Hello and thank you for being a DL contributor. We are changing the login scheme for contributors for simpler login and to better support using multiple devices. Please click here to update your account with a username and password.

Hello. Some features on this site require registration. Please click here to register for free.

Hello and thank you for registering. Please complete the process by verifying your email address. If you can't find the email you can resend it here.

Hello. Some features on this site require a subscription. Please click here to get full access and no ads for $1.99 or less per month.

For once, I agree with Cornel West!

From his opinion piece in the WAPO:

Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.

Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”

Yet today, one of America’s greatest Black institutions, Howard University, is diminishing the light of wisdom and truth that inspired Douglass, King and countless other freedom fighters. Amid a move for educational “prioritization,” Howard University is dissolving its classics department. Tenured faculty will be dispersed to other departments, where their courses can still be taught. But the university has sent a disturbing message by abolishing the department.

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. 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.

Sadly, in our culture’s conception, the crimes of the West have become so central that it’s hard to keep track of the best of the West. We must be vigilant and draw the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other. The crimes spring from certain philosophies and certain aspects of the civilization, not all of them.

The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world. We should never cancel voices in this conversation, whether that voice is Homer or students at Howard University. For this is no ordinary discussion.

The Western canon is an extended dialogue among the crème de la crème of our civilization about the most fundamental questions. It is about asking “What kind of creatures are we?” no matter what context we find ourselves in. It is about living more intensely, more critically, more compassionately. It is about learning to attend to the things that matter and turning our attention away from what is superficial.

Howard University is not removing its classics department in isolation. This is the result of a massive failure across the nation in “schooling,” which is now nothing more than the acquisition of skills, the acquisition of labels and the acquisition of jargon. Schooling is not education. Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.

Continued...

by Anonymousreply 101April 25, 2021 4:46 PM

The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education. To end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage, vision and civic virtue.

Students must be challenged: Can they face texts from the greatest thinkers that force them to radically call into question their presuppositions? Can they come to terms with the antecedent conditions and circumstances they live in but didn’t create? Can they confront the fact that human existence is not easily divided into good and evil, but filled with complexity, nuance and ambiguity?

This classical approach is united to the Black experience. It recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of Black people, which is to lift every voice. That means to find your voice, not an echo or an imitation of others. But you can’t find your voice without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages.

As German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer emphasized in the past century, traditions are inescapable and unavoidable. It is a question not of whether you are going to work in a tradition, but which one. Even the choice of no tradition leaves people ignorantly beholden within a language they didn’t create and frameworks they don’t understand.

Engaging with the classics and with our civilizational heritage is the means to finding our true voice. It is how we become our full selves, spiritually free and morally great.

by Anonymousreply 1April 20, 2021 8:20 AM

Beautifully put and good for him for speaking up.

by Anonymousreply 2April 20, 2021 8:26 AM

Yes, yes and yes. I hope this catches fire.

by Anonymousreply 3April 20, 2021 8:53 AM

So, they're getting rid of the classics department because the people taught in them were white?

by Anonymousreply 4April 20, 2021 9:01 AM

It would seem so, R4. This is the paragraph I love:

Howard University is not removing its classics department in isolation. This is the result of a massive failure across the nation in “schooling,” which is now nothing more than the acquisition of skills, the acquisition of labels and the acquisition of jargon. Schooling is not education. Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.

by Anonymousreply 5April 20, 2021 9:10 AM

Socrates or reruns of Sandford and Son? Same dif.

by Anonymousreply 6April 20, 2021 9:12 AM

Thanks for sharing, OP. I enjoyed reading it.

by Anonymousreply 7April 20, 2021 9:15 AM

The classics are so relevant today if you have good professors to help you interpret them. I saw a program on YouTube a few weeks ago where a former convict was talking about how much he enjoyed reading Sophocles’s Philoctetes in a prison school because his professor invited the class to see their own current experiences in the title character who is thrown away by his peers to rot alone on an island and is then forced to re-enter society.

by Anonymousreply 8April 20, 2021 9:44 AM

It's not just Classics departments and it's not just Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

UK students seeking degrees in Art History dropped 29% in a decade prompting plans to drop A levels in the subject. A narrow and popularly maligned field that is ranked only #187 or so in popularity of college majors, yet too easily written off as elitist, un-lucrative, and useless, and scrapped as Classics, Languages, History, English, Economics, etc.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 9April 20, 2021 10:29 AM

Humanities have been cut all over the country, any not just in black schools. America has decided that the only thing worth knowing is the so-called STEM subjects. Everything else can go to hell.

