Reading Pericles
Posted by lex, on March 10th, 2011
The core curriculum at Columbia still requires students to read Pericles’ oration on the advantages of public duty to the city state, according to Jaques Barzun (Columbia, ’27). A recent poll shows that at least 60% of students polled actually understood what they read, as least as impacts a prospective ROTC program at the university.
It’s too bad that their professors have lost the plot. Because even in the wake of DADT’s repeal, the faculty remain stolidly unimpressed:
Columbia faculty have raised new arguments against ROTC. Some faculty members have recently circulated a petition that the military should remain banned because it continues to be a “discriminatory institution” on the basis of “many reasons from physical disability to age.” The basketball team discriminates too.
Consistency requires us to ban basketball.