The Classics Are Making News
What happens when education is stripped of the Classics?
The Classics are in the news these days. Harvard’s Cornel West recently described Howard University’s decision to dissolve its Classics department a spiritual catastrophe “Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture,” he writes. “Those who commit this terrible act treat Western civilization as either irrelevant and not worthy of prioritization or as harmful and worthy only of condemnation.”
Classics scholar and award-winning translator Shadi Bartsch agrees. “What we need to do is ‘take back the classics,’” she argues. “For millennia, they have been read differently by different cultures. There is no reason they cannot withstand the test of our time, too.”
She should know. Her new translation of The Aeneid has been hailed as “the best version of the Aeneid in modern English.”
Bartsch is one of the first three authors who will spend time with my paid subscribers on Zoom. So come talk Classics! Legal scholar Nadine Strossen, author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship has also graciously agreed to do a Q&A. Strossen was the immediate past president of the ACLU. We’ll have a conversation about censorship and free speech. Finally, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times opinion columnist, Bret Stephens, who authored America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder in 2014 will also do a Zoom Q&A. As America makes plans to leave Afghanistan, his book might be even more relevant than it was when he wrote it.
These Zoom conversations (to be scheduled soon) will normally only be for founding subscribers, but these first three will be open to all paid subscribers. (Founding subscribers who attend will receive a copy of one of the books.)
Coming Up On Clubhouse
This week, I’m not hosting any Clubhouse talks, but coming up next week is my talk with Ralston College President Stephen Blackwood.
Wednesday, April 28 at 8:00pm Eastern, we will be discussing what constitutes a good education. Stephen will also talk about Ralston College’s new model of higher education.
More clubhouse conversations open to all are in the works!
For Paid Subscribers:
In my previous newsletter, I included an excerpt from my latest Psychology Today article about Jesse Singal’s new book, The Quick Fix. In the excerpt, I quoted Lawrence Krauss’s take on the 2006 bestseller, The Secret.
As promised, my full interview with Lawrence Krauss is now available for paid subscribers.