To blame this on PC culture or whatever misses a much bigger trend.

by Anonymousreply 10April 20, 2021 10:52 AM

R10 when it come to the topic at hand, it does have to do with PC/SJW/cancel culture.

by Anonymousreply 11April 20, 2021 10:54 AM

So when Republican state governments all over the country slash budgets for history and philosophy and art and Classics, they're doing it because they're SJWs run amok? Whatever, Andrew Sullivan.

by Anonymousreply 12April 20, 2021 11:13 AM

R12 This thread is specifically about traditional black institutions/universities. Yes, what they are doing is PC/SJW/Cancel culture., Are you too far-left to even comprehend?

by Anonymousreply 13April 20, 2021 11:18 AM

He’s talking about Howard, but I don’t see this as a “cancellation” or SJW move. Classics departments across the country have been in trouble since the 1960s due to perceived irrelevance by students.

by Anonymousreply 14April 20, 2021 11:44 AM

Art History is not the same. West is talking about how nonwestern people have used western philosophical ideas to shape their own thinking. The masterpieces of western painting and sculpture have had the same importance to the world. That's just the truth.

by Anonymousreply 15April 20, 2021 11:53 AM

r13 I think it has to do, in part, with the direction a lot of humanities departments have gone in the past few decades.

It began with the high theory 1980s. Now, many humanities departments are expressly political. In my corner of the world, they do bad history, bad social science, and bad philosophy. Literature departments aren't about literature anymore. Not really. I meet many grad students studying literature -- getting their doctorate -- who, well, seem to despise literature. We don't have many towering figures anymore like Harold Bloom -- white and male as he was -- who truly love literature, not for its political payoff, but as a thing in itself, a thing that demonstrates what it means to be a human living in this world.

I wrote this in another thread, but I think it applies here too. (Although I will add, classics departments are far less affected by this trajectory than lit departments):

[quote]I'm in the humanities, and increasingly the field is losing expertise at the expense of political expediency. At least in my field (literature), I think this is an unfortunate departure from STEM fields and even some other humanities depts.

[quote]A student who receives a BS in physics or math has a very solid foundation regarding those fields. By graduation, they are conversant in the fundamentals of their subjects. They are also held to account by objective standards (eg, exams) and it's hard to slip past these requirements. Literature (for me, English Renaissance literature) has largely abandoned these principles. For example, seniors in our department cannot scan a line of poetry. They cannot tell you what a spondee and trochee are. They can't define iambic pentameter. They can, however, recite the shibboleths of "race, gender, class" and parrot back to you why any given text is problematic.

[quote]I think our department has more diversity requirements than period requirements. A student can earn a BA without ever having read a line of Chaucer or Milton. Shakespeare remains the sole author requirement. MA and PhD students were at one time required to take a semester, at least, of Old English. No longer.

[quote]The canon wars were long ago, and it's clear the canon loyalists lost. But we've lost more, in my view, than the canon itself. We've lost a common language. We've lost intellectual rigor. We've lost the value of close reading and the beauty of poetics.

[quote]I'm not opposed to expanding the canon by any means. I'm not opposed to other critical approaches beyond New Criticism. However, I am opposed to these approaches supplanting a fundamental knowledge of the history of English and its literature, of the rigors of close reading, of a common knowledge base, etc.

[quote]And finally, as others have noted, this shift in the humanities comes in tandem with the pressure to publish and has allowed a whole lot of mediocre/bad scholarship to slip by undetected. How can there be real professional standards without expertise? You would be amazed at the shit that gets published.

by Anonymousreply 16April 20, 2021 11:54 AM

[quote]West is talking about how nonwestern people have used western philosophical ideas to shape their own thinking. The masterpieces of western painting and sculpture have had the same importance to the world. That's just the truth.

