About
I'm an Associate Professor of Classics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where I teach Greek and Latin languages and literatures, their transformative reception by African-American writers, their centrality to the American project of self-governance, and their power to transport us beyond our current culture of resentment.
I'm faculty advisor for the student Persuasion club, which provides a space for the free exchange of ideas on an otherwise censorious and cancel-culture-ridden campus. I grew up between Austin, TX, and a small village in Kerala, in south India. The darker side of my experience in India—growing up in a cult—is captured in this film. I'm planning a memoir about the brighter side. I'm the author of Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion (Princeton University Press, 2022), co-author and co-editor with Lawrence Eppard and Lee Jussim of The Poisoning of the American Mind (George Mason University Press, 2024), and a founding member of Free Black Thought.
