Just FYI Classics & classicists (or academics in any other discipline, really), the response to people raising the question of something’s accessibility & whether it’s fit for purpose if not accessible is not to tell them they need to work harder to understand it... 1/

... thereby implying (or even flat out stating) that they’re too stupid or lazy to recognise brilliance when they see it. Every time attempts at detoxifying the discipline start to build momentum, someone throws an elitist spanner in the works... 2/

... and members of an equally elitist coterie (and we all know who they are & where they’ve come from & how they all know each other) rush to defend & double down, and we get set back to square one, only this time with a brand new bad taste in everyone’s mouths... 3/

... Seriously, classicists, I can understand the impulse to defend yourself or someone you care about or admire from criticism, but take a moment & think about whether that criticism is actually justified, & what you can do to make sure that it doesn’t need to happen again... 4/

...because it’s not just about you & your mate, it’s about the entire discipline, & it’s actually about even more than that! The stakes are high, particularly at the moment wrt student recruitment, permanent posts, research funding, the future of uni departments etc. 5/5