Clarissa's Blog

I understand completely that the whole hullabaloo seems bizarre to people outside of academia. But imagine if the lead ballet dancer at La Scala were an amputee with no legs. The poor legless ballerina is crawling across the stage, and we are told to observe her beautiful leaps and fouettés. People who dare to notice and say out loud that she has no legs and can’t dance are called Nazis and get visits from police.

This is the Jason Arday situation. He’s the ballerina without legs. Cambridge belongs to us. It belongs to you and to me. It is part of the great patrimony of our Western civilization. And our inheritance, this precious, beautiful mechanism that our ancestors worked on for over 800 years, is being shat at by these legless ballerinas.

We are being robbed. Within a single generation, these amazing things that took centuries to build are being destroyed, thrown away, because a few eager grifters want to make a quick buck. Our culture, our knowledge, our civilization have withstood two thousand years of wear and tear. And they only got stronger. Until now.

This particular attack on our ramparts has been repelled. The enemy retreated. But the battle is far from over.