To the editor:

The Oct. 18 article in the Cornell Chronicle by intern Sam Warren '07, "Martin Bernal revisits 'Black Athena' controversy in lecture," is a valiant effort by a young scholar of limited experience to communicate the work of a leader of international academia, who is developing historiographies of greater diversity, philosophies of understanding the development of civilization beyond the cliché use of words that have limited facts about the role of Black Africans and people of color in the origin and development of the West.

A young scholar could not walk in and communicate an accurate summary since Professor Bernal's work is a problem to much of what any student like Warren assumes, believes -- has learned-- about Western Civilization.

Professor Bernal's work published originally in 1987, "Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization; the Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985," challenges historical orientations related to the origin of the West. Bernal confronts the way the West constructs ideas to limit, to deny the significance of an Ethiopian-influenced Egypt on the West. Bernal's scholarship is a challenge to traditional scholarship on the foundations of power relationships between peoples, nations, cultures and races; placing his work in a context where some vilify him for raising the issues. Bernal has raised the scholarship of visionaries like Cheikh Anta Diop, Chancellor Williams, Frank Snowden, John S. Mbiti to their rightful places in academia; leaders who dared to tell unwelcomed truths about the foundations of the West.

-- Carey Wynn II
Wynn is a 1970 graduate of Morehouse College who lives in Pine Bluff, Ark.