Now I can’t help thinking about the Roman empire

Have you heard about the Roman empire meme? It was hot on TikTok recently.

It’s a simple one; women approach the men in their life and ask how often they think about the Roman Empire. Clips of boyfriends, husbands, dads, and brothers who have never stepped foot in Italy casually admitting that they think about the Roman Empire often, even multiple times per day, have gone viral on the video-sharing platform, with female creators often expressing complete bewilderment at the shared obsession.

I had to think about that — I took several history courses on Rome in college, so I have invested some time in the subject, I’ve seen several popular movies with a Roman history themes, I’ve read books by Mary Beard and Colleen McCullough. But I struggled to remember when I last “thought about the Roman empire” — it just isn’t a frequent unprompted consideration. You know it’s all just spiders in my head.

I think it’s more a matter of being primed. It’s the converse of the “try not to think of an elephant” idea — when triggered, you start retroactively reviewing all the times you thought of the subject. Those men are just playing along with something they were asked by a woman, making it a kind of mansplaining exercise.

Although there may be an alternative explanation: maybe all these men are all advocates of the authoritarian “Red Caesar” idea.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.

These are authoritarian times, maybe that’s what has some people thinking about tyrants and empires. I don’t see how you can look at Trump and even imagine there’s a Julius Caesar in there — he’s not even a Sulla. Maybe a Vitellius.

Look, this subject got me thinking about the Roman empire. Now you’re all going to think about it, too.

I dare you to not think about the Roman empire.

Keep working hard, maybe someone will notice you

While the site was down, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their work on mRNA viruses. This is exactly the kind of thing that deserves a prestigious award, since it was a fundamental discovery that opened the door for all kinds of scientific developments. It’s the personification of Faraday’s statement, “What good is a newborn baby?” and it also represents a conundrum — lots of science is done that is not immediately of use to others, but has undiscovered potential. I’m kind of impressed with Karikó’s struggle — she languished for years trying to do this work, yet she persevered.

Karikó, the 13th woman to win the prize, languished for many long years without funding or a permanent academic position, keeping her research afloat only by latching onto more senior scientists at the University of Pennsylvania who let her work with them. Unable to get a grant, she said she was told she was “not faculty quality” and was forced to retire from the university a decade ago. She remains only an adjunct professor there while she pursues plans to start a company with her daughter, Susan Francia, who has an MBA and was a two-time Olympic gold medalist in rowing.

The mRNA work was especially frustrating, she said, because it was met with indifference and a lack of funds. She said she was motivated by more than not being called a quitter; as the work progressed, she saw small signs that her project could lead to better vaccines. “You don’t persevere and repeat and repeat just to say, ‘I am not giving up,'” she said.

Universities, pay your adjuncts. Also, I hope UPenn doesn’t try to do any fundraising off this work by a researcher they disrespected.

I also just want to mention that I lived near her in Pennsylvania — I didn’t know her at all, but maybe fame was brushed off by proximity. She described how she got the news.

I was sleeping, and actually my husband picked up the phone. I am at my home in a suburb of Philadelphia in Abington township. And I was away in a conference in Cold Spring Harbor, and just Saturday returned. We celebrated 50 years of recombinant DNA technology. I met all of those people there, 80s, 90s that did the basic work, and I just came back.

My kids went to school in Abington! Neato!

I should note that, while academia didn’t appreciate her work and neglected her, capitalism saw some virtue.

But two biotech companies soon took notice: Moderna, in the United States, and BioNTech, in Germany, where Karikó eventually became a senior vice president. The companies studied the use of mRNA vaccines for flu, cytomegalovirus and other illnesses. None moved out of clinical trials for years.

I don’t think most adjunct faculty can fall back on their position as a senior vice president of a pharmaceutical company.

I wonder how many adjuncts are slaving away, struggling to get their work out there, and will never get this kind of acknowledgment? Probably something close to all of them.