For years, American higher education has been awash in pseudo-scholars who will say anything to prove their “woke” bona fides. Pathetically weak arguments have gone unchallenged as long as they support the big narrative that Western civilization is the scourge of the planet; arguments that challenge them will be dismissed or ridiculed no matter how cogent they are.

This article by Professor Bruce Thornton provides support for my contention. He writes about the case of Wellesley history professor Mary Lefkowitz, who in 1993 criticized the ridiculous claims of “scholars” who insist that all of our civilization really derives from Africa.

Thornton writes, “Lefkowitz’s brave question and challenge of an intellectual mountebank ignited a scorched-earth response by black-studies and Afrocentric ideologues and activists. The incident soon became a national front in the culture wars. The vitriol ranged from the truly obscure black-studies professor Wilson Jeremiah Moses’ dismissal of Lefkowitz, a highly respected classical scholar, as an ‘obscure drudge in the academic backwaters of a classics department’; to Khalid Muhammad of the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam­­ — whose support was welcomed by the many black-studies professors — who viciously smeared Lefkowitz as a ‘homosexual’ and a ‘hook-nosed, lox-eating . . . so-called Jew.’”

Even 30 years ago, that’s how low academic discourse had fallen.

Read the whole thing.