History Lesson: A Race Odyssey by Professor Mary Lefkowitz

Author:Professor Mary Lefkowitz [Lefkowitz, Professor Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2008-09-05T09:45:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Truth or Slander?

ocrates firmly believed that there could be no education without dialogue. He always used the technique of question and answer in his discussions, because it was essential that everyone acknowledge the validity of statements before the discussion could proceed. But at Wellesley-at least in 1993-94-what we mainly saw was confrontation.

Dialogue, at least in certain circles, had come to mean confrontation, as was implied in the closing slogan of The Jewish Onslaught: "Dialogue. Apologies. Reparations:" Was it so certain that dialogue would result in apologies? By "dialogue;' The Jewish Onslaught evidently meant that one side would speak, and the other side would listen.

Nothing in the discussion at Wellesley about The Jewish Onslaught had managed to budge Martin an inch. In December 1993 he issued a second "Broadside;' defending The Jewish Onslaught as a "book of analysis supported by normal scholarly documentation." Jews, he argued, have written many books on black-Jewish relations, while only two such books had been written by blacks. Why, he asked, did Jews "enjoy monopolistic privileges over a debate that concerns Blacks as well as Jews"?

Curiously, Martin now chose to complain about President Walsh's "lack of civility." Another breach of etiquette had been committed by economics professor Marcellus Andrews, who had called Martin "a racist Pied Piper" But the worst offender, he claimed, was me. In an article I had written for a newsletter called Measure, published in September 1993, I had, as Martin put it, "maliciously and scurrilously alleged" that he had called a student "a white fucking bitch "1 Was Walsh, he asked in his "Broadside," aware of that? I also had said, in describing his verbal assault on Michelle Plantec: "The young woman fell down as a result of his onslaught and Martin bent over to continue his rage at her" Martin regarded this as an attack upon him, and he listed this and a number of other comments, including the "Jewish hate mail" that he had reported in The Jewish Onslaught.

This was not the only confrontation (or "dialogue") Martin had in mind. Although I didn't realize it at the time, what Martin wrote in this second "Broadside" was to be the basis of a lawsuit against me that he filed in December 1993. At the same time he sued two undergraduates for libel. One was Avik Roy, who had just graduated from MIT and was now at Yale Medical School. Roy was the founder of Counterpoint, an MIT-Wellesley student magazine that had been critical of political correctness at both insti tutions. Roy had written an article describing Martin's encounter with Plantec. The passage Martin objected to was: "Counterpoint has learned that ... Professor Martin gained tenure within the Africana Studies Department only after successfully suing the college for racial discrimination"' Martin also sued the student publisher of Counterpoint, Samira Khan, and Wellesley College for discrimination when it did not award him a merit increase. The summons didn't reach me until late January 1994. I was in Oxford, England, at the time, giving a lecture on the origins of the Stolen Legacy theory.

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