The Parthenon at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
(anyaivanova/Getty Images) One classical scholar believes that the field is too implicated in ‘whiteness’ to survive as-is. Here’s why he’s wrong.
Rachel Poser’s recent
New York Times profile of Princeton classicist Dan-el Padilla Peralta comes across as both glib and ominous. Referring to Padilla’s mission, the headline of the piece reads: “He Wants to Save Classics from Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?” The Herculean task Padilla has in mind is convincing other classicists to reject the privileged position given to Greece and Rome within the field. Why? Because he believes that classics as a discipline has played and continues to play an outsize role in the construction of whiteness and, thus, the perpetuation of systemic racism.
Kevin J. Beaty / Denverite
For the second time in three months, the Denver school board voted unanimously Thursday to reunify a comprehensive high school that had been dismantled in the past decade.
Montbello High School in far northeast Denver will reopen in fall 2022. To make that happen, three small schools Denver Center for International Studies Montbello, Noel Community Arts School, and Collegiate Prep Academy will close at the end of the 2021-22 school year, and a charter school will likely have to move.
Across town, West High School will reopen this fall. Both West and Montbello high schools were previously shuttered and replaced by smaller schools that district leaders hoped would improve education for the Black and Hispanic students who attended them.