Some thoughts from elsewhere.....

I found some interesting comparisons on the website of our partner institution Copenhagen University. There Classical languages, Archaeology,History and Ethnology are combined in the SAXO Institute within the Faculty of Humanities. The range of research interests can be found at http://saxoinstitute.ku.dk/research where one of the themes is "Mediterranean culture and history from the antique world to the present". It links archaeology, history, languages and literature and declares that this research area "is an undeniable foundation for achieving renewed understanding of our own time and cultural group."

There's also a confident tone in Copenhagen's Centre for Canon and Identity Formation in the Earliest Literate Societies. This is in fact based in their disciplines of Egyptology and Assyriology, so at least as "obscure and esoteric" as some might consider Classics, but the describe themselves as follows:

"The project focuses on a range of fundamental aspects of the the intellectual history of man. These include the conceptualization, assembly, canonizing and application of knowledge and how innovation was processed in tradition; how centres and institutions of knowledge were formed, organsed and operated; how social and ethnic identity was defined aqnd expressed in the written media and for what purpose; and what the intellectual response was to political and social changes brought about through cultural encounters."

http://cif.tors.ku.dk/

It seems to me crucial that in writing in support of the future of Classics at Leeds we say that we need to retain the discipline and to say how and why we make a key contribution to the life of the University.

The financial problems caused by funding cuts are of course real and painful. Institutions have to find some way to balance the books. But it's clearly crucial that a university like Leeds which aspires to be considered a world leader works out its financial plans in the context of a considered academic and intellectual long-term strategy. For information on events at King's College London see today's Education Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/23/university-funding-cuts