Do I hear champagne corks popping in the ivied halls where Dan-el Padilla and others who doubt whether Classics deserves to survive hang out? These Classics Abolitionists have much to celebrate, having argued that Classics as a department, major or field should be abolished. Now Howard University is doing just that. Let the champagne flow.
This is no minor victory. Howard is the flagship among historically black colleges and universities. Since it is, I believe, the only HBCU with a Classics department, that entire sector of American higher education will now be liberated from a discipline that has sometimes been embraced by the far-right, racists and old fogies enamored of Western Civilization.
There’s more to celebrate: While untenured faculty in the department will now once again be able to experience the excitement of the academic job market, tenured faculty members will likely complete their careers as refugees in benevolent departments elsewhere at Howard. These refugees should be, if the Abolitionists are correct, the leaven in the loaf, part of a new, more nourishing environment as classics are infused throughout the university.
Do not be misled by the rumors that the abolition of Classics is just the first step towards phasing down (or out) other humanistic fields in favor of a more vocational education. Lots of mostly white institutions have done that in recent years; why shouldn’t a historically black one do so, too?
In the midst of all this good news, well-known public intellectual Cornel West and his associate Jeremy Tate crash the party and publish an op-ed in the Washington Post calling Howard’s decision “a spiritual catastrophe.” As if that hyperbole weren’t devastating enough, they cite two figures who claim to have benefitted from their study of the classics - Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thank heavens they didn’t bring along with them the whole cast in the award winning book African American Writers and Classical Tradition by James Tatum and William Cook. It includes Phillis Wheatley, Ralph Ellison and Rita Dove. And, oh yes, Toni Morrison once told me about the important role classics played in her undergraduate education, so she might have been invoked, too.
Pay no attention to these names. Empirical evidence will soon be at hand. Howard’s decision provides a perfect opportunity to test the theories of the Classical Abolitionists. If they are right, some of Howard’s departments of literature, history, philosophy, will provide a supportive environment for classical studies, encourage their best students to include the classical world in their course selections, and over time appoint additional scholars studying aspects of the Greco-Roman world. Students’ education will be enriched. If the Abolitionists are wrong, education at Howard will be impoverished, and as a university it will be Howard’s end.
PS I’ll come back to the phrase “spiritual catastrophe” in another post. Stay tuned.
April 22, 2021
This is no minor victory. Howard is the flagship among historically black colleges and universities. Since it is, I believe, the only HBCU with a Classics department, that entire sector of American higher education will now be liberated from a discipline that has sometimes been embraced by the far-right, racists and old fogies enamored of Western Civilization.
There’s more to celebrate: While untenured faculty in the department will now once again be able to experience the excitement of the academic job market, tenured faculty members will likely complete their careers as refugees in benevolent departments elsewhere at Howard. These refugees should be, if the Abolitionists are correct, the leaven in the loaf, part of a new, more nourishing environment as classics are infused throughout the university.
Do not be misled by the rumors that the abolition of Classics is just the first step towards phasing down (or out) other humanistic fields in favor of a more vocational education. Lots of mostly white institutions have done that in recent years; why shouldn’t a historically black one do so, too?
In the midst of all this good news, well-known public intellectual Cornel West and his associate Jeremy Tate crash the party and publish an op-ed in the Washington Post calling Howard’s decision “a spiritual catastrophe.” As if that hyperbole weren’t devastating enough, they cite two figures who claim to have benefitted from their study of the classics - Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thank heavens they didn’t bring along with them the whole cast in the award winning book African American Writers and Classical Tradition by James Tatum and William Cook. It includes Phillis Wheatley, Ralph Ellison and Rita Dove. And, oh yes, Toni Morrison once told me about the important role classics played in her undergraduate education, so she might have been invoked, too.
Pay no attention to these names. Empirical evidence will soon be at hand. Howard’s decision provides a perfect opportunity to test the theories of the Classical Abolitionists. If they are right, some of Howard’s departments of literature, history, philosophy, will provide a supportive environment for classical studies, encourage their best students to include the classical world in their course selections, and over time appoint additional scholars studying aspects of the Greco-Roman world. Students’ education will be enriched. If the Abolitionists are wrong, education at Howard will be impoverished, and as a university it will be Howard’s end.
PS I’ll come back to the phrase “spiritual catastrophe” in another post. Stay tuned.
April 22, 2021