Paideia Institute Statement on Diversity and Inclusion

Kore 685: the original statue and a modern, painted replica, reproduced with a high degree of accuracy thanks to the efforts of the Swiss painter Émile Gilliéron a century ago. The coloring is based on archival watercolors, completed immediately after the statue’s discovery in 1888. © Nikos Pilos

Everyone in the field of Classics is thinking hard about their priorities when it comes to making the study of Greece and Rome an open and inclusive environment where all students feel comfortable and welcome. Our organization was founded by and is currently led by two white men, but we feel that it is important that those who have lived experiences different from ours also feel like they belong. We would therefore like to issue the following statements reaffirming our commitment to inclusivity and outlining steps that we have already taken and will be taking to address these concerns:

• We believe that the key to creating a diverse future for Classics is reaching young people. Not enough young people from socioeconomically underserved backgrounds have access to Latin and Greek. We are proud to operate Aequora, a national outreach program through which volunteers teach a literacy curriculum based on Ancient Greek and Latin to 4–6th graders in underserved communities. In the past two years we have hired two full-time staff to expand the program, raised over $200,000 to support its expansion, and doubled the number of Aequora sites in operation. We look forward to continuing to create a pipeline so that a more diverse array of students has the opportunity to study the ancient world.
• Along similar lines, our Greece and Rome Prizes provide full scholarships and travel stipends to outstanding Classics students with extreme financial need from classical high schools in the lower-income districts of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. to attend our Living Latin in Rome and Living Greek in Greece High School courses. Greece and Rome Prize students also receive free tutoring and college advising when they return home from the program. This year, we will be bringing three prize winners to Italy and Greece. Next year we pledge to add another scholarship to this program and add another school to the Rome Prize network.
• As a start up, we know that we could do more to address issues of diversity, inclusion, and employee relations. We therefore pledge to fundraise for a new management position of Human Resources Officer, who will help us address these issues at all levels of the Institute.
• We reaffirm our commitment to gender equality in the staffing of our programs. This has been our goal since our foundation, but in practice we have not always achieved it. We pledge to recruit more talented female speakers of Latin and Greek to teach in our programs.
• We acknowledge that, like many organizations in the field of Classics, our staff is mostly white. We also realize that we currently have few women in management positions. We recognize the importance of insights that people from different backgrounds can have for the development and administration of inclusive programming. We are committed to hiring more women and people of color in management positions in the future.
• For the past four years, The Paideia Institute has been developing a new Latin textbook which was due to be released this spring. We have realized that in its current form, the textbook does not present the study of Latin as an activity that is open to all. We have therefore decided to delay its publication until we are confident that it presents the study of Latin as an inclusive activity.
• We are proud that our Board of Directors is currently 40% female. We look forward to recruiting more perspectives to our board as we build a future for the institute in the 2020’s and beyond.
• The theme of Living Latin in New York City in 2020 will be “Forgotten Voices from the Past” and will focus on women writers and other underrepresented groups from Greek and Latin literature.

We are excited to play our part in building a more secure future for the field of Classical Studies.

Jason Pedicone
President and Co-Founder

Eric Hewett
Executive Director and Co-Founder