June 30, 2006

Read All About It: Racism and Other Evils

To the Editor:

Lennard J. Davis's decision to think twice about teaching Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness because its racist stereotypes offend his African and African-American students has less to do with the problem of censorship than it does with the way instructors in the humanities perceive their responsibilities to classical texts — ancient and modern ("The Value of Teaching From a Racist Classic," The Chronicle Review, May 19).

Tacitus held the Germans in