I’m probably pre-empting him in posting this, but this week’s Clarion Call by George Leef is a great write-up of the saga of Mary Lefkowitz’s new book History Lesson, which tracks the Wellesley classicist’s battle with the tendentious “Afrocentric” history that traces all of Greek civilization back to a (literal) robbery of Egypt. (Another good review of the book, from the brand-new Tory publication Standpoint is here.)

Not to beat a horse that is now well and truly dead — in the “blogosphere,” that means it’s about a week old — but Prof Lefkowitz’s story is an excellent example of how administrators were quick to indulge even the zaniest scholarship of “Africana Studies,” no matter the weight of evidence against it. Rather than being the critical forum it should have been, academia is on full display in Lefkowitz’s account as a value- and truth-neutral forum. “He has his view of ancient history and you have yours,” as one administrator told Lefkowitz.

This current runs a lot deeper than one would think: The last time I went to the Smithsonian’s African Art gallery — otherwise, an outstanding collection — the gift shop was stocked with a book claiming that the Mayans were descended from Africans who had crossed the Atlantic on reed pontoons a millennium before Columbus. Absurd, but that’s what is on offer.