David Butterfield

speaker

739 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 20 May

David Butterfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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TRIGGERnometry · How Civilisations Die - Ancient Greece Expert David Butterfield · 20 May 2026 podcast

Not only do we start in Greece, which is where we were, but we teach ancient Greek in ancient Greek from scratch on day one.

which means not only are the students immersed in the place where the Western tradition emerged, but they are forced to learn it through hearing, through speaking, through private conversations and through classes to make the language their own and therefore to internalize the very thought processes that made this Greek rational turn happen.

After that, we pursue the rest of the Western tradition back in Savannah, Georgia,

But we operate with a rigor and a commitment to objective truth and indeed to transcendent qualities such as good, beautiful.

That was not something I could get at Cambridge.

And I feel liberated as an academic intellectually to be able to have a smile on my face when I teach and research now.

Correct.

But people have worked themselves into a corner that they intellectually cannot escape.

They know on the one hand that Cambridge has existed for its academic excellence and that there's merit behind that.

But equally, it has to follow from that that that means it is exclusionary to certain types.

Now, in part, that is worth interrogating because our school system really is not what it's meant to be.

And certain schools will educate to a much better level than others.

That holistically needs looking at because we're all fair minded and we all believe that potential should get as far as it's able to.

However, the very idea of Cambridge being elite and selective, these are the same words, elite and selective are the same word, is deemed problematic because it's therefore not for everyone.

And some sort of political, almost virus in their worldview has forced them into a conclusion which is actually destructive of the job they hold.

they cannot allow themselves to believe that some people are not allowed to come to Cambridge because of their lack of intellectual merit.

As such, they're faced with an irresoluble paradox, and the only way they aim to respond to it is to turn down the meritocratic dial, to celebrate excellence less, and to include those who in some cases really should not be included in terms of the principles of what Cambridge stands for.

So I'm fully with you.

And what really encourages me, Francis, is that as a people, as a nation, perhaps as a species,

We are inherently meritocratic and we naturally celebrate excellence.

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