NOT OUT OF AFRICA

MARY LEFKOWITZ

Chapter One

Introduction

In American universities today not everyone knows what extreme Afrocentrists are doing in their classrooms. Or, even if they do know, they choose not to ask questions. For many years I had been as unwilling to get involved as anyone else. But then, when I learned what was going on in this special line of teaching, my questions about ancient history were not encouraged. There was no sense that as a faculty we were all involved in a cooperative enterprise, that of educating all of our students. Intellectual debate was in fact actively discouraged, even though the questions raised were reasonable and fair. Ordinarily, if someone has a theory that involves a radical departure from what the experts have professed, he or she is expected to defend his or her position by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence from the instructors who claimed that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.

Normally, if one has a question about a text that another instructor is using, one simple asks why he or she is using that book. But since this conventional line of inquiry was closed to me, I had to wait until I could raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February 1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley's Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a "distinguished Egyptologist," and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then president of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is, a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.

After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander and had stolen his philosophy from the library at Alexandria, when that library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians. But others stayed to hear me out, and I assured Dr. ben-Jochannan that I simply wanted to know what his evidence was: so far as I knew, and I had studied the subject, Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle's and Alexandra's deaths.

A lecture at which serious questions could not be asked, and in fact were greeted with hostility -the occasion seemed more like a political rally than an academic event. As if that were mot disturbing enough in itself, there was also the strange silence on the part of many of my faculty colleagues. Several of them were well aware that what Dr. ben-Jochannan was saying was factually wrong. One of them said later that she found the lecture so "hopeless" that she decided to say nothing. Were they afraid of being called racists? If so, their behavior was understandable, but not entirely responsible. Didn't we as educators owe it to our students, all our students, to see that hey got the best education they could possibly get? And that clearly was what they were not getting in a lecture where they were being told myths disguised as history, and where discussion and analysis had apparently been forbidden.

Good as the myths they were hearing may have made these students feel, so long as they never left the Afrocentric environment in which they were being nurtured and sheltered, they were being systematically deprived of the most important features of a university education. They were not learning how to question themselves and others, they were not learning to distinguish facts from fiction, nor in fact were they learning how to think for themselves. Their instructors had forgotten, while the rest of us sat by and id nothing about it, that students do not come to universities to be indoctrinated, at least not in a free society. As Arthur Schlesinger says in The Disuniting of American:

The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible.

So it seemed to me that being called a racist was not my principal problem, false and unpleasant as the charges were. Such attacks could easily be repelled, as long as my colleagues were prepared to reconstruct what happened in the past on the basis of historical evidence. The trouble was that some of my colleagues seemed to doubt that there was such a thing as historical evidence, or that even if evidence existed, it did not matter much one way or the other, at least in comparison with what they judged to be the pressing cultural issues and social goals of our own time. When I went to the then dean of the college to explain that there was no factual evidence behind some Afrocentric claims about ancient history, she replied that each of us had a different but equally valid view of history. When I stated at a faculty meeting that Aristotle could not have stolen his philosophy from the library of Alexandria in Egypt, because that library had not been built until after his death, another colleague responded, "I don't care who stole what from whom." How could I persuade these colleagues, and many others like them, that evidence does matter, that not every interpretation of the past is equally probable, and that I was not trying to teach about the history of the ancient world in order to preserve or transmit racist values?

The present book is an attempt to answer these difficult question, at least so far as the understanding of ancient history is concerned. There is an urgent need for a book that discusses the nature of the charges against the Greeks and provides a complete discussion of the reasons why they are without foundation. Hardly a week goes by when an article does not appear by an Afrocentrist writer observing that the discoveries attributed to the Greeks rightly belong to the ancient Egyptians. But while many of us have responded to various individual assertions abut the Greeks, no one so far has taken the trouble to respond fully to all of them, and to explain why it is that these ideas are now being circulated. I can understand this reluctance on the part of classicists and Egyptologists. To respond to the kinds of allegations that are now being made requires us in effect to start from the beginning, to explain the nature of the ancient evidence, and to discuss what has long been known and established as if it were now subject to serious question. In short, we are being put on the defensive when in ordinary circumstances there would have been nothing to be defensive about. Worst of all, making this sort of defense keeps us from going on to discover new material and bring our attention to bear on real interpretative problems. Instead of getting on with our work, we must rehearse what has long been known. But nonetheless, the case for the defense must still be made.

