Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta, champion of anti-racism in classics, to leave Princeton in August

For Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta ’06, the classics were never neutral. He questioned the discipline’s relationship with race and modern society in his newest book, released in July, and has been an outspoken presence on Princeton’s campus. From introducing pro-Palestine proposals in faculty meetings to discussing classics’ contentious relationship with whiteness, Padilla is no stranger to activism.

Next August, Padilla Peralta will leave Princeton for Arizona State University (ASU) after a nine-year stint in the Princeton Classics Department, a move he says reflects a long-standing desire to teach at a public institution.

“For me, it was always crucial to find spaces where I could be in constant conversation with the public and with a sense of the public good,” Padilla Peralta told The Daily Princetonian.

Padilla Peralta, who grew up in and out of homeless shelters in New York City, rocketed to classics stardom as an undergraduate and graduated from Princeton as salutatorian in 2006. He has been among the most prominent voices to call for the field to be transformed or even dismantled over its links to racism and white supremacy.

One key aspect of his decision to transfer away from Princeton is his qualms with Princeton’s informal motto “In Service of Humanity.” Padilla Peralta told the ‘Prince’ that he feels this “profession of commitments to service at [Princeton] did not fully align with [his] own sense of what a community truly geared towards the public would look like.”

Padilla Peralta did note the success of the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity as a “really substantial redefinition” of Princeton’s characterization of a place that can welcome first-generation and low-income students. He also noted the Office of Religious Life’s events, which he said “recharged” him.

But he expressed his belief that ASU has a fundamentally stronger connection to a public-service community than Princeton does. He cited ASU’s charter mission and specifically its emphasis on “fundamental responsibility” for the communities it serves, including “economic, social, cultural, and overall health.”

“ASU seemed to me to be doing something very right in its commitment to inclusion,” Padilla Peralta said.

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At Princeton, he is a professor in the classics department, known for teaching his introductory survey class CLA 219: The Roman Empire. “I try to give students a vocabulary for thinking about the persistence and transmission of empire,” he said. “I have taken pains to give them as full-bodied a representation of the Roman world as possible.”

For Padilla Peralta, this means considering history from many angles, including the perspectives of victims. “I think one can make a variety of compelling arguments for why the practice of history should embrace a sense of obligation to people in the past, but specifically to people who were on the receiving end of the most insidious and corrosive forms of imperial violence you can imagine,” Padilla Peralta said.

He noted that the class regularly enrolls 100 students, sometimes 200.

“The hope is to familiarize them with the suite of tools for reconstituting the past,” Padilla Peralta said.

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This idea of redefining the teachings of classics is the guiding principle of Padilla Peralta’s scholarly work. In his new book, “Classicism and Other Phobias,” Padilla Peralta rethinks the relationship between classics and Afro-diasporic life. He traces the discipline through European imperialism and the transatlantic slave trade.

Padilla Peralta also works beyond classics. His work in Black studies and postcolonial theory insists that the field must acknowledge its own role in cultural hierarchy. His next book, anticipated to be released in late 2026 or 2027, examines the intellectual history of the Dominican Republic, the country where he was born.

After the publication of a New York Times Magazine piece in 2021 about his desire to transform the field of classics, he faced backlash from right-wing institutions who he said claimed to know “how the classics can and ought to be valued.”

“What I am interested in is the question of how the existence of this infrastructure and its capitalization creates challenges for people who are working at the other end of the scholar-activist continuum,” Padilla Peralta said.

But for Padilla Peralta, these pressures facing scholars seep into the classroom. In teaching these larger responsibilities to students, he discovered “troubling trends” within Princeton, one of which he identified as the issue of mental health. He expressed concern over the “language of rigor” at the University and emphasized the need for the University to prioritize mental health.

“There’s no point in talking about the vibrancy of the life of the mind if the health of that mind isn’t the governing priority,” he told the ‘Prince.’

More broadly, he has experienced a “loss of faith” in Princeton’s priorities that have set in over the past few years. He referenced the administration’s response to the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” faculty advocacy for rights of self-governance, and what he called a wave of tenure denials over the past year. “It seemed to me that something about Princeton’s mission in service seemed like a kind of ‘noblesse oblige,’” he said. “I found it to be problematic.”

At ASU, Padilla Peralta will be teaching at the School of International Languages and Cultures. He hopes to work with the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance studies to scale its existing course offerings to include more on the ancient world. He’s also interested in paleoclimateology, the study of Earth’s past climates, and hopes to study deserts in Arizona.

For Padilla Peralta, the move to ASU does not mean leaving classics behind, but continuing a reimagination of it that began at Princeton.

“I still remain convinced that much good can and will continue to be done at Princeton,” Padilla Peralta said.

Clara Docherty is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Lafayette, N.J., and typically covers campus clubs and institutional legacy. She can be reached at clara.docherty[at]princeton.edu.

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