Mary Lefkowitz - Anti-Afrocentricism

Anti-Afrocentricism

In 2008, Lefkowitz published History Lesson, which the Wall Street Journal described as a "personal account of what she experienced as a result of questioning the veracity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its advocates." She was attacked in newsletters from the Wellesley Africana Studies Department by her colleague Tony Martin, which turned into a rancorous, personal conflict with anti-Semitic elements. Martin stated in May 1994 at Cornell University that "Black people should interpret their own reality. . . . Jews have been in the forefront of efforts to thwart the interpretation of our own history." In another incident described in her book, Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, the author of Africa: The Mother of Western Civilization, gave the Martin Luther King lecture at Wellesley in 1993. Dr. Lefkowitz attended this lecture with her husband, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University. In that lecture, ben-Jochannan stated that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. During the question and answer session following the lecture, Lefkowitz asked ben-Jochannan, "How would that have been possible, when the library was not built until after his death?" ben-Jochannan replied that the dates were uncertain. Sir Hugh responded, "Rubbish!" Lefkowitz writes that ben-Jochannan proceeded to tell those present that "they could and should believe what black instructors told them" and "that although they might think that Jews were all 'hook-nosed and sallow faced,' there were other Jews who looked like himself."