Long-time readers will be familiar with the tragic story of Joshua Katz, a Princeton classics professor who was chased out of university by a mob. They not only cost him his job but also made him un-personable as a professor, one of the most respected academics in his field. Katz wrote today about speaking at a conference of classicals scholars who had gathered to Greece. He spoke to them via Zoom because his wife was pregnant and he couldn’t travel.
I found myself in Athens seven days ago. There, I zoomed in on the Academy of Athens. Here, a group of British and European classicists, many of them long-time friends, was gathering. Some of them walked out while I was speaking, and boycotted my presentation. This is not the behavior of respected professors towards a once-respected colleague, but rather the behavior of activists students toward an external speaker. Since I was not present in the room, it was impossible to gauge how many people had left. My talk’s beginning and ending are what I know for certain. Every other speaker, which was nearly 30 of us, received a lengthy introduction. I did not receive any. I was told to start my talk. This is the first conference I’ve seen in my entire life. It was also unusual and almost as offensive as the fact that my talk did not receive a single clap from the moderator. Unusual, but maybe equally telling was the fact that I wasn’t asked one question. You are now invisibility.
For those who acknowledge my existence, I’ll tell you about “Classics: Inside Out, Upside Down”: This is a humanistic discipline that is in serious trouble. Even at Princeton, students are less interested in ancient Greece and Rome than they used to be. There are far, far more Ph.D.s in classics than tenure-track positions, or any academic jobs.
Prof. Katz stated that he spoke about the ideologically driven collapse of authority within Classics and the standards it entails, as well as how left-wing activists were trying to destroy it. More:
My Zoom talk focused on what this turmoil means to parents, students, students, employers, funding agencies and the media. I tried to convey a clear message about the problems and possible solutions. Since no one present spoke or is likely to speak to invisible me again, I won’t know if the vast majority of classicists, which I suspect, agree with me, but they are too afraid to. I think I can console my self with this though: I will be watching as my ex-colleagues burn.
This tweet by Mark Zuckerberg’s sister gives you an idea of what kind of people are ruining Classics. She is using her considerable wealth to transform Greco Roman studies through the jackhammer of wokeness.
Mark Zuckerberg’s sister was able to get pregnant by a “woman”, who didn’t ejaculate responsibly. It’s quite a thread.
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As I mentioned in my previous post, I was part a televised discussion that was broadcast on Slovak television. It touched on my book Live not by Lies. He refused to believe there is anything totalitarian or repressive about the liberal democracies of today. He claimed that he had lived through Communism and that this isn’t the case because we can freely express our opinions without being punished. I said to him that if it was true in Slovakia, he should be thankful for it. America is living in the affirmative answer to the question “Is it possible to have totalitarian systems within the structures and liberal democracy?” The man is not to blame. People in this region of the globe find it difficult to understand the cultural suicide of America. After the talk, one of my panelists, a veteran stage actress, asked me about transgenderism and children in America. She gasped and her jaw dropped open. “Decadence!” She whispered. Yes, exactly.
I wrote about the teachings of KU Law’s faculty and administration by embracing illiberal Leftism (also known as wokeness) in the previous post. They are destroying liberal democracy without question and doing it with an incomparable greater effectiveness than any January 6 mob yahoos on Capitol Hill. It is happening within institutions such as Princeton. It would be foolish to study Classics at Princeton. This, however, is the way the field is moving. This is why the savage online behavior of the headmaster of a classical Christian school is so damaging. The classical Christian schools are the only place where literature and culture from the Greeks, and Romans, can be studied with appreciation. These institutions, which are often quite poor, act as Dark Ages monasteries that keep the light shining during the darkest days of the Woke Era. Everyone I have met in this field does it out of love for the Classics. But now the disgraced headmaster is giving ammunition to the enemies intellection, the enemies reason, and the enemies West to turn against Joshua Katz and these defenseless little schools.
We gotta fight, y’all. We gotta fight.
