Navigation Controls Masthead [INLINE] September 2 1996 FEATURES [INLINE] Mary Lefkowitz has outraged some academics by insisting that Socrates was Greek, says Michael Gove [INLINE] © Mary Lefkowitz: African-American academics accuse her of lurking at the heart of a Jewish plot Photograph: ROBIN MAYES The woman who defied political correctness Political correctness may sometimes seem no more than a pompous term for politeness, but it can lead to persecution. Outside the barracks and away from the terracing it can appear only right to respect others' feelings by using appropriate language. However, across the Atlantic political correctness has seen not just language modified, but facts twisted in the name of feeling. Thousands of students are being taught, in defiance of the evidence, that the roots of Western civilisation lie not in Greece, or even Israel, but Africa. "Afrocentric" teachers maintain that white scholars have covered up the debt Europe owed Africa for racist reasons. To restore black pride, students are told that Greece was an Egyptian colony, Greek philosophy merely borrowed African wisdom and the famous figures of the Ancient World, such as Socrates and Cleopatra, were black. Few American academics had dared to take on the nonsense taught in the name of progress until a slight, 61-year-old classics don, Mary Lefkowitz, pointed out that these African emperors had no togas. In a book published earlier this year, Not out of Africa, the Wellesley College professor took a scythe to the rank, unweeded garden of bogus scholarship. Lefkowitz proves, in an accessible but impeccably argued fashion, that there is no credible evidence for Socrates and Cleopatra's "blackness". A snub nose in Socrates's case, and a mysterious grandmother in Cleopatra's, have been used as excuses to invent African roots for characters who could scarcely be more Greek. Evidence of Greek debts to Egyptian culture are shown to stem not from archaeology but an 18th-century French historical novel, Sethos, by Abbé Jean Terasson. It is almost as though history courses on the Roman Empire used Asterix as primary source to accommodate bruised French feelings. But by raising her voice for reason, Lefkowitz unleashed buried prejudices. Her criticisms of Afrocentrism were aired prior to the publication of her book in The New Republic, a Washington weekly some of whose executives are Jewish and friends of Lefkowitz. In an uncomfortable echo of the rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan and black extremists, African-American academics accuse her of lurking at the heart of a Jewish plot. Political correctness revived the spirit of Salem on a New England campus. "I almost wish there were a Jewish conspiracy, it would have saved money on telephone calls," remarks Lefkowitz, toying with some hoummus as she reflects on her recent persecution. A trim woman in tweed and thin-rimmed Armani spectacles, she has an air at times of an academic from the pages of Alison Lurie, at others the sharpness and determination of a Wall Street attorney. It was a visit by one of the most assertive Afrocentrics, Dr Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan, to her own university that spurred Lefkowitz to action. Giving the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Lecture at Wellesley College, Dr ben-Jochannan asserted that Aristotle had "stolen" his philosophy from African thinkers whose works he had appropriated from the great library at Alexandria. Lefkowitz politely pointed out that the library had only been built after Aristotle's death. She was shocked by the response. "Dr ben-Jochannan said he resented the tone of the inquiry, but he couldn't answer it. Several students accused me of racism afterwards and claimed I had been brainwashed." When Lefkowitz committed her doubts to print she provoked a vicious reprisal. A colleague at Wellesley, Tony Martin, published a book, The Jewish Onslaught: Dispatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, which placed her at the heart of a Jewish cabal. Professor Molefi Kete Asante, of Temple University, contented himself with a simple accusation of "white racism". Colleagues whom she hoped might rally to her defence, if not out of loyalty to her, then at least to the truth, were silent. "I was disappointed that some people who I expected to support me didn't and some did so only privately." Others advised her to drop the whole thing. "People asked me, why does it matter to you? If these people feel better about themselves by believing all this, why not let them? But I couldn't do that. I'm a scholar. I care about the truth. People seem to have forgotten how history was used in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for political purposes." A desire to see scholarship defended motivated Lefkowitz, but so did concern for the fate of the students being misled. She was convinced students were not helped to succeed by being taught untruths, however comforting. As a self-styled "sceptical feminist", she draws parallels with the mistakes made by women who tried to rewrite history for ideological feminist reasons. "They twisted the truth and blamed past inequalities on patriarchal oppression when what limited women's lives was their biology." Lefkowitz thinks the real inequalities that blacks and women may suffer aren't overcome by trying to make them feel better, but by telling the truth. "What liberated women was science, not politics, what will help black students is knowledge, not attitudes." In the face of furious criticism, Lefkowitz was tempted to retreat, but she was encouraged to fight on by success in another, far more important, struggle. Shortly after battle was first joined with the Afrocentrics, Lefkowitz contracted breast cancer. A course of chemotherapy allowed her to see the condition off but she was gravely ill for a year. "The treatment and the surgery were almost as violent as the disease," she recalls. While recovering, she renewed her determination to argue her case, commenting: "I felt that the criticism I'd endured was nowhere near as bad as what I had just faced. I also felt that if my whole life as an academic hadn't been wrong, then this is what I must do." Despite her difficulties, Lefkowitz has been emboldened to take her message across the Atlantic. Not out of Africa has not yet been published in the UK, unlike all her other books. Earlier works of classical criticism and history, which have sold far fewer copies in America than Not out of Africa, have appeared here. Publishers claim in their defence her quarrel is local, but Lefkowitz believes that even though the terrain is different in Britain, the underlying issues are similar. "I can see in Britain some of the things I was fighting; relativism, lack of respect for the truth, the abuse of learning for political purposes. I'm delighted I've been able to interest people in the US in the Ancient World by showing its relevance to current debates. I'm sure there'd be a similar interest here." Part of Lefkowitz's interest in showing Britons that modern-day battles can be fought on dusty Attic plains springs from her marriage to the English classics don Hugh Lloyd-Jones. He is a former Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford and Lefkowitz's critics detect Lloyd-Jones's hand behind her involvement in the American culture wars. Although one of the finest living scholars of Greek, he does not hold with all the values of democracy's birthplace. He supported the Greek colonels' coup and acted as senior member for the Oxford University Monday Club. Some believe Lefkowitz has been encouraged to belittle Black Studies by her High Tory husband. But far from being manipulated by her husband, it is Lefkowitz who wears the chinos in their home. She met Lloyd-Jones professionally while already married and a mother of two. The Oxford don, who in the words of one colleague, "had worn the same jacket for 40 years", and who had been married himself for 28, was wooed away by Lefkowitz and they married in 1982. Now in their Oxford home, it is Lefkowitz's influence that prevails, from the hand-stitched cushions with lines from Horace to the Ralph Lauren polo shirt that has replaced Lloyd-Jones's antique coat. It is determination that has seen Lefkowitz through, that and the pull of the Classics reflected in her attraction to Lloyd-Jones. She won him, and is winning her battle because her first love is the life of the mind. As she admits: "It's just satisfying being with someone who cares as much about your subject as you do." Sign of the Times: Guy Walters Copyright 1996. [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] Interactive Times button Search button [LINK]