Well said, R15.

by Anonymousreply 17April 20, 2021 12:08 PM

Why not just introduce non-western cultural classics into the curriculum instead of dismantling the entire thing?

by Anonymousreply 18April 20, 2021 1:20 PM

Is Cornel West a black SUPREMACIST?

by Anonymousreply 19April 20, 2021 1:34 PM

Actually, R13, West himself didn't narrow his argument to just Howard University so you can just fuck the fuck right off.

by Anonymousreply 20April 20, 2021 4:51 PM

R10 is absolutely right. Students are told all the jobs are in STEM and to ignore the humanities. So the numbers decline in humanities and departments get cut. This is happening in my state school where I teach in the philosophy department. And it has nothing whatsoever with SJWs rejected the traditional canon or any other right-wing nonsense.

by Anonymousreply 21April 20, 2021 4:58 PM

White people have fucked up so bad throughout history, that people are over anything having to do with the west.

And by the way. The west was built on the backs of black and brown people for centuries.

You know, white colonial imperialism and all that.

by Anonymousreply 22April 20, 2021 5:24 PM

Cornel West will soon be cancelled.

by Anonymousreply 23April 20, 2021 5:29 PM

[quote]White people have fucked up so bad throughout history

I think the word you're looking for is "badly."

And your second paragraph would've been more forceful if it were one sentence, with a comma after the word "way."

by Anonymousreply 24April 20, 2021 5:30 PM

R24 Alright grammar Nazi.

by Anonymousreply 25April 20, 2021 5:54 PM

To be honest, it has NEVER been more than a tiny minority of students who loved and enjoyed philosophy, classical languages and literature, renaissance poetry and plays. And I'm going to be contrarian and say that there's a hell of a lot of very good writing going on in our time, dealing with big topics and ideas, couched in the language of our time and using characters that most of us can relate to. The many kings of England memorialized by Shakespeare mean nothing to us and their lives are unfathomable to us. .It's part of Shakespeare's genius that he made their stories interesting and put words in their mouths that make us think, about the nature of power and evil and nobility, but still, they are by and large far outside our frame of reference and I NEVER see myself in their stories..... Part of the purpose of great literature is to make us see ourselves in stories, and to learn to be more introspective and thoughtful about our own lives and actions, instead of stumbling through life with complete lack of self-awareness.

Nonetheless, we have a referential culture, so we have to have enough exposure to the sources of those references to make sense of the references. Thousands of novels use snippets of Shakespeare in their titles for instance. We have constant references to Greek and Roman gods and their myths, and of course the Bible is referenced everywhere. All of these references must be bewildering to people who have never encountered any of this in their academic lives.

At least one philosophy course is practically a necessity to teach good critical thinking skills and the construction of logical arguments.

For many decades, parents have pressured their children to study business, law or medicine (and now STEM subjects) over those "useless" academic subjects. However, that tiny minority which appreciates classical studies needs to have SOMEPLACE to study those subjects. If those departments get cut or are gutted in every college in the country, how will this knowledge get transmitted? And I worry about a world where critical thinking and logical, factual arguments get swamped by Qanon -type theories. Somewhere, somehow, there have to be people trained to demolish that sort of trash thinking in a few choice words.

by Anonymousreply 26April 20, 2021 6:01 PM

Literature should be a window and a mirror, and a sliding glass door

by Anonymousreply 27April 20, 2021 6:04 PM

White conservatives need to STFU about what is and isn't taught at institutions of higher learning, given how much effort they've put into shutting their doors to all but the richest and most privileged students. They can particularly zip it when it comes to traditionally Black colleges, which were formed specifically in opposition to white anti-education fuckery.

by Anonymousreply 28April 20, 2021 6:09 PM

When did Cornel West become a white conservative, R28?

by Anonymousreply 29April 20, 2021 6:13 PM

No, R4, the classes are still being taught, just within other departments.

