Everybody is familiar with Great Books programs, where students are introduced to the classics. But after writing about this year’s sad selection for UNC-Chapel Hill’s summer reading program and exchanging emails with Michael Sanera, I figure maybe the time has come for a Worst Books program. The Chapel Hill choice, Covering, a call for giving legal sanctions to practitioners of identity politics, might not make the cut. Michael, however, came up with a real stinker: Martin Bernal’s Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical
Civilization, a staple in many ethnic studies departments that suggests that the ancient Greeks ripped off their knowledge from Africans.