Afrocentrist writers have suggested many ways to revise the teaching of European history and science. But in this book I have chosen to concentrate on the way modern writers have misrepresented the achievement of the ancient Greeks. Throughout European history many different groups have claimed affinity with the ancient Greeks, because they have admired particular aspects of their civilization, whether intellectual, military, and athletic. But Afrocentrists are not content with establishing a special relationship to the ancient Greeks. Instead, they seek to remove the ancient Greeks from the important role they have previously played in history, and to assign to the African civilization of Egypt the credit for the Greeks' Achievements.

Any attempt to question the authenticity of ancient Greek civilization is of direct concern even to people who ordinarily have little interest in the remote past. Since the founding of this country, ancient Greece has been intimately connected with the ideals of American democracy. Rightly or wrongly, since much of the credit belongs to the Romans, we like to think that we have carried on some of the Greeks' proudest traditions: democratic government, and freedom of speech learning, and discussion. But it is from the Greeks, and not from any other ancient society, that we derive our interest in history and our belief that events in the past have relevance for the present.

So, in spite of what my colleague said, it does matter to all of us whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt, even though that event (or rather, nonevent) supposedly took place as long ago as the late fourth century B.C. It matters, because if Aristotle had done such a thing, we should give the ancient Egyptians, rather than the ancient Greeks, credit for the development of conceptual vocabulary and formal arguments. It matters, because extreme Afrocentrists accuses historians of antiquity like myself of being party to a major cover-up in behalf of the ancient Greeks.

Instead, I will try to show that no such cover-up operation has ever existed. Afrocentrism is not simply an alternative interpretation of history, offered on the basis of complex data or ambiguities in the evidence: there is simply no reason to deprive the Greeks of the credit for their own achievements. The basis facts are clear enough, at least to dispassionate observers. In effect, Afrocentrists are demanding that ordinary historical methodology be discarded in favor of a system of their own choosing. This system allows them to ignore chronology and facts if they are inconvenient for their purposes. In other words, their historical methodology allows them to alter to course of history to meet their own specific needs.

In asserting that important aspects of Greek civilization were derived from Egypt, modern Afrocentric writers are, however, following a long-establishment pattern. Some two thousand years ago Jews in Alexandria insisted that the Greeks had bee inspired by their own earlier civilization: Moses, they said, had been Plato's teacher. The claim, at the time that they made it, did not sound as incredible as it does today. Their notion of chronology was vague, and their knowledge of Greek philosophy limited. But modern Afrocentric writers have no such excuse.

Although it is understandable that Afrocentrists, as certain Europeans have done before them, should want to take credit for the ancient Greek origins of Western civilization, the basic outlines of chronology in the Mediterranean are will known, and all the texts under discussion are readily available in translation in all university libraries. There is no reason why claims of a conspiracy should be credited, if no real evidence can be produced to support it. Despite allegations to the contrary, virtually all the claims made by Afrocentrists can be shown to be without substance. Anyone who is willing to look into the matter can see that it is utterly absurd to state (as some Afrocentrists have done) that Aristotle's treaties On the Soul was derived from the Egyptian "Book of the Dead." In fact, all that the two texts have in common is that they mention souls. But that is true of a great many other ancient documents.

In this book I will show why these and many other claims about Greece's debt to Egypt are false. I will suggest that arguing that Afrocentric writers offer a valid interpretation of ancient history is like being comfortable with the notion that the earth is flat. But although such new and daring hypotheses about the past can easily win adherents, especially when they favor present cultural and political aspirations, everyone should be aware that there are real dangers in allowing history to be rewritten, even for culturally useful purposes. Even though it may inspire students with pride and self-confidence, writing and teaching such ethnic histories, each with its own brand of "ethnic truth," sanctions the invention of falsehoods.

What will happen some years from now, when students who have studied different versions of the past discover that their classmates have learned abut their own ethnic histories? Will students on one ethnicity deny the existence of other "ethnic truths," with dire consequences akin to the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia? Perhaps they will be reassured that the differences do not matter because all history is a form of rhetoric, and narratives of the past can be constructed virtually at will. When that time comes, and I hope it never will, our students will be no better off than the Jews who claimed that Plato studied with Moses: they will have no respect for evidence, no concern with chronology, no understanding of the differences between languages and cultures. In other words, they will have overlooked everything that has been learned about history since Herodotus in the fifth century B.C. began his famous inquiry into the human past. It is in the hope of helping to prevent such retrogression that I have written this book.

Since Afrocentrist assertions do not amount to a systematic revision of the history of ancient Greece, but rather focus on a small range of particular issues, it is possible to approach these issues as a series of interrelated questions. The second chapter deals with questions of "race." Is there any evidence that Egyptians invaded Greece during the second millennium B.C., evidence that might provide some support for the allegations that there was an African component in Greek civilization? I shall also address two particular questions about African ancestry: Was Socrates black? Was Cleopatra black? I shall show that there is no evidence for thinking so. I shall discuss the ancient perception of ethnicity and race. Here one again we can learn from the ancients. To them, culture was a far more important factor in human behavior than skin color or other "racial" characteristics.

