The Sunday Read: ‘He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?’

The Daily

• Episode: The Sunday Read: ‘He Wants to Save Classics From Whiteness. Can the Field Survive?’
• Website: The Daily
• Feed URL: http://rss.art19.com/the-daily
• Duration: 00:57:56
• Published: 2021-05-02 15:00

For years, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Dominican-born teacher of classics at Princeton, has spoken openly about the harm caused by the discipline’s practitioners in the two millenniums since antiquity — the classical justifications of slavery, race science, colonialism, Nazism and other 20th-century fascisms.

He believes that classics is so entangled with white supremacy as to be inseparable from it.

Today on The Sunday Read, how Dr. Padilla is trying to change the way the subject is taught.

This story was written by Rachel Poser and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.