THE LONDON CLASSICISTS OF COLOUR (LCOC)is an activist group for Classics students at the University of London who want to “decolonise” their curriculum. In January this year it released an open letter to the University’s colleges, urging them to “implement a series of changes in their academic approaches, racial and ethnic representations, and treatment of people of colour in student bodies and faculties”.
The letter inevitably makes reference to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, and clearly aligns with that movement’s ideology: that people of black and ethnic minority origin are systematically and structurally discriminated against in all traditional institutions, including academia.
Of course, this is nothing new. When I was studying Classics at the University of London a
