Howard University’s Removal of Classics is a SPIRITUAL CATASTROPHE

The Washington Post ^ | Apr 19, 2021 | Cornel West & Jeremy Tate

[CondoleezzaProtege]

“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...

Howard is not removing its classics department in isolation. This is the result of a massive failure across the nation in “schooling."

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 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...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...

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

West is a Marxist. Always keep that in mind when one like him “goes straight” re doing something properly or smart.

Maybe he likes the Classics. After all, HE IS A COLLEGE PROFESSOR, as if they are the only ones who can appreciate any type of “CLASSICS”, be it music, literature, philosophy, even patriotism.

So what, at the end of the day, he’s still a traitorous Marxist who is poisoning too many minds of our young people. He knows what he is doing. HE KNOWS WHAT HE IS SAYING. He does not do this out of the goodness of his heart, the rationality of his warped mind, for the betterment of society, unless this is the an example of “The Broken Clock Being Right Twice a Day” syndrome.