Lying Away Cancel Culture

[Res Ipsa]

My reserves of things to worry about is kinda tapped. Which aspects of cancel culture should I be most concerned about:

1. Terry Gilliam gets to put on his production at a different theater?
2. New state laws prohibiting the teaching of accurate U.S. history?
3. New wave of banning books from school libraries?

Cancel culture became a "thing" only when someone noticed that it was happening to a certain class of people.

I tried watching the Closer. I laughed at first. Then he said some things I considered ignorant and I turned it off. I didn't go online and rant about it. I only mention it to raise a point. Terry Gilliam watched it and saw something different. I wouldn't just shame him for having a different point of view, but see it as a chance for a discussion. Check out this TED Talk by Loretta J Ross where she suggests instead of calling people out we should call them in. Or don't watch it. It's only 14 minutes and she makes a lot of good points

https://www.ted.com/talks/loretta_j_ros ... ll_them_in

I don’t follow Chapelle and I’d never heard of The Closer until a thread was posted on it here. I’d not heard about the incident with Terry Gilliam until this thread. I think the notion that I could shame either guy is kind of silly. They don’t know who I am and have no reason to give a second’s consideration to my opinion. And I don’t really care enough about their political opinions to educate myself enough to have an opinion.

Talking to people I disagree with is more my style.

[Res Ipsa]

So, being realistic, I may kvetch about this or that, but I understand that I am but one humble person of small consequence and that my role is really to teach some courses to young people in my state. I don’t seek to rile people up. I try to be very balanced in my approach.

Lately, though, the real lefty people in my field have been on a path of disciplinary suicide by decrying our field as irredeemably racist. The same thing is happening in medieval studies too. On the one hand, I am enthusiastic about cultivating interest in my topic among students of all kinds, and seeing some of them become the scholars of the future.

The people who argue that classics is over, however, because it is “too racist” are just wrong, in my opinion. I have very diverse classes when I teach the right subject. I would teach Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt every year if I could for that reason. I really think some SJW types go way overboard, and I find that distressing. Would they prefer that I had never had to teach those African American students I loved and nurtured who went on to be successful professionals? Is it really true that classics is racist?

I say B.S..

Thank you for once again sending me down a rabbit hole. I’ve spent several hours reading articles about Classics and racism, and the whole subject is pretty fascinating. It’s like all of the contemporary American race issues stuffed into one specialized Academic discipline.

In my utterly unqualified opinion, I don’t think Classics is an inherently racist academic discipline. But it sounds to me like it is entangled with some difficult race issues. It reminds me quite a bit of my time in law school when the critical legal theorists were attacking racism and sexism in legal institutions, including in the law school itself. But my law professors had it easier than you do; no one was proposing to close down law schools.

It seems to me that Classics has a tough structural racism problem created by the language requirement. My public high school back in the ‘70s offered Latin. But I don’t think my kids’ high school did. And, just taking a wild guess, I’d think that high schools that offer Latin classes are much more accessible to white students than black students.

Princeton’s solution doesn’t sound like a good one to me. The soft bigotry of low expectations comes to mind. It sounds like Oxford’s two track approach is better, although not ideal. The real remedy is at the high school level, which is totally out of your control.

My reading didn’t give me any feel for how classics has been taught over time. It certainly could be taught in a way that reinforces white supremacy, but it’s not clear to me whether that has occurred over time. It sounds like there is a white supremacist myth about the Greek and Roman civilizations used by the Nazis and the current alt-right movement, but I have no idea whether that has its roots in past views within the Classics field. It seems to me that, in addition to its intrinsic value, Classics has an important role to play in refuting these kind of damaging myths.

As an outsider, it looks like grappling issues that should be grappled with. I hope the outcomes are productive and that Classics continues to be an academic field of study. I’d love to audit your course on Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Sounds interesting as hell.

[Physics Guy]

John C. Calhoun has been cancelled. In 2017 Yale University finally renamed its Calhoun College to honor Grace Hopper instead. Calhoun is now probably known most for one sentence, to the effect that he would recognize a Black person as a human being if and only if they could parse a Greek verb.

I don't think that shows that the Classics are or were racist, but racists and classists have been happy to champion the Classics when the Classics have had few other allies, and this support has carried its inherent price of association with racists and classists. For centuries the Classics were an important means by which the western elite defined itself, and it's hard to live that association down once its advantages have evaporated.

