This item from the Evening Standard (wow!) was mentioned over at Classics International:
Spears are being hurled in the classical world after a new book about Euripides was given a lukewarm write-up in the well-respected Classical Review.
Cypriot author had spent eight years researching the play Rhesus, attributed to Euripides, for his new academic work published by the Oxford University Press. Liapis concludes that it’s not by Euripides but the authorship issue is not the problem. It was the review by Donna Zuckerberg, a little-known classicist doing a PhD at Princeton, who bakes by night and also happens to be the younger sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Not many in the classical world share Zuckerberg’s opinion that Liapis “fails utterly” in writing a proper appreciation of the play, nor her view that he betrays “persistent and pervasive negativity”. The Classical Review has already received complaints about the quality of Zuckerberg’s review and dismissive comments. Another classical journal, the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, had given Liapis a rave write-up, saying he offered “ a wealth of intelligent, well-balanced discussion”.
Professor Colin Leach, formerly at Oxford University, whose enthusiastic review is due to be published in the Journal of Classical Teachers later this year, expressed his surprise that Classical Review did not allocate so important a book to a senior academic. He also notes: “Zuckerberg used the ‘word’ hapaces, which purports to be the plural of hapax. But hapax is not a noun, but an indeclinable adverb, meaning ‘once’, and hapaces does not exist. It may be a feeble joke, or even an Americanism.” God forbid.
- via: Classical battle over Facebook founder’s sister (Evening Standard)
If you don’t have access to Classical Review, you can get a taste of Zuckerberg’s comments here (it’s the first paragraph). The BMCR review by David Sansone is here. Simon Perris’ review for Classical Journal is generally positive. Judging from those (and the above), I strongly suspect the Standard was experiencing a bit of a slow news day and wanted to do some Zuckerberg bashing of some sort (perhaps they’re trying to stir something up analogous to Simcha Jacobovici v Joe Zias … or Simcha Jacobovici v Yuval Goren (but see also …) … disagreements of this sort aren’t really new to us and, as far as I’m aware, don’t generally make the newspapers. On the other hand, it’s interesting to note that Zuckerberg’s sister is pursuing a PhD in Classics!
rogueclassicism 