They did not get rid of the classes OR the classics. There is simply no more Classics Department.

This is one of those news items that people with a specific political agenda misinterpret (on purpose, usually) to try to make some kind of point; here, they're trying to make this some anti-white racism crap.

It's not. And I'm tired of Cornel West writing these kinds of op-eds and making these kinds of comments when he knows full well he's simply providing troll fodder for white racists, and that he's essentially lying about what's happening so he can be angry about something.

He's smart, he knows that the classes have not been removed, yet even after he says "tenured faculty will be dispersed to other departments, where their courses can still be taught," he continues to talk about "removal of the classics."

It's ridiculous. I'm so tired of so much bullshit, so many lies, all this puffed-up outrage over things that never happened, just to make some fucked-up rightwing political point.

by Anonymousreply 30April 20, 2021 6:18 PM

[quote]It's part of Shakespeare's genius that he made their stories interesting and put words in their mouths that make us think, about the nature of power and evil and nobility, but still, they are by and large far outside our frame of reference and I NEVER see myself in their stories..... Part of the purpose of great literature is to make us see ourselves in stories

This is self-involved bullshit. No, you don't need to see yourself in every story to learn from it. I would argue that learning the ability to see others and understand them using empathy through reading their stories is the skill that is taught through the classics and literature in general. The "see myself" focus is a very shallow approach to literature.

by Anonymousreply 31April 20, 2021 6:28 PM

The ugly truth is that the economy can no longer absorb humanities and social science degrees into gainful employment. It used to be that you could have a degree in the classics, fail or choose not to continue into post-grad academia, and still get a decent middle-class white collar job. But that hasn't been the case for many years. I feel like I was part of the last generation who could get decent employment out of college with anything other than a STEM degree, and I graduated in 2002.

Colleges are also producing too many post-grad degrees in the humanities/social sciences, so getting a master's or doctorate is also useless unless you're a genius with an incredible hustle.

I agree with West that sidelining the classics is a bad trend, and SJWs are undoubtedly playing a part, but the primary solution would involve restructuring the economy, and that's never going to happen.

R12

What budgets? Government barely funds college education anymore, and that's been the case since the '80s. Get some new talking points.

by Anonymousreply 32April 20, 2021 6:35 PM

r31. Chew on this statement:

“Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”

by Anonymousreply 33April 20, 2021 6:38 PM

A large part of the value in reading older forms of literature is that it's a way to study the past through the lens of art and culture. If you learn something about yourself in the process, great, but it's not a self-help manual.

by Anonymousreply 34April 20, 2021 6:42 PM

R33, that has nothing to do with having to see yourself in every story as was stated above. That is more a match to what I stated about learning to incorporate others experiences through developing empathy through reading literature and then using that to look at your own life.

by Anonymousreply 35April 20, 2021 6:43 PM

I'm in the humanities, too (History). This is true across American higher education.

by Anonymousreply 36April 20, 2021 6:45 PM

Does he order his food using rhymes and ‘floetry’?

by Anonymousreply 37April 20, 2021 6:46 PM

[quote] America has decided that the only thing worth knowing is the so-called STEM subjects.

It's one side of the political divide that is driving this. Higher education is a one-party state, and those are the people who are driving this decision. The people of America were never consulted.

by Anonymousreply 38April 20, 2021 6:47 PM

The people who are mandating the primacy of STEM subjects and starving the humanities are the legislators in state capitols who decide what gets funded. The American people have long thought subjects like philosophy and history are useless and don't lead to a job. This is just the logical extension of that. This is Republican thinking about education made flesh.

