Over the last couple of years, writing about DEIB (diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging), for me, has become a difficult, at times even wrenching task. The energized sense of purpose that filled my soul around the time this project started, in the fall of 2020, gave way to disheartenment, dispiritedness, disengagement, and fatigue, and I struggled with that.
This was not the case in the classroom, where I continued to feel enthusiastic about promoting a sense of belonging, where it felt elemental to lean into hard topics, and where engagement in the topic of social betterment and encouragement towards improving self and society were and very much are cornerstones of learning. Latin and the Roman world were the matters at hand, but at the core of our work — just like in English class, history class, the sciences and everywhere else across the curriculum — lay a fundamental drive to make sense of existence. And within those school walls, good faith efforts at that most daunting of tasks were the norm. But not so elsewhere.
I tried several times, in earlier drafts of this piece, to articulate exactly why I found DEIB writing so difficult during that stretch. Yes, it was absolutely the rancorous tone of discourse around social issues, around schools across the country banning books, around state governments seeking to limit the rights of marginalized people in myriad ways on an almost daily basis, and in how distant so many of us felt, and still very much do, from those with whom we disagree in these challenging areas.
But more than that, I kept crumpling up and crossing out those earlier attempts because sharing views about hard things has become, well, harder for me in the time that has elapsed since we — a small group of Latin teachers devoted to creating resources and sharing our best practices — were asked to join this initiative by Cambridge University Press & Assessment, which was during the haze of the pandemic: pre-vaccine, post-George Floyd’s murder, addled all of us by the overwhelm of an increasingly crushing set of circumstances.
Somehow, amidst all that, I had a clarity of voice and mind; after returning to the world outside of my home, however — at first tentatively and then, eventually, fully vaccinated and classroom-ready — engaging with it grew into an altogether different beast. DEIB work had curdled into an attack point for so many bad-faith voices in the media, in government, and in so many places online, a source of derision and just plain meanness rather than the essential, life-affirming action that it is. I felt readier than ever before to be a teacher for students, but I found it tougher than I had before to share my thoughts in print on the how, the why, and the how-to of inclusion.
What’s more, as a Jewish-identifying teacher with a complicated set of feelings about Jews’ higher profile in a post-October 7th world, amidst the war in Gaza and the rising threats of antisemitism and Islamophobia during these uncertain times, I found myself sharing thoughts on social media less and less, not wanting to join a fray that shows no signs of abating.
To be completely candid, the growing complexity of these conversations simultaneously drew me to the topics and away from any interest in the mundanity of teaching a language that most people around us tend to think isn’t all that valuable anyhow. I find suggestions of Latin’s uselessness to be misguided, but I would be lying to myself, my students, and everyone around me if I said I found such proselytizing of the values of the language to be top of mind in my relationship to the practice of education.
But in thinking that way — in seeing my relationship to Latin teaching as one to tend or ignore — I started realizing that our subject, when we can see it through a relational lens, is ripe with relevance to these pressing societal ills. After all, the Romans and Greeks both had storied interactions with Judaea and its inhabitants, and all of these moments — the wars, the attempts at diplomacy, the common cause against enemies, and even the complicated relationships of everyday people within these ancient societies — provide springboards of understanding to modern problems that are, in fact, centuries old.
Instead of focusing, then, on writing, I found my attention turn to building relationships. To a posture of listening, and to making sure that my students felt heard as they shared thoughts, questions, and their own feelings about the world all around us. Because Latin and Greek literature is filled with authors commenting upon interactions that belong in a New York Times editorial as much as an erudite, scholarly paper, I spent much of last year bringing in texts that would spark conversation, and they did.
I don’t know that I have any more insight into DEIB in the Latin classroom than when we all started four years ago, but I do know that listening to observations from students, prompting analysis of texts when they introduce hard topics to a classroom, and generally offering a non-judgmental approach to hearing every voice, all bring me closer to people with whom I disagree — and that includes students, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and even family members with whom I’ve long held disagreements over politics and other hard topics.
And so, although sharing my thoughts on hard topics in writing continues to be more of a challenge for me than it used to be, doing the actual work of DEIB these days in the Latin classroom, and everywhere else in a school community, feels hopeful, like a light of necessary kindness contributed to a world whose uncertainties continue to unfold.
Benjamin Joffe teaches Latin at The Browning School in New York City, where he also serves as the faculty advisor to the Jewish Alliance Group and the Jewish Cultural Club. Additionally, he is a member of the writing team working on the new edition of the Cambridge Latin Course through the Cambridge School Classics Project. And outside of those responsibilities, he teaches Biblical Hebrew to his sons and others through the Hebrew School at Ansche Chesed in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His most recent offerings at conferences, and for students, are a series of workshops entitled “Beyond Civil Discourse: A Talmudic Approach to Meeting the Political Moment.”