Part of that past association with privilege has included reverence for Ancient Greek and Roman culture. One did not merely study the ancients; one appreciated how smart those ancient Athenians were, how admirably structured was the Roman Republic, and so on. If one can barf up all that old classist reverence and study ancient cultures more critically, though, there ought to be a secure place for Classics in modern education. If a lot of the old defenses of Classics were based on reverence that can't be sustained any more, then conversely a lot of what might once have seemed like attacks on the Classics, saying that this or that feature of ancient society was horrible, could instead appear as important reasons to study the Classics today.

[Kishkumen]

It seems to me that Classics has a tough structural racism problem created by the language requirement. My public high school back in the ‘70s offered Latin. But I don’t think my kids’ high school did. And, just taking a wild guess, I’d think that high schools that offer Latin classes are much more accessible to white students than black students.

Princeton’s solution doesn’t sound like a good one to me. The soft bigotry of low expectations comes to mind. It sounds like Oxford’s two track approach is better, although not ideal. The real remedy is at the high school level, which is totally out of your control.

The problem is the structure of high school education in the U.S., but the misperception here is that one needs to take Latin or Greek before college to major in Classics. I started Latin my second semester at BYU, and I now have a PhD. There are many people in the field like me.

It is bizarre, but this says so much about the elitists driving these decisions. Because they went to fancy preparation schools and started Greek at the age of 12 or some such, they decry the injustice of high schools not offering Latin when they have colleagues who did not study Latin in high school. Their blinkered solution is to take away the language requirement in Classics.

Hey, we did just fine, white knight preparation-school-trained elite! So the answer is to make the situation for the languages worse by taking them out of the requirements?

There is a word for those who study Ancient Greece and Rome without languages: archaeologist. Now, most archaeologists actually do have plenty of language training in a wide range of languages, but one can certainly make it as an archaeologist without spending a lot of time with the languages. Archaeology is vitally important too. It exists already. So where is the need to remove the language requirement?

You really are missing much of the picture without the languages. That is true of any culture, any civilization.

[Kishkumen]

John C. Calhoun has been cancelled. In 2017 Yale University finally renamed its Calhoun College to honor Grace Hopper instead. Calhoun is now probably known most for one sentence, to the effect that he would recognize a Black person as a human being if and only if they could parse a Greek verb.

Guilt by association has become something we run to embrace instead of struggling to overcome. I am all for renaming buildings. At Penn my program’s building was renamed after a wealthy donor’s mistress while I was a student there. So much better to have named it after one of the many Black geniuses and Civil Rights heroes!

But to blame Greek because Calhoun made this stupid-ass statement? It is stupid not because it includes Greek but because it questions the obvious humanity of our fellow humans. Instead of focusing on the real problem, let’s blame Greek. In other words, let’s answer stupidity with another form of stupidity.

Now, the non-stupid part of his statement is to hold up the understanding of the Greek verb as an advanced cultural attainment. It is one that many Black scholars have succeeded at, and one that many can and will continue to attain in the future. Greek is at the font of the civilizational revolution that transformed the world for better or worse. Every dominant political system, including communism, derives ultimately from the study of the Classics to some degree, by those who could read Greek philosophy in Greek.

Science as we know it goes back to Greek thought.

Christianity would simply not exist without Greek, Judaism grew up alongside and was deeply influenced by Greek thought, and Islamic scholarship was thoroughly immersed in Greek philosophy.

Saying we do not need Greek is one of the most profoundly shortsighted and ignorant things anyone can say. One invests in Greek for reasons other than consumer satisfaction or economic benefits. One invests in Greek to maintain an awareness of 3000 years of civilization around the globe.

[Kishkumen]

Once upon a time, some high-minded parents decided to teach their child the map of a neighboring metropolis because they wanted their child to be able to navigate a different place. No narrow-minded child in their house! It took many hours to master the map of the neighboring city, but eventually the child knew where every street and every major building, landmark, and service was located. One day, the mother ran out of milk and, because the au pair had called in sick, asked the child to walk to the grocery store to buy some milk. The good-natured, intelligent child happily agreed to. He took the money from his mother's hand, grabbed a grocery bag, and walked out of the penthouse condo to the elevator. He then took the elevator down to the ground level of the high-rise building, stepped onto the sidewalk, and promptly got lost.

If only the parents had taught the child the map of their own metropolis as well as that of someone else's.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with ignoring our own past in our well-meaning attempt to be broadminded. I am all for being broadminded. Study the world and visit it. Learn other languages. Know something of what it means to be in another person's shoes, so to speak. But by all means start by learning "your city's map" first. Our educational leaders on the left have forgotten this very practical point. The wealthy elites who send their kids to preparation schools are happy not to pay the taxes that fund teaching average to poor kids about the history. The collusion of the two, conscious or not, is hollowing out our historical awareness and creating intellectual incoherence. It will ultimately rob us of our republic.

