In February, Oxford University announced that the Classics faculty is considering dropping Homer and Virgil from the required reading list. Part of the reasoning given for the proposed change is a “very troubling” gap in grades between men and women.1 While 38 percent of men achieved top marks in the course that currently requires Homer and Virgil, only 19.3 percent of women achieved the same marks.2 In other words, Oxford University is considering removing two of the pillars of world literature from their required reading list because women are not doing as well as men.
The decision implies that Oxford, like preeminent schools throughout the West, has been infected by identity theory. Rather than using objective standards of excellence to determine which texts students ought to read, more and more universities are structuring their curricula around this ideology,
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