Sorry, assholes. This isn't the SJWs at work.

by Anonymousreply 39April 22, 2021 1:55 PM

[quote] The people who are mandating the primacy of STEM subjects and starving the humanities are the legislators in state capitols

Perhaps they have decided that society would do better with more doctors, scientists, and engineers, and fewer grievance-studies degree holders (otherwise known as bartenders and janitors).

by Anonymousreply 40April 22, 2021 3:03 PM

I love how R40 chimed in on a thread that warns "it's bad to abandon teaching the Classics" by saying "teaching anything but math and science is undermining American civilization."

by Anonymousreply 41April 22, 2021 8:53 PM

R41, it's not the right that has abandoned the Classics. It is the left, which has colonized them with foolish ideas like critical theory and intersectional politics.

by Anonymousreply 42April 22, 2021 9:41 PM

R42, in other words, they started incorporating people other than old white guys.

by Anonymousreply 43April 23, 2021 5:23 AM

R43, you don't really know what the Classics are, do you?

by Anonymousreply 44April 23, 2021 11:24 AM

R43 'Old white guys' is always the lame comeback by the far-left about anything. Get a new argument!

by Anonymousreply 45April 23, 2021 12:22 PM

Distinguished gentleman of an advanced age with low levels of melanin work for you R45?

by Anonymousreply 46April 23, 2021 2:01 PM

This pattern is not something occurring only among major black universities. I understand the particular story with Mr. Douglass, but it's rather distorting.

The dissolving - active contempt, actually - of classics departments and related departments is not completely a dismissal of the power and worth of Western civilization's past (plus other material that is part of classics curriculum). It does make some sense that an entire department devoted to this area works against how universities are organized today. The work of classics education can be distributed among the disciplines, among philosophy, history, literature, political science, social sciences, and other areas. In that way the classics are not treated as something external and worshipful in comparative isolation. Subject integration matters a great deal.

by Anonymousreply 47April 23, 2021 3:13 PM

Very few people have the slightest notion of where Cornel West is coming from. Even college educated people. People are very poorly educated nowadays. STEM an exception. I teach in humanities in a STEM university and the smart stem students would never question the legitimacy of classics and philosophy. Even if they are personally not interested in the moment they can understand the value.

by Anonymousreply 48April 23, 2021 3:19 PM

Also, college is a bit late to tell young people that classics have value.

If we want to point fingers, lets aim them at the obligatory teachers and schools. And education programs. I watched some junior and senior HS classes during the lockdown. The teachers were NOT impressive, especially of the younger kids. The teachers were spewing a lot of editorial and constantly asking for confirmation from the students of what the teacher said. It was dismal.

by Anonymousreply 49April 23, 2021 3:26 PM

R47 speak it sister!

by Anonymousreply 50April 23, 2021 5:05 PM

R44 and R45, you are just stuck old men. The reason "the classics" are defined as "the classics" in the limited way they are, namely Greek and Roman history and literature, is because old white men a long time ago decided that that's how they would defined classics because, according to them, they are the basis of modern civilization. The problem is that the definition of civilization they are using is narrow because of their inherent bias. You should expand your minds a bit and study the civilizations of ancient Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and realize that they all contributed to modern society, even though they weren't old white men.

The fact that people are trying to correct for that built-in bias now is a good thing. The only people who don't think it's a good thing are, not surprisingly, old white men. Welcome to the modern world where you're no longer special simply because you're pale and have a dick. I know it's hard to embrace change, especially for old white men like you, but keep up or get out of the way. The world moves on and it will move on without you. In fact, it already has.

by Anonymousreply 51April 24, 2021 12:52 AM

[R51] Share some recommendations from Africa please. I don’t know any ancient African literature.

by Anonymousreply 52April 24, 2021 1:02 AM
Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 53April 24, 2021 1:13 AM

Well one collection of Middle Eastern texts has always been fairly popular in the West

by Anonymousreply 54April 24, 2021 1:32 AM

Making this into a STEM vs. Humanities debate is silly. This is about the elevation of trade school topics (digital marketing etc) over knowledge for knowledge’s sake topics at traditionally liberal arts colleges. The type of people who would defund philosophy have no use for pure mathematics. They only care about skill acquisition.

by Anonymousreply 55April 24, 2021 11:28 AM

Yes, r55, but departments who house pure mathematicians (for example) also have lots of people studying and researching applied math. And hence, those departments receive more funding. Additionally, at my university, the math department is housed within the natural sciences college -- which has a HUGE budget.

