Howard University's classics department is an incubator for Black equality. Don't close it.

 I'm not sure how this got past the USA Today editors. It's by Anika T. Prather. It's sane, it's intelligent, and it goes against the current anti-intellectual "tear down Western civilization" orthodoxy. It does so using facts and logic. I wonder who was fired over this and if there will be a public apology.

The beauty about Howard University is that, since its founding, each student has at least some exposure to the works of the canon. I believe this classical foundation is what produced people like Justice Thurgood Marshall, a graduate of Howard's law school who did more than just practice the trade of his career but served all of humanity through his work. 

The list of Black scholars who have come out of Howard and been touched by the classics is extensive: Toni Morrison minored in classics; Zora Neale Hurston took classes in the field; Chadwick Boseman had classical theatre training while a student at Howard, and was taught by the actress Phylicia Rashad. I minored in theatre at Howard, and we are all well versed in Greek tragedy and Roman comedy.

Alain Locke believed so much in reading from the canon that the hall where the classics department is housed is named after him. Locke, who taught at Howard, became the first African American Rhodes Scholar and is considered the father of the Harlem Renaissance.

Read the classics. They will enrich your life in many ways. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying and merely wants your intellectual world reduced so that you are forced to depend on them to learn what to think.