Joel

Newspaper article about the Working Classicists Guide to National 5 Classical Studies, in today’s Courier (Dundee).

👋

so, that drive by Lawrence.

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

"Who Goes Nazi?" by Dorothy Thompson, Harper's, August 1941. Give it a read, play the game, see if you recognize anyone you know today. Sadly, it's going to matter. Brilliant, uncanny, timeless. Oh, and btw, RESIST like your life depends on it, bc it might. harpers.org/archive/1941...

When kings return: Homer's lesson for divided societies - Neos Kosmos What Odysseus's violent homecoming reveals about autocracy, memory, and the impossibility of resolution

Provost Joel P. Christensen (@sentantiq.bsky.social) explains what Odysseus’s violent homecoming reveals about autocracy, memory, and the impossibility of resolution neoskosmos.com/en/2025/10/0...

...Interfering with that process by forcing knowledge to pass through a political filter is a tactic adopted by the Soviet Union and other authoritarian states"

ACLS Statement Regarding White House “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” ACLS stands firmly against this latest White House effort to divide faculties by giving special privileges to students in “hard science programs” and its demand that institutions abolish “units that p...

"Universities and colleges have one mission: to advance knowledge. Faculty carry out the mission by conducting research and teaching students. The knowledge they produce and circulate is independently assessed by professional peers."

www.acls.org/news/acls-st...

“They were not happy with freedom unless they might also rule and be masters”

nec iam libertate contentos esse nisi etiam regnent ac dominentur #Livy

Amazon's push notification on my phone for "epic deals" unfortunately leads neither to Homer nor to hekatombs

its truly remarkable, you have to really take the measure of it and it's almost hard to comprehend it, but the president of the united states is having texas invade illinois and oregon just to make twitter content

Rebirth and Ruin: Understanding Fascism's Appeal with Roger Griffin In this interview, Roger Griffin examines the psychological and ideological roots of fascism and terrorism, emphasizing how modernity's existential crises drive radicalization and extremist violence.

"The Enlightenment hope—that the world would become more enlightened with prosperity, education, and growing social equality—has been proven to be a myth."

devastating interview with a scholar of fascism

intpolicydigest.org/rebirth-and-...

When kings return: Homer's lesson for divided societies - Neos Kosmos What Odysseus's violent homecoming reveals about autocracy, memory, and the impossibility of resolution

"As political allegory, then, the return of Odysseus could be the reassertion of a monarch over a fractious oligarchy. The Odyssey could be seen as advocating for the expedience of autocracy over the corrupted dangers of oligarchy (or, perhaps, a proto-democracy)."

neoskosmos.com/en/2025/10/0...

When kings return: Homer's lesson for divided societies - Neos Kosmos What Odysseus's violent homecoming reveals about autocracy, memory, and the impossibility of resolution

"The logic of violence and erasure at the end of the Odyssey operates still today. The resurgence of autocracy worldwide imposes an order that makes erasure of history and obliteration of difference the cost of mere survival."

neoskosmos.com/en/2025/10/0...

I love it whenever aporia is structurally load bearing in story. From cosmic horror to Ithaca having no solution to blood feuds blending into Odysseus's raison d'etat.

some of them will die, and those who survive will have to forget it."

"... it is also possible that the end of the epic aims to emphasise the cost of capitulating to the demands of autocracy. Such a reading shows us both the extremes a king will go to in order to protect his own privileges and the cost his people must pay in order to enjoy the benefits of his rule...

When kings return: Homer's lesson for divided societies - Neos Kosmos What Odysseus's violent homecoming reveals about autocracy, memory, and the impossibility of resolution

"As political allegory, then, the return of Odysseus could be the reassertion of a monarch over a fractious oligarchy. The Odyssey could be seen as advocating for the expedience of autocracy over the corrupted dangers of oligarchy (or, perhaps, a proto-democracy)."

neoskosmos.com/en/2025/10/0...

When kings return: Homer's lesson for divided societies - Neos Kosmos What Odysseus's violent homecoming reveals about autocracy, memory, and the impossibility of resolution

"The logic of violence and erasure at the end of the Odyssey operates still today. The resurgence of autocracy worldwide imposes an order that makes erasure of history and obliteration of difference the cost of mere survival."

neoskosmos.com/en/2025/10/0...

Truth be told, the butlerian jihad was the part of Dune i found most relatable. But that's probably because my earliest exposure to "AI" was skynet

I bet when you first read #Dune you didn’t realise that you’d end up on the side of the #ButlerianJihad.

A woman sitting in a chair reading The Odyssey

Great article by our summer intern Grace Burke on the TikTok trend that is sparking new interest in the Odyssey – with insights from Classics scholar and Provost Joel Christensen

Picture of neon sign saying in latin "mihi cura futuri" meaning something like "concern for the future is mine" or perhaps "i care about the future"

Hunter College, setting the right priorities

A collage of book covers published by the 2020-2021 Leon Levy Center for Biography fellows.

A rare feat: Every fellow from one Leon Levy cohort has turned their “kernel of an idea” into a published biography — with critical acclaim. That’s what we call a launchpad www.gc.cuny.edu/news/how-leo... @lancerichardson.bsky.social

ταῦτα γάρ ἐστι μόνα τὰ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους ποιοῦντα, τὰ τοὺς ἀκωλύτους, τὰ τὸν τράχηλον ἐπαίροντα τῶν τεταπεινομένων, τὰ ἀντιβλέπειν ποιοῦντα ὀρθοῖς τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς πρὸς τοὺς πλουσίους, πρὸς τοὺς τυράννους.

τίνι πεποιθώς; οὐ δόξῃ οὐδὲ χρήμασιν οὐδ᾿ ἀρχαῖς, ἀλλ᾿ ἀλκῇ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ, τοῦτ᾿ ἔστι δόγμασι περὶ τῶν ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν καὶ οὐκ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῖν.

These alone are what can make people free, what can make us unhindered, what can raise anew the head of those who have been harmed, what makes it possible for us to look directly into the eyes of the rich, of the tyrants.” #Epictetus

“On what did he rely? Not on reputation, or wealth, or social position, but in his own courage, which resided in his judgments about what we do control and do not

DYEL military leadership.

“No one loves their homeland because it is great. They love it because it is their own.”

Nemo enim patriam quia magna est amat, sed quia sua. #Seneca

Next up Liar's and sorites paradoxes