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I agree with much of this, but I would have added that the rise and fall of classics in US universities is complex, and there is much that has rightly been critiqued in that fascinating story.
Cancel the Classics? https://theweek.com/articles/965573/cancel-classics https://theweek.com/articles/965573/cancel-classics
Cancel the Classics? https://theweek.com/articles/965573/cancel-classics https://theweek.com/articles/965573/cancel-classics
But Damon's principle point remains: the narrative Padilla is telling is absolutely reductive and just flat out ignores the fact that classical texts have been enormously influential for many Black intellectuals and civil rights leaders. @AnikaFreeindeed is excellent about this.
Damon is also right that when we subordinate the liberal arts to our current political agendas, we miss their liberating power entirely, which lies in the ways they transcend the present entirely.
Padilla's story is absolutely fascinating. The way that the classics inspired and uplifted him out of poverty is amazing stuff--it will be familiar to those who are aware of the general pattern. But Padilla had an intellectual conversion to critical theory at some point.
The details of that are not fully fleshed out, but that's clearly the driving factor. And if you listen to the talk Padilla gave in San Diego, it's filled with the usual claims about enacting violence in the classroom by teaching texts whose morals don't jive with our own.
Well, that's where I jump off the boat. If that's how we approach the humanities, we are locked in the present to a degree that is IMO dangerous and stultifying.
But let's not pretend that if we opened up the classics to the world beyond Greece and Rome we wouldn't be confronted by violent, hierarchical, civilizations rooted in patriarchy and slavery. Because that would not be true.
Anyway, the Humanities is dying. I don't actually think we can save it, but I am absolutely going down with the ship, yammering on about Plato and Aristotle, who have made my life so much richer and deeper than it otherwise would have been.
