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Article: Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- October 28, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Mary Lefkowitz. Basic. 222 pp. $24.
In the preface to Not Out of Africa, Mary Lefkowitz declares, "I am not attempting simply to preserve the traditions of an outmoded discipline; I am defending academic standards." The Wellesley classicist stresses the importance of observing what we might call the sacraments of the scholarly vocation. Academic inquiry must not be encumbered by political concerns. Scholars should concentrate exclusively on the evidence, not on the race or ethnicity of the researcher who makes an argument. Scholarliness and its demands are also discussed in Black Athena Revisited, a collection of twenty essays co-edited by Lefkowitz and Guy ...