Intellectual Honesty

I was in Philadelphia for the last couple of days and whilst on the trip read a new book that I found compelling. History Lesson, a Race Odyssey is story of a Wellesley Professor of Classics (now emerita) attempt to pursue the truth.

Professor Lefkowitz is not someone I would normally seek out. After a short introduction to Latin before I went to college, I chose to avoid the fields in Classics as an undergraduate. But I do know good scholarship when I see it. Her odyssey began as a result of a movement that has infested a lot of colleges and universities across the country called "post-modernism." Postmodernism is an attempt to argue that objective reality or truth cannot be known. Postmodernists suggest that knowledge is subjective. In the particular instance that Professor Lefkowitz discusses, a fellow professor at Wellesley argued that the Greeks stole major ideas in their philosophy from the Egyptians, including stealing ideas from the library at Alexandria. The same professor argued that the Jews were in large part responsible for the slave trade. Unfortunately for the supporters of these absurd ideas, historical evidence, which on both points is unequivocally clear, is irrelevant. For example, the library at Alexandria, according to historical record, was not constructed until after Aristotle's death, so it would be a bit hard for the Greek philosopher to appropriate ideas from a library that was not extant. But the post-modernists don't want to deal with those kinds of details.

The antagonist in this narrative is a (now) retired professor at Wellesley in Afrocentric studies, named Anthony Martin. he and others made the claims evidently to promote the idea of the primacy of African civilization. But as Lefkowitz so clearly points out the unsubstantiated claims do not accomplish that. Professor Martin seems to think that bullying tactics can be substituted for scholarship.

There are two conclusions I found from the book. First, Professor Lefkowitz is a careful scholar. She is a dedicated researcher who understands the social nature of knowledge in a university. She expects colleagues to engage in civil discussion and debate. She comments "The best argument is not the one we like, or the one that is argued most persuasively,but the one that offers the best account of all the available facts." As was cited in an Honorary Doctorate of Letters that she received from Trinity College, she has a deep commitment to "intellectual integrity."

Second, the performance of the Wellesley administration in the incidents described by Dr. Lefkowitz, leave a lot to be desired. Several of the College's senior administrators seem too ready to ignore the absolute demand for civil interactions on a college campus and sacrifice those ideals for political correctness.