The third chapter of the book burns to the broader and more complicated issue of whether Greek philosophy was stolen or in any way dependent upon Egyptian thought. I believe that the notion of an extensive Greek debt to Egypt originated in the mythology of eighteenth-century Freemasonry, and that for that reason, the Afrocentric claims about an Egyptian legacy are based on an honest misunderstanding. I shall show that although some ancient writer were told by Egyptian priests that the famous Greek philosophers studied in Egypt, these stories are more accurately understood as myths of cultural dependency.

In the fourth chapter I explain why certain Afrocentrist writers have come to believe that there was in ancient times and "Egyptian Mystery System." I will argue that in reality this "System" was n invention of an eighteenth-century French writer, the Abbe Jean Terransson. The mysteries he described were in character Greco-Roman. In other words, when Afrocentrists accuse that Greeks of stealing form the Egyptians, the Egyptian ideas that they are describing are not actually Egyptian, but rather "Egyptian" as imagined by Europeans who had no direct or authentic knowledge about Egypt. To say that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt is tantamount to saying that they stole their philosophy from themselves.

The fifth chapter deals with the origins of the myth that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt. I suggest that the ideas of a "Stolen Legacy" was first popularized by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, and I describe how it was developed into a full-fledged theory in 1954 by a college teacher in Arkansas, George G.M. James. I also examine the evidence James provides in support of this thesis and show in general and in particular that it does not hold up to serious scrutiny.

In the conclusion I consider what (if anything) can be done to contradict the calumnies that are being spread about the ancient Greeks and about all of us who study the ancient world. I discuss the issue of responsible teaching and of academic freedom. I suggest some possible courses of action that schools and universities might adopt.

I believe it is essential for all of us to realize that some action needs to be taken. It is not simply a matter of doing justice to the ancient Greeks and their modern descendants. Universities must encourage free inquiry and debate, and not permit the classroom to be used as a means of political indoctrination. Even more important than that is our obligation to teach history, history that can be supported by warranted evidence.

Chapter Six

Conclusion

If the notion of a Stolen Legacy is a myth, and has virtually no historical value, why should it be taught in schools and universities as history? It should not, especially since study of the myth replaces real learning about the ancient Mediterranean world and about Africa. Extreme Afrocentric "ancient history" has no place in the curriculum of schools or of universities. Appealing mythologies about the past bring satisfaction in the short run, but in the end they damage the very cause they are intended to promote. The events of this century have shown that it is dangerous to allow propaganda to usurp historical truth. Even if the group sponsoring the propaganda feels their intentions to be noble, by substituting myth for history they open the way for other groups to invent their own histories. Some of these new mythologies could harm African-Americans far more than Afrocentrist mythology could ever help them.

In the particular case of the Afrocentric myth of antiquity, not only is the myth unhistorical, it is essentially not African. As we have seen, it is a product of the same Eurocentric culture that the Afrocentrist seek to blame for the eclipse of African civilization, and for world problems generally. Most ironically, by claiming as African a myth that is fundamentally European, the Afrocentrists make Africa the source of the culture that they blame for their own troubles. Another Eurocentric feature of Afrocentrism is its concentration on Egypt. By failing to pay equal regard to other African civilizations, such as that of Nubia, the Afrocentrists appear to be judging African cultures by European standards. Egypt has always been admired by Europeans for the antiquity of its civilization and for its artistic and architectural remains. Why focus on one African nation which has won European admiration for its achievements?

Extreme Afrocentrism prevents students from learning about real ancient African civilizations. But that is just one of the dangers involved in Afrocentric myth. The notion of a Stolen Legacy is destructive in other ways as well. First of all, it teaches young students to distrust all Europeans, past and present. That is a racist approach, and like all forms of racism, both morally wrong and intellectually misleading. Are all Europeans alike? Are they one single race, and all Africans another? Anyone who has so much as glanced at a map realizes that neither Europe nor Africa is composed of one ethnicity or nation.

Another limitation of Afrocentric ancient history is that while pretending to be scholarly, it is often completely unscientific. As we have seen, there is little or no historical substance to many of the Afrocentrists' most striking claims about the ancient world. There is no evidence that Socrates, Handball, and Cleopatra had African ancestors. There is no archaeological data to support the notion that Egyptians migrated to Greece during the second millennium B.C. (or before that). There is no reason to think that Greek religious practices originated in Egypt. Even if the philosophers actually went to Egypt, they did not steal their philosophy during their visits there. The important Egyptian religious texts share only a few general common themes with the Greek philosophical writings, most of which can be found in the religious works of other ancient Mediterranean peoples.

