Novae Famae, the vitriolic, un-moderated successor to Famae Volent, the classics job message board, has gone the way of the dodo. In its place has risen, phoenix-like, Novae Famae 2019-20, which, from the comments posted on its landing page, seems to aim to restore some order, with the restoration of moderators and the re-establishment of rules addressing slander, hate speech and naming names. Most significantly, NF19 (my own coinage!) insists on user IDs for commentators. If I understand correctly these are still functionally anonymous, but they will permit such things as responding to specific posters or even banning them if necessary.
In my view the death of Novae Famae is a good thing; it will not be missed. However, I learned one very important thing from it: classicists are not in the vanguard of humanistic studies the way they once were. Rather, it seems that a significant subset of them are trying desperately to maintain a fossilized academic field, on the premise that the Greeks and Romans are somehow more special than any other ancient (or modern) peoples, which is very foolish. I was distressed to find out how vocal, and oftentimes bigoted, this subset is. It has furthered the alienation I feel from the classics, a topic which I have studied for more than half my life (and I say this as a 36-year-old).
I don’t have any moralizing notes on which to end, save for my usual refrain that I think classics is doomed, and rightly so.