Saving Classics on Social Media

 

Using Web 2.0 to keep the study of classical antiquity alive

Howard University students are using the power of social media to try to save their Classics program #saveHUClassics

The students' social media campaign has captured the attention and outrage of scholar Cornel West. In an opinion piece for The Washington Post last month, West and Jeremy Tate argued that the university's decision to "abolish" the program signals a "spiritual decay":

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 either irrelevant and not worthy of prioritization or as harmful and worthy only of condemnation.

Howard junior Sarena Straughter created a Change.org petition, which currently has just under 200 signatures, after gathering 6,000 signatures thanks to a Google docs petition that went viral on Twitter and was hyperlinked in a New York Times article last month. Straughter wanted "to show Howard University how deeply people care about our department and its faculty." Straughter jumped on social media to connect and organize her classmates: 

I was personally so sad to hear that Howard would make such a decision, especially in regards to letting go professors who have had an extraordinary impact on my educational experience, that I circulated a GroupMe chat to my friends, classmates, and other students in the College of Arts and Sciences and quickly gathered over seventy students ready to help. We organized a letter writing campaign to Howard’s Provost, Dr. Anthony Wutah, and circulated a larger letter on social media which received over 6,000 signatures and endorsements.

 Straughter's campaign has garnered international coverage from news outlets like The National Review, Inside Higher Ed, USAToday, and The Economist. 

USAToday noted the impact of Plato's "Republic" on Huey Newton.

The Economist's May 1st edition mentions Phyllis Wheatley liberal use of classical allusion in her 18th-century poetry, as well as Frederick Douglass's "who read Cicero's speeches in secret."

What's so fascinating, and perhaps not without a touch of irony, is how rapidly Straughter's Gen Z social media-based campaign has propelled the cause of this millennia-old field to hypermodern international attention. In just two weeks, the cause has grown from a GroupMe chat and GoogleDoc to the Twitterverse, old-guard news outlets, a designated website, and a Change.org petition with a substantial wall of hyperlinks documenting the cause's media coverage. 

Eminent classical scholar and public philosopher Martha Nussbaum has yet to weigh in--Nussbaum is not a social media user: 

There are no general-interest media that all of us can tap into. I'm not a good person to talk to about social media. I just avoid it. I'm suspicious also of the culture of venting. But the bigger question is, How can we in this media world have a genuine civic conversation? I mean, look at Franklin Roosevelt. He had these radio talks that all Americans listened to, and there was a common civic conversation that came out of it.

Martha Nussbaum

It would seem to be that Straughter has created just that -- a genuine, living, and dynamic civic conversation -- thanks to her savvy use of social media and the hashtag. The evolution of the humble hashtag, repurposed from its landline, punch-button former life to confirm a robotic query ("and then press the pound key"). The pound key, implicit closer of conversations -- end note, rather than the hashtag's hopeful new beginning. 

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