Other assertions are not merely unscientific; they are false. Democritus could not have copied his philosophy from books stolen from Egypt by Anaxarchus, because he had died many years before Alexander's invasion. Aristotle could no have stolen his philosophy from books in the library at Alexandria, because the library was not built until after his death. There never was such thing as an Egyptian Mystery System. The notion of mysteries, or rituals of initiation, is fundamentally Greek, and such information as we have about Egyptian mysteries dates from a period when Egypt had been occupied and influenced by both Greeks and Romans. The Egyptian universities described by James and Diop never existed, except in their own imaginations, and in that of the French scholar-priest Jean Terrasson.

Because of all these inaccuracies, Afrocentrism not only teaches what in untrue; it encourages students to ignore known chronology, to forget abut looking for material evidence, to select only those facts that are convenient, and to invent facts whenever useful or necessary. It does not warn students that nations do not borrow (or steal) cultures from one another in the way that neighbors borrow cups of sugar. If the Greeks had learned their philosophy from a large theoretical literature produced by Egyptian writers, surely some trace of that literature would have remained in Egypt, and we would know the names or schools that produced it. We have a detailed knowledge of Greek literature, even though the Romans used it as the model for their own original literary creations.

IS AFROCENTRISM A NEW HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY?

As I observed in chapter 2, it has become fashionable to assume that history is culturally determined, and that each culture or ethnic group can write its own history differently. In particular, cultural relativism has offered an intellectual justification for Afrocentric history. "This is the age of Diop," Molefi Kete Asante assures us in Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge (1990). In Asante's view, Diop's achievement was to free people of African descent from their dependence on Eurocentric frames of reference, by arguing that "the objectivity of knowledge referred to by European scholars could not be separated from the consciousness of the social-cultural world and that Europeans brought that consciousness with them whenever they discussed Africa." Asante appears to be saying that no one need believe anything that any European says about Africa. That declaration is indeed liberating, at least to Afrocentrists. Anyone who accepts Asante's formulation need not trust a word I have said in this book, or that anyone has said or will ever say in criticism of Afrocentrism.

The line of reasoning requires us to assume that invariably and without exception the character of a person's motivations is predetermined by his culture or ethnicity, instead of by individual volition. Isn't that virtually the same as saying that it is not I who speak, but my skin that speaks for me? To return for a moment to the question of Socrates' ancestry that I raised in the first chapter: if Professor Asante says there is no evidence that Socrates is black, should he be trusted because he himself is black, but if I say exactly the same thing, no one need believe me, because I am a person of European descent, and a classicist, and for that reason motivated by self-interest, self-promotion, or inherent prejudice? Is the remark more true because he said it, but less true because I said it? Leaving aside for the moment the question of historical reality, whatever happened to the notion that individuals could think for themselves, and break beyond the bounds of their culture, nationality, race, or ethnicity? Diop's historicism is not so liberating as it first may seem, because it requires its adherents to confine their thinking to rigid ethnic categories that have little demonstrable connection with practical reality.

We come now to the other flaw in Diop's methodology. As we saw in the last chapter, his mode of history writing allows him to disregard historical evidence, especially if it comes from European sources. But does being an African enable one to know about the particulars of African history, simply by intuition or osmosis? Asante seems to think so. But what about the revisionist ancient "history" that he has offered to his readers? The Egyptian Mystery System that he imagines to be African is in reality actually European in origin, as we saw in chapter 4. So African intuition is not a more reliable guide to the truth about Africa than European or Asian intuition, whatever those might be supposed to be.

Instead of relying on such extra-rational devices as cultural motivation or intuition, surely everyone will be better served by paying attention to history rather than to the historian. What is the quality of the evidence? Does it stand up to scrutiny? Discussions about evidence is what scholarship used to be about, and I would argue that we must return to debates abut the evidence. When Professor Asante and I debated the issue of Egyptian influence of Greece on a radio program in May 1993, we agreed about many issues. As I recall, we discussed the evidence and agreed that the Egyptians were an African people, and that the Greeks did not steal their philosophy from Egypt. It is possible to say that some things are true, and others are not, and some things are more likely to be true than others, at least on the basis of what is now known. Rather than assume that each race, or each ethnic group, or each nation, should write its own versions of history, I would like to join David Hollinger in calling for a wider cosmopolitanism, which seeks to be sensitive to different points of view, and which can represent a diversity of viewpoints.

