14 Facts About Mary Lefkowitz

Mary R Lefkowitz was born on April 30,1935 and is an American scholar of Classics.

Mary Lefkowitz is the Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she previously worked from 1959 to 2005.

Mary Lefkowitz has published ten books over the course of her career.

Mary Lefkowitz attracted broader attention for her 1996 book Not Out of Africa, a criticism of Afrocentric claims that ancient Greek civilization derived largely from that of ancient Egypt.

Mary Lefkowitz argued that such claims owed more to an American black nationalist political agenda than historical evidence.

Mary Lefkowitz served on the advisory board of the conservative advocacy group the National Association of Scholars.

Mary Lefkowitz returned to Wellesley College in 1959 as an instructor in Greek.

Mary Lefkowitz holds an honorary degree from Trinity College, which cited her "deep concern for intellectual integrity," and from the University of Patras and from Grinnell College.

Mary Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology, women in antiquity, Pindar, and fiction in ancient biography.

Mary Lefkowitz came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History.

The pinnacle of Mary Lefkowitz's controversy surrounding Afrocentrism in the classics took form in her years-long scholarly debate with Martin Bernal.

The first, Black Athena: Revisited, is a collection of essays edited by Mary Lefkowitz that responds directly to Bernal's work with strong criticism.

Mary Lefkowitz attended this lecture with her husband, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones.

Mary Lefkowitz was married to Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Regius Professor Emeritus of Greek at Oxford University from 1982 until his death in 2009.