[Father Francis]

I don’t follow Chapelle and I’d never heard of The Closer until a thread was posted on it here. I’d not heard about the incident with Terry Gilliam until this thread. I think the notion that I could shame either guy is kind of silly. They don’t know who I am and have no reason to give a second’s consideration to my opinion. And I don’t really care enough about their political opinions to educate myself enough to have an opinion.

Talking to people I disagree with is more my style.

It isn't so much that you could shame them, but that social media has made it possible for people to join up and shame people in massive groups. Sometimes it's just for one thing they said one time, as if that defines them as a whole. I don't use social media much for this reason. One slip up or misunderstood post can turn you into a pariah.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on talking to those you disagree with. It's an act of compassion, and I consider compassion to be the highest virtue.

[Res Ipsa]

I don’t follow Chapelle and I’d never heard of The Closer until a thread was posted on it here. I’d not heard about the incident with Terry Gilliam until this thread. I think the notion that I could shame either guy is kind of silly. They don’t know who I am and have no reason to give a second’s consideration to my opinion. And I don’t really care enough about their political opinions to educate myself enough to have an opinion.

Talking to people I disagree with is more my style.

It isn't so much that you could shame them, but that social media has made it possible for people to join up and shame people in massive groups. Sometimes it's just for one thing they said one time, as if that defines them as a whole. I don't use social media much for this reason. One slip up or misunderstood post can turn you into a pariah.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on talking to those you disagree with. It's an act of compassion, and I consider compassion to be the highest virtue.

I’m a big fan of compassion. I don’t think In terms of virtue and rankings, but it has a humbling effect that I think is required to survive our current trials and tribulations.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Once upon a time, some high-minded parents decided to teach their child the map of a neighboring metropolis because they wanted their child to be able to navigate a different place. No narrow-minded child in their house! It took many hours to master the map of the neighboring city, but eventually the child knew where every street and every major building, landmark, and service was located. One day, the mother ran out of milk and, because the au pair had called in sick, asked the child to walk to the grocery store to buy some milk. The good-natured, intelligent child happily agreed to. He took the money from his mother's hand, grabbed a grocery bag, and walked out of the penthouse condo to the elevator. He then took the elevator down to the ground level of the high-rise building, stepped onto the sidewalk, and promptly got lost.

If only the parents had taught the child the map of their own metropolis as well as that of someone else's.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem I have with ignoring our own past in our well-meaning attempt to be broadminded. I am all for being broadminded. Study the world and visit it. Learn other languages. Know something of what it means to be in another person's shoes, so to speak. But by all means start by learning "your city's map" first. Our educational leaders on the left have forgotten this very practical point. The wealthy elites who send their kids to preparation schools are happy not to pay the taxes that fund teaching average to poor kids about the history. The collusion of the two, conscious or not, is hollowing out our historical awareness and creating intellectual incoherence. It will ultimately rob us of our republic.

That’s a gem of a statement, professor. It’s deeply philosophical. Dr. Stak recommended a book explaining Heidegger, so my wife and I read it and have since been brushing up on him and it’s been great. One of the things he discusses, in my midwit way of understanding him, is you can’t have an authentic relationship with the present if you fail to understand your history, in which we are the culmination of our past that extends well beyond our limited time. You make a strong argument for a classical education that includes understanding the foundations upon which our western world (and perhaps global world now) resides. Heidegger also talks about embracing our death so we can work it in an authentic way, but it’s an impossible task if we don’t understand our past. Our future can’t be authentic if we erase our past.

- Doc

[Kishkumen]

That’s a gem of a statement, professor. It’s deeply philosophical. Dr. Stak recommended a book explaining Heidegger, so my wife and I read it and have since been brushing up on him and it’s been great. One of the things he discusses, in my midwit way of understanding him, is you can’t have an authentic relationship with the present if you fail to understand your history, in which we are the culmination of our past that extends well beyond our limited time. You make a strong argument for a classical education that includes understanding the foundations upon which our western world (and perhaps global world now) resides. Heidegger also talks about embracing our death so we can work it in an authentic way, but it’s an impossible task if we don’t understand our past. Our future can’t be authentic if we erase our past.

- Doc

Thank you for the generous compliment, DocCam. Heidegger is an example of a man who really immersed himself in the Classics. Not that my opinion of him matters, but I value the lesson he is trying to teach as you describe it. I need to read much more Heidegger. It has been some years since I last dipped into his work. Thank you for sharing that. Stak is quite a scholar himself.