There are of course many possible interpretations of the truth, but some things are simply not true. It is not true that there was no Holocaust. There was a Holocaust, although we may disagree about the numbers of people killed. Likewise, it is not true that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt; rather, it is true that the Greeks were influenced in various ways over a long period of time by their contact with the Egyptians. But then, what culture at any time has not been influenced by other cultures, and what exactly do we mean by "influence"? If we talk about Greek philosophy as a "Stolen Legacy," which the Greeks swiped from Egyptian universities, we are not telling the truth, but relating a story, or a myth, or a tall tale. But if we talk about Egyptian influence on Greece, we are discussing a historical issue.

In historical and scientific discussions it is possible to distinguish degrees, and to be more or less accurate. As a classicist, I may overemphasize the achievement of the Greeks because I do not know enough about the rest of the Mediterranean world; Egyptologists may be inclined to make the same mistake in the opposite direction. We recognize that no historian can write without some amount of bias; that is why history must always be written. But not all bias amounts to distortion or is equivalent to indoctrination. If I am aware that I am likely to be biased for any number of reasons, and try t compensate for my bias, the result should be very different in quality and character from what I would say if I were consciously setting about to achieve a particular political goal.

Drawing a clear distinction between motivations and evidence has a direct bearing on the question of academic freedom. When it comes to deciding what one can or cannot say in class, the question of ethnicity or of motivations, whether personal or cultural, is or ought to be irrelevant. What matter is whether what one says is supported by facts and evidence, texts or formulae. The purpose of diversity, at least in academe, is to ensure that instruction does not become a vehicle for indoctrinating students in the values of the majority culture, or for limiting the curriculum to the study of the history and literature of the majority culture. That means that it is essential for a university to consider developments outside of Europe and North America, and to assess the achievements of non-European cultures with respect and sympathy.

It is another question whether or not diversity should be applied to the truth. Are there, can there be, multiple, diverse "truths?" If there are, which "truth" should win? The one that is most loudly argued, or most persuasively phrased? Divers "truths" are possible only if "truth" is understood to mean something like "point of view." But even then not every point of view, no matter how persuasively it is put across, or with what intensity it is argued, can be equally valid. I may sincerely believe that Plato studied with Moses (like the Jews in Alexandria in the second and first centuries B.C.) and speak eloquently about all that Plato learned from him, but that will not mean that what I say corresponds to any known facts. Moses lived (if indeed he lived at all) centuries before Plato; they spoke different languages, and the Torah (or Pentateuch), even though it contains admonitions and legislation, has little in common with Plato's Laws. In order to be true , my assertion about Plato would need to be supported by warranted evidence. And it cannot be. The notion of diversity does not extend to truth.

If it is not possible for the same thing to be at once false and true, there is a means of judging what should be taught in a university. Should we offer (and use university money to staff) a course in which the instructor contends that ancient Greek philosophy was stolen from ancient Hebrew philosophy? For convenience, let's call this course "The Hebraic Laws of Plato." In favor of such a course, it might be argued that there is some limited historical support for contending that the Greeks were inspired by the Jews. As we have seen, in the second and third centuries A.D., Clement and some other church fathers took the idea seriously. Another argument in favor of the course is its potential appeal to Jewish students, who would be "empowered" or at least be made to feel less culturally isolated by what they learned in it.

Now suppose that our primary goal were to "empower" Jewish students. If the course empowered them, would it really matter if its content were manifestly untrue? In some universities today, it appears that the answer to this question would be no, it does not matter whether what is taught is true, or is supported by warranted evidence, because a diverse point of view, with a laudable social goal, has bee presented. Moreover (so the argument goes) it would be wrong for the university administration to interfere in any way, because the academic freedom of the instructor should be protected.

Those who believe that the primary purpose of the university is to promote particular social goals may be willing to include courses like "The Hebraic Laws of Plato" in the curriculum. But I believe that we would be better advised to think of social justice as an important, perhaps even the most important by-product of education. If the real purpose of universities had been, and should remain, the dissemination of knowledge, then we need to be concerned with the quality of "knowledge" on offer. If we do not, there will be irreversible damage, far greater than if we abandoned all notions of trying to teach social justice in our courses.

ARE THERE ANY LIMITS TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

If diversity does not apply to truth, then there are limits to academic freedom. That does not mean that we should try to keep students from knowing about erroneous theories or hypothetical possibilities, or from reading works like Hilter's Mein Kampf, the Nation of Islam's Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, or James's Stolen Legacy. In my own case I would never teach Plato again without mentioning the Afrocentrist theory that Socrates was of African descent, and in all my courses I discuss the question of Egyptian influence on Greece. But I also point out why I believe that the allegations made by Afrocentric writers such as James and ben-Jochannan are wrong, and I give the students access to all the information they need to make up their own minds about Socrates' ancestry, and the extent to which Greek culture was borrowed fro earlier civilizations.

