Thanks for this — I’m finding all of this very interesting, since I haven’t had any experience of the Paideia Institute’s programmes. Still, I do worry that Classics is constructing an environment that’s hostile of people with different political views.

I personally think a good number of the things the Paideia leaders were reported as saying or thinking weren’t extreme at all (for example, supporting Trump is something that almost half of US voters did at the last presidential election).

As for your decision to leave the organization because you have a different take on equity and inclusion, I respect that; but I also think private educational institutions should be able to make their own policies on such things.

One problem is that a different person — a conservative, say- could just as easily beat up on Eidolon (or many Classics departments in the US) for creating a hostile department for white men (all the talk of ‘whiteness,’ ‘toxic masculinity’ and so on). That’s not likely to happen, because there are so few people on the right in our field (which itself might have something to do with the environment we’re creating).

But I wonder whether a better option than just calling each other ‘unacceptable’ for their political views would just be to live and let live. Eidolon can go its way and Paideia, I think, should be allowed to go its way too. Anyway, thank you for your post.