Not One to Talk About the Classics

I did read Plato in high school, and tagged the Greek philosopher as a proto-Fascist, and read a fair amount more modern philosophy, and mave made an effort to understand the basic concepts at the heart of what is generally called, "Western Thought," but it's never been a huge part of my life or my, "Thinking."

So I am not one of those people completely losing their sh%$ over Howard University abandoning the classics in its curriculum. 

What I am surprised by is that one of the people who wrote this OP/ED in the Post is the luminaries of African American academe, Cornell West.

I should not be surprised, if you look at his background, it is clear that he spent much of his formative years in the study of philosophers and philosophies from across the world, including those who are lumped under the sobriquet of, "The Classics."

One of the best things about the article is that it is so much more thoughtful and well written that we can expect to hear from Fox News in the next few days:

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.

It is a glorious expression of intellectual fury.