The college of arts and humanities, on the other hand, never has adequate funding.

In principle, I completely agree that disciplines like pure math and philosophy are very much aligned. However, given the structure of the modern university, their respective funding realities are much different.

by Anonymousreply 56April 24, 2021 11:36 AM

Should add that r56 is coming from the perspective of a public r 1, not a SLAC.

by Anonymousreply 57April 24, 2021 11:38 AM

Love West.

by Anonymousreply 58April 24, 2021 11:41 AM

You are absolutely right R56, but don’t you feel that within the STEM field there is an increasing imbalance to the T(echnology) component? Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the biomedical research side, a huge fan of Bayh-Dole and obviously I love what translational science has accomplished, but without adequate funding of curiosity based research there will be nothing to translate in 20 years. Between the dissolution of places like Bell Labs, the focus on Impact with NSF funding scores and the single minded focus on quickly translatable findings in the biomedical sciences along with the the denigration of the humanities we are selling out our future.

by Anonymousreply 59April 24, 2021 12:03 PM

We are on the precipice.

by Anonymousreply 60April 24, 2021 12:04 PM

All good points, r59. I'm coming at this from the humanities perspective, so I don't know the idiosyncrasies of STEM funding.

A complete aside: I've been reading lately about early set theory. I find it fascinating how many mathematicians in the 19th / early 20th century were also philosophers: off the top of my head, Frege, Russell, Hahn, Whitehead, Boole, Dedekind.

by Anonymousreply 61April 24, 2021 12:39 PM

The Florida legislature has passed a bill allowing (presumably conservative) students to record their (presumably liberal) teachers to bolster charges of disagreeable or offensive speech.

I know the nasty old codgers of the DL want to blame everything on These Kids Today, but the real threat to free speech and to American education is the jumped up yahoos in state capitols. You can argue that they don't contribute the dollars they used to (and they don't), but they can still pass laws.

by Anonymousreply 62April 24, 2021 2:12 PM

Yeah, r62, let's never forget that the Right has always been big fans of shutting down debate, not allowing improper thought, guarding the gates from the heathens. This was not invented by the left, and when the right goes on about their love of free speech and open discourse it's mainly bullshit.

by Anonymousreply 63April 24, 2021 4:52 PM

The issue today is the humanities are not developing deep thinkers. So its a good idea to throw classics and philosophy at the STEM geeks because they have the synapses and habit to give it a good go. The humanities have been debased.

by Anonymousreply 64April 24, 2021 5:49 PM

Cornel West is usually a far-left hack but this is a very good piece.

by Anonymousreply 65April 24, 2021 6:08 PM

[quote] Schooling is not education

Schooling is just memorizing facts. Education is the actual process of learning. Two totally different things.

by Anonymousreply 66April 24, 2021 6:10 PM

This is where conservatives pretend to care about the classics so they can score some points against "woke" people

Meanwhile conservatives don't read and prop up dummies like Lauren Boebert who dropped out of high school

by Anonymousreply 67April 24, 2021 6:13 PM

Is that what you think will actually happen r64? Won't it just be a bunch of future robotic worker bees worshipping money and the rich and never questioning anything outside of their very narrow fields? Isn't that the goal?

by Anonymousreply 68April 24, 2021 6:48 PM

R31 wrote " No, you don't need to see yourself in every story to learn from it. I would argue that learning the ability to see others and understand them using empathy through reading their stories is the skill that is taught through the classics and literature in general."

This is very true, yet for some reason this is rarely applied to white students. For generations we limited the canon to white authors writing about white characters and excluded so much of the great literature of the world. With the expanded canon, including Asian classical literature, South American novels, etc it means works of greater merit are edging out some of the undeservedly canonical works of the past. (I am looking at you, James Hogg!)

And our white students get a chance to see others and understand them them using empathy---which I agree is one of the key reasons to study literature.

by Anonymousreply 69April 24, 2021 7:18 PM

R69, In America, the focus is mainly on anglo authors I would say. It doesn't even focus on many great authors from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc.

by Anonymousreply 70April 24, 2021 7:20 PM

R69, somewhat relatedly, that is the issue I have with big media shoehorning black, Latino, and Asian actors into roles that are clearly written for white characters, whether that's due to the time period of the piece or the historical setting, etc. I really want some new stories and wish they would fund tv shows and movies that tell original and historical stories from those groups. An example is pretending that David Copperfield was Indian in that recent version with Dev Patel. It's just culturally stupid due to many factors. Why not fund one of the billion stories that India actually has to tell, both culturally and historically, and then hire Indian actors, writers, directors, etc? As a woman, I don't want women just given a bunch of roles that were written for men. I want our original stories funded and told with women directors, actors, writers, etc.

by Anonymousreply 71April 24, 2021 7:57 PM

R69 is writing from 1982 and taking a stand against the white canon! How are you gramps?

by Anonymousreply 72April 24, 2021 8:01 PM

I despise West - I hate him. I think he is a racist monster and a complete fraud.

by Anonymousreply 73April 24, 2021 8:05 PM

whores and grifters pretending to care about free speech. So stupid.

by Anonymousreply 74April 24, 2021 8:51 PM

What about the Gypsies, tramps and thieves?

by Anonymousreply 75April 24, 2021 10:17 PM

Steve Jobs would say to anyone who'd listen that Apple's aesthetic was to marry the sciences of engineering and computing with the humanities - art and design and history. Losing one is a great tragedy.

by Anonymousreply 76April 24, 2021 10:28 PM

R72, if I am gramps for standing up against the white canon, then what are all the people on this thread arguing to keep the white canon?

I wish this had been settled in 1982.

by Anonymousreply 77April 24, 2021 10:42 PM

Yeah r71, there is this rather stupid idea out there that if we can only portray all the white historical figures as black or brown everyone will suddenly love black and brown people. It's ass backwards and hopeless. The most that would be accomplished if it isn't laughed at altogether is that white supremacists will stop liking those historical figures who are now seen as black or brown.

The Left has many good ideas, but one of the stupid ideas is that changing a few words or changing a few people in history will magically change everyone's attitudes toward race. It should stop that nonsense. It just never works.

by Anonymousreply 78April 25, 2021 12:49 AM

R78, actually, I think it started off as a labor issue. Then it became clear that people are aware that actors are acting.

It is just another convention of storytelling. We buy anachronistic styling, anachronistic language, background music, etc.

I do not think anyone thinks society is going to change because a dark skinned man gets to play a Dickens character.

by Anonymousreply 79April 25, 2021 1:03 AM

Classics is the study of ancient Greek and Roman cultures. There is no "canon" and it is WHITE MEN. That's just the way it is. (side eye to Megyn Kelly). It's CLASSICS.

On my Ivy campus in the 1980s the white male canon was already being swapped, diversified, replaced, complimented in other domains. You could study philosophy, literature, art, history of science, political economy, from cultures around the world throughout recorded history.

by Anonymousreply 80April 25, 2021 1:09 AM

And all that is fine r79, except we both know it is this terribly forced thing, that if we can just put enough black and brown and people on screen it will change everything. It is the silliest kind of dingbat, Hollywood logic.

It would be nice to actually tell more black and brown stories. But this is easier, so this is what the average moron in Hollywood will embrace.

by Anonymousreply 81April 25, 2021 1:21 AM

oh fuck, black and brown people, not black and brown and people.

by Anonymousreply 82April 25, 2021 1:22 AM

Humans were stupid apes fighting over resources before classical antiquity and nothing’s really changed since then. You’re all being a bit dramatic.

by Anonymousreply 83April 25, 2021 1:43 AM

Actually that is precisely the silly thing everyone needs to stop believing r83. There is actually a reason to discover real archeology, real anthropology, real history. Not in some silly PC way, but in an actual way. Actually discover that different people have reached this weird thing called "civilization" in very different ways, and also we really need to stop thinking of civilization as this one thing that happened once in ancient Sumeria and just grew from there. That is complete stupidity and has to stop. That is why actual multiculturalism, actual delving into real diversity, not the bullshit "let's pretend everyone always had the same idea" but real diversity, can actually enhance education.