But courses that are designed to conceal a considerable body of evidence, or that re intended to instill resentment and istrust in place of open discussion, have no place in the curriculum. We do not need a course on "The Hebraic Laws of Plato," even if someone wants to teach such a course and some students are willing and even eager to take it. Even as recently ad thirty years ago it would not have seemed unreasonable to ask faculty members at least to explain why particular course needed to be offered. But now the raising of such questions seems to many people a violation of the basis principles of university life. When I suggested that Afrocentrists discuss the evidence fro their claims about the past, one critic complained that my viewpoint was "McCarthyite in its intolerance." Why "McCarthyite?" In the essay I said nothing about taking disciplinary action of any kind against instructors who teach what is manifestly untrue. Rather, i was trying to drew attention to the differences between freedom of speech and academic freedom. Freedom of speech gives me the right to say that Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt, provided that it is clear that what I am expressing is my opinion, and that I do not pretend or assert that it is factually accurate and true in every respect. One can say man youtrageous, untrue, and cruel things in this country, and on the whole it is better to have such license than to restrict free expression.

Whether freedom of speech extends to the classroom is anther question. Academic freedom and tenure are not intended to protect the expression of uniformed or frivolous opinions. Implicit restrictions are already in place, even thought they may not be stated in college catalogues. One such restrictions is competence within a field. Faculty are appointed as instructors in particular subjects, not as generalists. Fro example, I was hired to teach Greek and Latin; not Egyptian. I should not be allowed to teach Egyptian because I have no credentials in Egyptian; another reason is that I know only a few words of Egyptian, even though I can read a Coptic dictionary because the Coptic alphabet is based on Greek. This does not mean that if I chose to learn Egyptian and acquire an advanced degreed in the subject, I should not be allowed to teach it. Until I acquire such credentials no one, no even the most avid partisans of the subject, should want me to do so, because I do not have the necessary competence.

The question of competence in language study is relatively easy to determine, because it is possible for many people to agree about what it means to be fluent in or knowledgeable about any given language, its literature, and culture. For the same reason, it is relatively easy to determine who is competent in scientific subjects. We do not hire geographers who teach that the world is flat, because there is a considerable body of evidence that shows that flat-earth theory is false, even though for many centuries it was universally regarded as true.

It is much more difficult to identify competence in subjects where there is no established body of evidence or where there is more than one possible methodology. There are many valid ways to read a literary text, although here again one expects instructors to have professional credentials, to be able to provide an argument for their way of reading the works of literature that they profess, and to show that they know its basic content (Hamlet is not the hero of Macbeth, for example).

But in certain subject areas motivation and indentity have been taken as the equivalent of professional credentials. For example, does being a woman automatically guarantee knowledge of Women's Studies? I would argue that being a woman may make me or someone else aware of women's problems, but not necessarily of their extent or of their solutions. In the case of the study of the ancient world, being female encouraged some of us to take a particular interest in the status of women in Greece and Rome. But being female did not help us interpret ancient documents and archaeological data; for that we needed to have professional training in ancient languages and civilization. Similarly, a person of African descent may be more curious about the civilization of ancient Egypt than someone from another ethnic background. but African ancestry alone will not help him understand ancient Egyptian religion or enable him to reach hieroglyphics. As we have seen, it did not prevent Diop from imagining that Mystical Egypt was a reality.

The reason why we require competence and verification is that we are hired to teach people who want to learn about our subjects. We will not be serving our students well if we insist on teaching them what is factually incorrect, even if we imagine that it would be better for them if we did do so. If some students were comforted by being taught that the world was flat, would that justify the inclusion of Flat Earth Theory in the curriculum? Shouldn't we object if a geographer repeatedly taught that the world was flat, and did not mention that most other geographers happened to disagree with her, or describe fairly the reasons why they did so?

WHAT CAN BE DONE, IF ANYTHING?

One strategy is to ignore the geographer who teaches that the earth is flat. Akin to this principle of turning a blind eye is the notion of minimizing damage: if only a few students are affected by flat-earth theory, why make a big fuss about it? With any luck they will never be in a position to drive their cars off the face of the earth. But even though ignoring the problem is the least difficult option, it is important to remember that it does not really solve the problem. Some students, even if only a few, will be learning nonsense. What happens if s student who thins that the earth is flat becomes an engineer? It is our responsibility as educators to see that all our students get the best possible education.

Of course, teaching false information about Socrates and Aristotle will not put anyone in immediate physical danger. But nonetheless these untruths do injustice, not only to the ancient Greeks who have been falsely maligned, but to their descendants. Why deprive the Greeks of their heritage, particularly if the charges against the ancient Greeks can decisively be shown to be wrong? Why encourage hostility toward any ethnic group? Haven't we seen enough examples in this century of the horrific results of teaching hostile propaganda?

