ancient biography (The Lives of the Greek Poets, 1981).

During her career at Wellesley Dr. Lefkowitz held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Onassis Foundation. She was a Visiting Professor at University of California/Berkeley in 1978 and a Sacher visiting fellow at St. Hilda's College/Oxford in 1979–80, where she has been an Honorary Fellow since 1994.

Dr. Lefkowitz's two daughters are both Wellesley alumnae ('86 and '90). She lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with her husband, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, a former Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford.