I think it would be fair to say that the idea of Boris Johnson as a national figurehead for classics was problematic long before he started deploying far-right dog whistles in his newspaper column. I actually don’t intend this as a criticism of the charity Classics For All for having invited him to be one of their patrons; I can entirely understand the logic of seeking the support of a prominent public figure who not only studied classics but who continues to make classical references at every opportunity. But the benefits of such an association inevitably come with a potential cost, especially in today’s febrile culture where every controversy is immediately magnified and accentuated, and especially with a political figure who actively courts controversy, in the form of throwaway remarks that can always be excused as a joke if the consequences look like becoming too serious – the current burka fuss is by no means Johnson’s first foray into vulgar racism.
But this goes beyond the sort of embarrassment produced by, say, having a patron convicted of financial irregularities or seeing a prominent member of the discipline disgraced for sexual misconduct. Johnson’s classical education is so much part of his public persona, that this unavoidably reflects back on classics; it runs the risk of reinforcing, in the public mind, the association between classics and privilege, the role of the subject in a traditional elite education and its rhetorical deployment by the beneficiaries of such an education as a means of communicating cultural superiority – where it isn’t being more actively deployed in a politicised narrative of Western Civilisation. Presenting Johnson as a prominent – and by implication, approved – classicist conveys the message that this is what being a classicist is all about; that may attract some people, but surely alienates a great deal more, and precisely those from backgrounds that traditionally don’t have any engagement with classical antiquity or any thought of studying it.
I’ve found myself this morning idly wondering about a different sort of public engagement project for our discipline. Classics for All takes the first part of its name as a given; its mission is to extend the study of traditional classics as widely as possible. But, as I tried to argue in my recent book, traditional classics has some problematic associations; it’s difficult to separate it from traditions of elitism, sexism, classism and racism, even without the looming image of Johnson. Classical Studies for All would be as much about rethinking the discipline itself to make it fit for the 21st century, listening to a wider range of people about how it needs to change to become genuinely accessible, rather than seeing the problem as just a matter of resources to promote the existing form of the discipline.
And it would need different sorts of patrons: not the great and the good, however worthy, but the young and radical. Akala, for example, or Kate Tempest… Of course, as a middle-aged white professor I am the last person who should be trying to organise such a thing, but it would be good if someone did.
Update 15/8: it did belatedly occur to me to wonder whether this was simply proposing to reinvent the wheel to some extent by echoing the mission of Edith Hall’s excellent Advocating Classical Education project, but double-checking their website suggests I wasn’t mistaken in thinking that they likewise have a focus on curriculum and qualifications. Again, as with CfA, this isn’t a criticism; I can see exactly why this makes sense as a goal. I suppose my hesitation – the reason I think that there are other things we could and maybe should be doing – comes down to the question of the relationship between promoting/defending classical studies as a subject/discipline and promoting/defending it as an area of importance and interest. Obviously there’s a big overlap, and I would guess that many people might argue that they’re inseparable, but I can’t help feeling (1) that this isn’t true (after all, interest in antiquity flourished long before classics existed as any sort of discipline, and continues to exist beyond the discipline), and (2) that the rhetoric of initiatives like CfA, and especially the focus on getting more people to study the subject formally, tends to suggest that the primary goal is the health of the discipline. Which is fine, but not the only possible goal, especially if one thinks that there may be some issues with the discipline as currently constituted, and still more if one thinks that engagement with the classical might be important even or especially for those who don’t want to or can’t take it up as an academic subject.
Update 15/8: probably everyone visiting this page will have seen the statement from the Women’s Classical Committee on inclusive Classics and problematic subject a,bassadors, but if not it’s well worth reading.
Sphinx 
I’ve got two objections, although they may be pulling in different directions. One is that the excellence of poetry as Akala and Kate Tempest practice it is, surely, quite different from the excellence of either Greek or Latin poetry. To put it another way, a mediocre but competent passage by a contemporary performance poet would be judged adequate (but no more) by very different criteria than a mediocre but competent passage of Ovid. The point generalises (Cicero vs Tony Blair, Sophocles vs Sally Wainwright, Aristotle vs anybody). Perhaps the neglect of the Classics is just part of where we are as a society – we don’t attend to the Classics because we don’t value the things that those writers valued and did well.
But – speaking as somebody who did Latin A Level and read Greek tragedy at university – I hate that phrase, “the Classics”; to me it signifies precisely “those texts that an earlier period classed as mandatory, but we don’t any more”. It signals both obsoleteness and superiority, in other words – a bad combination. It reminds me of trying to read Dickens in my teens – with my mother telling me that by my age she’d read, and loved, David Copperfield – then giving up and reading Forster and Nabokov. And “Classical Studies” doesn’t really get you off that hook. Just call it “Latin and Greek” and have done.
I see exactly what you mean, especially on the combination of obsolescence and superiority, which can express itself as a weird and rather offputting mixture of insecurity and arrogance. One answer is, as you say, to ditch the name altogether – since it also ties into all sorts of problematic discourses about Western Civilisation, European Culture, empire etc. But I still believe in the possibility of classical studies as a sort of Gesamtaltertumswissenschaft, not just Greek and Latin and less constrained by its own traditions. And that’s then more or less my response to your first point, because such a field of study would have classical reception at its heart, and not just direct reception of specific ancient texts but all forms of engagement with antiquity. The point of referencing Akala or Tempest isn’t to suggest judging them in terms of classical norms, it’s that both have offered stimulating contemporary reflections on and reworking of antiquity, making it into something new rather than treating it as something that has to be preserved and worshipped.