If we can bring ourselves not automatically to accept the first and easiest option of putting our heads in the sand and pretending that nothing is wrong, what ought to be done instead? I think the very least we can do is to complain and call attention to what is wrong. Certainly pointing out why flat-earth theory is wrong involves publicizing the inadequacies of both instructor and university, and that will cause a certain amount of pain. Bringing problems to light will lead (at the very least) to arguments and name-calling. But it is the better of the two options from an educational point of view, because it guarantees that at least some of our students have the opportunity to know that there are or have been opposing viewpoints, thereby enabling them to make their own decisions. In order to learn and teach, we must ask tough questions. As Plato points out in the Republic, the search for the truth inevitably causes pain to those who search for it.

Some of my colleagues have suggested that it is the responsibility of students (rather than of faculty) to point out that flat-earth theory is wrong, and vote against it, in effect, by not attending the lecture or taking the course. But that assumes that students will always be capable of knowing about the subject in question. Presumably all our students know that the earth is not flat, because they have seen photos of the (round) earth taken fro cameras in space. But do all of them know that Aristotle could not possibly have stolen his philosophy from Egypt, and why it is possible to say so? Even though some students do know something about Aristotle, the main responsibility for determining the competence and contents of university instruction belongs and must belong to the faculty.

There is another reason why we should not insist that our students decide about the quality of course offerings. The students who are in the best position to know about the quality or nature of a course are the students who are presently taking that course. But these students are being graded by the instructor whose methods or information they have reason to question. They may not be free to comment until they are no longer in a position of being judged, or of needing letters of recommendation from that particular instructor, and it is unfair to ask them to put their grade-point average in jeopardy.

For these reasons, we cannot leave it up to students to determined whether what they are being taught is reasonably accurate and/or represents all responsible viewpoints fairly. Why do we even need faculties if students are capable of making such determinations without their expert and informed assistance? We consider ourselves to be capable of judging faculty competence when we make new appointments to our faculties, and when these faculty members are considered for promotion and tenure. The trouble is that after a certain pint in a person's career, we virtually suspend judgment.

Suspending judgment might seem to serve effectively the interest of the senior faculty, if those interests consist in being allowed to do whatever they think best, provided that they either persuade their colleagues to let them do it, or that they behave in so obstructive a way that their colleagues will allow them to do whatever they wish, in return for noninterference with their own work. But it is questionable whether such protective behavior, as it has long been practiced in this country, offers much benefits to the student or to the institution. Who has not had at least one instructor who had not kept up with developments in his or her field? And who has not resented the fact, and wished that the university had offered something better?

When as an undergraduate I complained of such substandard instruction, I was told, as students are still being told, that the person in question had tenure. Tenure, in effect, has become a kind of carte blanche to do whatever one wants, once one is lucky enough to get it. That may be what we have turned it into, but that was not its original purpose. Tenure was designed to allow faculty academic freedom. Initially, that meant that faculty should be allowed to teach theories and subjects that trustees and parents might mot approve of. But id did not guarantee and could not guarantee complete autonomy, for the simple reason that no one can competently teach anything and everything.

Academic freedom is the right to profess a discipline according to its recognized content and procedures, free from constraints and considerations extraneous to that discipline. I do not believe that academic freedom (whatever it has come to mean since) includes the right simply to cease to be an active member of the intellectual community, since that hardly serves the purposes of the university or its students. Nor do I believe that it can or should guarantee anyone the privilege of teaching what is beyond his or her range ob provent competence, even when such teaching is fully acceptable to students, or at least not questioned by them. Academic freedom does not include the right to teach in a way that prevents students fro being able to learn. A university may want to keep a poor teacher who is a brilliant scholar on its staff, but it should not allow him to teach beginners. Similarly, instructors should not use their classrooms systematically to arouse hatred of particular ethnicities or genders or individuals, because only people who subscribe to the same prejudices or orthodoxies can be comfortable in such an atmosphere.

What (if anything) should be done about he instructors who go beyond even our vaguely defined limits? I have suggested that we begin by debating all these issues, even if the debates are painful, because that way will be most educational for most people, both faculty and students. These debates will take time, because people are never eager to relinquish cherished views and established practices, especially when their egos are involved. Specifically, I think universities should not be quick to discipline instructors who insist on substituting false information for true, even if some individuals or groups have been injured by them. The issue is not whether someone's feelings have been hurt. Rather, it is the quality of instruction at our universities. So the first line of defense should be words, and, when appropriate, even ridicule of the theories that have been shown to be contrafactual.

