It was only a matter of time befor🌳e Cicero got canc♉eled. ;
The New York Times the other day profiled Princeton cꦅlassicist Dan-el Padilla Peralta, who wants to destroy the study of classics as a blow foꦛr racial justice.
The critique of classics as stultifying and privileged isn’t new, but in the woke era, this attack is more potent than ever and has a better chance of demolishing a foundation of Western educ𒅌ation.
Atও a time when Abraham Lincoln doesn’t pass muster in the progressive precincts of America, poor benighted Homer, whose chief subject was toxic masculinity, probably ꦬdoesn’t stand a chance.
The Times reports that the critics believe that the study of classics “has been instrumental to the invention of ‘whiteness’ and its continued domination.” Or as Padilla himself puts it, “systemic racism is foundational to those institutions that incubate classics and classics as a field itself.”
It is rare to find other fields with scholars so consumed with hatred for their own disciplines that they want to destroy them from within. Presumably, if an ultra-💧progressive astrophysicist concludes that his field is desperately out of touch with social-justice concerns, he simply goes and does something else for a living, rather than agitating to have students stop learning about space.
One would think Padilla’s own amazing personal journey would, in itself, make the case for the wonders of the classics. He came here as a child from th♛e Dominican Republic, lived in a homeless shelter in New York City, discovered a book on ancient Greece and Rome — and with help from a mentor, got into a prep school and went on to get degrees from Princeton, 💛Oxford and Stanford.
For him, evidently, the classics weren’t veꦏry exclusionary, aꦦnd indeed there’s no reason that they should be.
The rigors of Greek and Latin, the timeless questions raised by Plato and Aristotle, the literary value of some of the most compelling poems, plays and tracts ever written, the insights of early historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the oratory of Pericles and Cicero, the awe-inspiring beauty of 🌄the architecture, sculpture and pottery — all of this is available to anyone of any race, ethnicity or creed.
To look at all ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚthese marvels and see only “whiteness” speaks to a reductive obsession with race that is destruct𒁃ive, self-defeating and, in the end, profoundly depressing.
The Times complains, paraphrasing the critics, that “Enlightenment thinkers created a hierarchy with Greﷺece and Rome, coded as white, on top, and ever𒐪ything else below.”
There’s quite a simple reason, though, that Greece and Rome have been a subject of study an🅰d fascination for so long — their cultural, political and legal contributions are so vast and enduring.
The Greeks gave us the example — flawed and incomplete to be sure — of democracy, and the Roman st🧸amp is still discerniღble on our legal system and institutions.
Western thought and literature have proceeded throughout their history in dialogue with t💮he classics, constantly interacting with the arguments, themes and characters of those long-ago forebears.
This isn’t true of other ancient societies.
Of course, the Greeks and Roma⛦ns were blinkered, exclusionary, 𝓡repressive and violent, but who wasn’t? Where in the ancient world did slavery not exist? What society afforded women equal status with men? Where did any ruler respect the dignity of all people?
A key difference between th𓆏e Greeks&nbꦉsp;and Romans and the rest was that their writers critiqued and lampooned their own societies. This willingness to engage in self-criticism became one of the hallmarks, and strengths, of Western culture.
T🌊he critics give the Greeks and the Romans the same treatment as the American project, ignoring what was exceptional about them for a monomaniacal focus on their failings, even if the failings were commonplace everywhere else.
They want♛ to impoverish American college students and ultimately the Western mind in an act of ideological sabotage. This is galling enough; it’s even wor🧜se that they call it progress.
Twitter: @RichLowry