,
20 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
recent articles in conservative publications Quillette, Breitbart, and The New Criterion make it clear that conservatives are feeling threatened by initiatives to make Classics a more diverse and inclusive field
all three mischaracterize the events of this year’s SCS but the TNC piece is unusual in three respects: praise for Princeton’s Latin 110 class, the oddly specific digs at Eidolon, and the lengths it goes to to NOT mention the Paideia Institute or its online journal In Medias Res
evidence that the TNC article was written after tips from/in consultation with staff of Paideia (a nonprofit organization that I cofounded with Jason Pedicone and Eric Hewett but left in 2017) is subtle but obvious to anyone familiar with the situation
for more on why I parted ways with the institute, and why they created IMR, see this twitter thread: for more details on Paideia’s influence on the article (and evidence of the attempts to cover up that influence), keep reading...
first, Kimball heralds Princeton's Latin 110 as one of "a few bright spots inside the academy"—a course, by the way, taught by a Paideia staff member and created at the request of Paideia students
Kimball then, in a misleading interpretation of a tweet by Joseph Howley, complains that "even that class at Princeton has been castigated on Twitter for catering to students who are too 'fit,' too male, and probably too heterosexual"
but Howley’s tweet and its responses do not "castigate the class," they critique *the prose in an article* published on In Medias Res, the Paideia Institute's online publication, and written by EIC John Byron Kuhner medium.com/in-medias-res/…
Kuhner has written for TNC several times in the past, as has Jason Pedicone, the President of Paideia. you should read this book review: medium.com/in-medias-res/…
spoiler: it contains the sentence “the bitterness of clashing cultures inevitably also produces sweet moments of sublime humanity, as a bite of baklava at the Mosquée de Paris can serve to distract the mind from current political preoccupations”
Given their connections, and their shared values, it’s no shock that TNC published a rapturous blurb right after the founding of In Medias Res. no, I’m not being hyperbolic about the tone of this announcement, which enthuses...
"We cannot yet celebrate the advent of vernal cultural daffodils... but the appearance of this vital new journal is like the sudden epiphany of crocuses, or at least snowdrops, on the still snow-fringed, nearly frozen lawn" newcriterion.com/issues/2018/2/…
in light of all their connections to TNC, it's conspicuous that Paideia and In Medias Res aren't named outright even once in this most recent piece, even though they clearly informed TNC’s perspective on it. consider this wording in para 3:
Eidolon is "an online journal that was started in 2015 to demonstrate the relevance of classics to modern life" This passive framing ("was started in 2015") seems calculated to elide any reference to the Paideia Institute, under the aegis of which I founded the publication
What’s really telling is the claim that I "engineered a palace coup." I have always been EIC of Eidolon, a point which Paideia actually clarified on twitter:
What’s more, Eric Hewett—one of the Paideia cofounders—was actually the first person to suggest Eidolon leave Paideia. We left a few months after that, of our own volition, and out of concern that our progressive bona fides was providing cover for Paideia’s institutional problems
we agreed to a “we just need to spread our wings” narrative out of solidarity with the people trying to fix Paideia from the inside (like Liz Butterworth) and to protect their remaining progressive programming, especially Aequora
the rest of the section about me and Eidolon just reprints my own words and offers snide asides. Much more offensive is the article's treatment of my colleague Dan-el Padilla Peralta
the entire piece should be read as aligned with the ideology of Paideia, esp in its complaints re: "grievance warriors who have injected an obsession with race and sexual exoticism into a discipline that, until recently, was mostly innocent of such politicized deformations"
that assessment is as succinct a description as possible of the Classics that Paideia wants to embody, and I have an endless string of receipts showing how upset my former colleagues were that I refused to make Eidolon conform to a version of Classics that was "apolitical"
so make no mistake: the recent conservative outcry against progressive Classics isn't just coming from outside the discipline. /fin
