For the benefit of anyone who is actually confused, rather than shilling for Putin, I do not believe in US military involvement in the conflict in Ukraine and have never advocated anything of the kind—much less for the US engaging in forcible regime change in Russia.

The tweet in question came in the context of a long series of tweets I have been assembling over the past several days of Russian and Belorussian protests opposing the war and demanding change. https://t.co/dqb1XmD2Mi
It came in the context of a series of actions by Western governments—which I support wholeheartedly—to isolate Russia in non-military fashions and support the international order.
My point was that it's hard for me to imagine unwinding these actions entirely while Putin was still in power. Rather, as many other people are saying—including Russians speaking in Russian—the regular order cannot return while Putin remains: https://t.co/PNa4M7Ksrc
Does anyone, for example, really think that Germany is going to say, as soon as the Ukraine conflict ends, "Oh, that 2 percent GDP on defense stuff? Never mind!"
Russia hands knew exactly what I meant: https://t.co/HyxPVdA9kt
Most of my Twitter followers did too, I'm sure. A few people were confused and I tried to engage with them politely about what I was and wasn't saying. Thanks to them for the engagement and responses: https://t.co/zRsDBd5zMa
But the tweet did not blow up among those who actually follow me. It blew up among people who do not—many of them Putin's stooges of the right and left: https://t.co/LLucKURBMi
And I do not engage with the Kremlin's useful idiots.
I am appending this thread to the original tweet so that nobody will be actually confused about what I do and do not believe and advocate.
If you hear anyone suggesting that I am warmongering, that person is simply lying.
I have nothing further to say on this subject.

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x