by Anonymousreply 84April 25, 2021 1:47 AM

But you people seem to think such multiculturalism is a challenge to find on campus nowadays. Yet it's been in place since the 80s for chrissakes. I could and did study Iroquois culture in college. in the 80s. And North African civilization. In the 80s. Cornel West and HL Gates guest lectured in my African American History course.

by Anonymousreply 85April 25, 2021 1:58 AM

Don,t worry. The really intellectually gifted will find a way to study art and the humanities on their own, as well as advanced math and physics.

by Anonymousreply 86April 25, 2021 2:10 AM

I hope so r86. Will there have to be secret underground academies?

Seriously, the problem is that "productivity" is the current religion. Everyone has to prove they are "productive." No actual knowledge. Just productivity. Make, make, make, do, do, do, produce, produce, produce. Produce what? Who cares? Just make more of it. I don't know that there is a way around it in this culture.

by Anonymousreply 87April 25, 2021 2:13 AM

By the way, Cornel West has no personal or professional affiliation with any HBC as far as I know. Does he? He's pure Ivy League.

by Anonymousreply 88April 25, 2021 2:18 AM

whether he does or does not r88, he has a point about all this. Teach everything, but teach it fully. Don't be 19th century dingbats about it though. Don't pretend that the entire worth of the world is captured in a few 6th Century BC Greeks. Don't do that shit either.

by Anonymousreply 89April 25, 2021 2:37 AM

I agree he has a point. But why the unspoken context that Howard has 750m endowment and Prof West's institutions have 15 to 50x as much money. Harvard Classics department is doing fine.

by Anonymousreply 90April 25, 2021 3:13 AM

No one's going to ask OP why they've never agreed with West on anything before, not one thing? We all know why.

by Anonymousreply 91April 25, 2021 3:31 AM

honestly, why do you care what money he has personally r90? it's a much more general discussion.

by Anonymousreply 92April 25, 2021 3:31 AM

Who spoke about what money Cornel West has?

by Anonymousreply 93April 25, 2021 3:34 AM

actually nobody r93. Damn, totally misread your post. sorry about that.

by Anonymousreply 94April 25, 2021 3:37 AM

The brass tacks is that underfunded private universities are going to consolidate and expenses to invest in departments considered useful by the students and marketable by the school. As for our grand state universities, the tax payers have balked at the expense. Perhaps there can be a classics department at the 1 land grant.

As for Howard, I would be surprised if any POC intellectual enough to want to pursue philosophy or classics wouldn't be accepted straight out to the Ivies and well funded schools that can indulge the luxuries of the learning for learning sake in Classics, etc. This year the ivies abandoned standardized tests and admitted the most diverse freshman ever for next fall.

by Anonymousreply 95April 25, 2021 3:43 AM

freshmen. sorry can't see or type well tonight.

by Anonymousreply 96April 25, 2021 3:44 AM

and that is all true r95. And another reminder that the great god Economy is kind of a cunt. Pretty much everything we value as a society is kind of nonsense. It's just how we are these days.

by Anonymousreply 97April 25, 2021 3:45 AM

Please add Gödel to my list at r61

by Anonymousreply 98April 25, 2021 8:25 AM

Noted R98

by Anonymousreply 99April 25, 2021 9:51 AM

[quote] The really intellectually gifted will find a way to study art and the humanities on their own, as well as advanced math and physics.

Well, except for that tiny little period of time known as the "dark ages". I don't suppose we're allowed to use that term now though, are we?

by Anonymousreply 100April 25, 2021 12:28 PM

True, R100.

by Anonymousreply 101April 25, 2021 4:46 PM
Loading
Need more help? Click Here.

Yes indeed, we too use "cookies." Take a look at our privacy/terms or if you just want to see the damn site without all this bureaucratic nonsense, click ACCEPT. Otherwise, you'll just have to find some other site for your pointless bitchery needs.

×

Become a contributor - post when you want with no ads!