To the editor:
Reading Greg Lukianoff's “If You Can't Teach Plato in Philosophy Classes, What Can You Teach?” (Opinion Guest Essay, January 13), I was reminded of my first encounter with Plato's Symposium at a seminar in China, where homosexuality was criminalized in 2003 and was considered taboo until 1997.
I remember a passage that struck me. Plato wrote a speech by the playwright Aristophanes about the origin of love. Humans were once giants, powerful enough to rebel against the Olympian gods, but as a punishment they were cut in half and made into incomplete creatures, doomed to wander the Earth in search of their other half. Once discovered, we would gladly perish of thirst or hunger to maintain a happy reunion. The professor's eyes sparkled with mischief. What if our true nature was completely male or female?
I reread Symposium with students at Princeton University, where I earned my Ph.D., and in Germany. There is debate about teaching Plato because of his anti-democratic political philosophy. But if you can't discuss dead Greeks, how can you discuss living authoritarians and their defenders? I gladly defend the right to read Plato. Little did I know that a hauntingly poetic passage from “Symposium” would trigger American censorship.
China has always had censorship, and under the Xi Jinping administration, those regulations have become even stricter. But respect for Chinese tradition has so far protected pre-modern material from censorship. This is another reason why most Chinese humanities scholars have turned to pre-modern studies.
The fact that American censors are working harder than Chinese censors is really sobering.
Yang Ziyi
frankfurt
The author is a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Frankfurt..
To the editor:
While I admire Greg Lukianoff's passion for free speech, his essay fails to take into account the professor's responsibility to mediate discussion of difficult topics without bias. Unfortunately, many professors in recent years have managed classroom discussions in ways that have made some students feel the need to self-censor or risk being ostracized for their right-leaning or even moderate views.
I agree that Texas and Florida's approach seems heavy-handed, but that's only because many higher education institutions have been ideologically captured. I wish we had the free market of ideas Lukianov envisioned.
mateo fiori
Oakhurst, California
To the editor:
I have taught graduate and undergraduate students in art history and humanities for 20 years at a public university. I can't remember a class where I didn't teach Plato. One of the classes I inherited was Art and Social Protest, and we spent half the semester on Dead White Men's Masterpieces and the second half on postmodern art, especially from the 1960s and 70s.
We looked at all the art protest movements of the time – women's, black, Hispanic, gay, ecological – and investigated the theories driving them. It was a rigorous course with two overflowing sections each semester, and the students loved it. I argued to my students that they didn't have to believe in the theory or like the art, but it was important to become familiar with these ideas. They could write a paper on any artist of their choice, even if it went against the “liberal” ideas taught in class.
No one complained. But I think I would be fired today if I even discussed issues of race or gender, no matter how important they are to understanding art. Students are currently being deprived of their rightful place to discuss social issues.
Patricia Gammon
Freeport, Florida
To the editor:
Greg Lukianoff, while rightly criticizing Texas A&M for censoring Plato, wrote that this amounted to “turning the modern academy into a parody of its ancient namesake.”
It was, of course, Plato who founded the ancient academy as a haven for critical discussion. It needed to be protected and nurtured away from the heated political debates of Athenian democracy's agora, parliament, and courts.
The Athenians never threatened the activities of Plato's Academy—despite its upper-class characteristics—perhaps because Plato believed that democracy was the least unfair political order and that “academic” discourse would do more good than harm.
In contrast, the anti-democratic MAGA movement's policies are deliberately undermining the American academy. because It indicates a relatively independent source of power.
John R. Wallach
Montville, New Jersey
He is the author of The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy.
