My alma mater is, for better or worse, the undergraduate equivalent of a cult film: Most people have never heard of Reed College, and the few who have really like to argue about it.
So it’s disconcerting when arguments usually confined to the Reed campus attract national attention. In recent days, a Washington Post column and a much-read Atlantic article have described, in disturbing detail, ongoing student protests against the perceived Eurocentrism of Humanities 110, a rigorous, year-long examination of the ancient Greeks and their neighbors required of all first-year Reed students. Since the protests began, in September 2016, protesters have repeatedly disrupted classes, intimidated lecturers, and bullied other students both online and off. (To be clear, the mission of Reedies Against Racism, the campus group that started the protests, is broader than Hum 110 reform, and its stated demands are less extreme than some members’ rhetoric and behavior suggest; that context is little comfort, however, to the students and professors who have been insulted and harassed.)
Many Reed alumni—most of us no strangers to political protest—are appalled by these tactics, and plenty of current students are, too: this fall, a large segment of the incoming class, led primarily by students of color, has called for the restoration of order to the Hum 110 lecture hall.
Obscured by the campus cacophony, though, is a worthwhile—and necessary—discussion about whether anyone should read the ancient Greeks in the first place, and if so why and how. That discussion has been underway at Reed for decades, and with any luck it will continue for decades to come. As someone who took Hum 110 more than twenty years ago, the news from campus has made me reflect on what I learned in the course. The answers, both equally true, are that I didn’t learn very much. And that I learned everything.
Continue reading →
The two of us moved in together a few weeks ago. With a moving truck, towering boxes of books, and every edible thing she could remove from her previous household, we merged lives. Whose tea strainer should we keep, whose collapsible metal steamer, whose box of African rooibos?