Can, or should, anything else be done about courses used for dissemination of false information or for purposes of indoctrination? The issue has received considerable public attention in the last few years as the result of the lawsuit against the City University of New York by Professor Leonard Jeffries. Jeffries teaches the Afrocentric theories of antiquity that I have described in this book. But the University did not attempt to remove him in any other way because of the quality of his teaching. Rather, they were concerned about a speech he made in 1991, which was thought to be anti-Semitic. The lower court reinstated Jeffries. But in this opinion upholding the reinstatement on appeal, Judge Conboy made a useful distinction between freedom of speech and academic freedom. He observed that there was no reason why City College should "continue to diserve its own students by subjecting them in class to the bigoted statements and absurd theories of any of its professors.

Conboy observed that the issues being litigated in the Jeffries case were basically irrelevant, and that the real question is about standards, about what Jeffries teaches in the classroom. In effect, he said that it was the University's business, and not the Court's, to deal with academic questions. Surely he was right, because if these problems are left to the courts, academic freedom will be restricted in ways that affect even faculty with tenure.

The problem is illustrated by the 1995 decision of the U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit (New York) reversing and remanding its decision to allow Jeffries's reinstatement. The court cited the Supreme Court decision, Water v. Churchill, which held that a government employer could fire an employee for making a disruptive speech (in this case a nurse had complained about an department in the hospital where she was employed). In the light of the Waters decision, the Second Circuit court found that the City University was justified in disciplining Jeffries, because what he said in 1991 in a speech off campus was likely to be disruptive to the University. This potential disruptiveness was enough to outweigh whatever First Amendment value Jeffries's speech might have had.

The court also argued that the decision did not infringe his academic freedom as a faculty member, because he still had tenure and "the defendants have not sought to silence him or otherwise limit his access to the 'marketplace of ideas' in the classroom." Presumably he (or anyone) can go on saying whatever he wants so long as he has tenure and is not a department chair or some other kind of official of a university. The court did not specify whether they thought Jeffires's 1991 speech was disruptive because of its anti-Semitism, or because what he said showed that the university tolerated and employed in a position of some authority a person who was apparently willing repeatedly to profess as true information that is known to be false.

From the university's point of view, the charge of academic incompetence is the more serious charge. Anti-Semitism is obnoxious and reprehensible (like any other form of racism), but what is even more disruptive to the university is a reluctance to marshal evidence fairly, and a refusal to present to students a complete and balanced view of the subject. Should a professor at a university speak as if scientific research had confirmed "melanin theory," which contends that skin pigmentation has a direct relation to intelligence, or state, as if it were a historical fact, that "ice is a key factor in the development of Europeans culturally, economically, socially?" In the context of academe it matters whether a facutly member's contentions are reasonable and made on the basis of all known evidence. The problem with saying that Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt is not that modern Greeks and classicists will be offended; what's wrong with the statement is that it is untrue.

The ambiguities in this decision suggest why it is not a good idea to count on the courts to clean house for us. As Nathan Glazer has observed, academics now tend to abdicate responsibility for the quality of instruction at their universities, with the result that many decisions that ought to be made by university administrations and faculties are now being made by the courts. Because courts can only wield the "clubs of free speech and nondiscrimination," they will ignore what ought to be the prime aim of the university, dissemination of knowledge. So far as the courts are concerned, "truth and nonsense, competence and incompetence, will hold the same position."

Because of the confusion about the purpose of the university (do we enforce social justice, or do we disseminate knowledge?), we have reached the point where academic discourse is impossible, at least in certain quarters, because the achievement of social goals, such as diversity, has been allowed to transcend the need for valid evidence. But once we accept the idea that instead of truth, there are many truths, or different ethnic truths, we cannot hope to have an intellectual community. This is why we cannot each remain in our own separate enclaves with out talking with colleagues who share similar interests and concerns.

University administrators ought to ask whether we need courses in flat-earth theory -or Afrocentric ancient history- even if someone is prepared to teach them. Ideally, those discussions should take place within departments. But in most universities academic deans and curriculum committees also have the authority to ask why a course needs to be offered, and to request an explanation of why instructors choose to ignore and/or suppress evidence. At the very least they could insist that the departments provide accurate descriptions of such courses in the catalogue: caveat emptor.

Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt. They may believe that even if the story is not true, it can be used to serve a positive purpose. But the question, and many others like it, should be a matter of serious concern to everyone, because if you assert that he did steal his philosophy, you are prepared to ignore or to conceal a substantial body of historical evidence that proves the contrary. Once you start doing that, you can have no scientific or even social-scientific discourse, nor can you have a community, or a university.