Donna Zuckerberg
Donna Zuckerberg is an American classicist, feminist, and writer. She is author of the book Not All Dead White Men (2018), about the appropriation of classics by misogynist groups on the Internet. She was editor-in-chief of Eidolon, a classics journal, until its closure in 2020. She is the sister of the Facebook's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Early life and education Zuckerberg was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York in 1987 to a Jewish family. She is the third of four children. One parent was a dentist and the other was a psychiatrist. She says the family was tight-knit and the parents encouraged their children to develop whatever talents they had. Her siblings Mark Zuckerberg and Randi Zuckerberg both work in the technology sector. After earning a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago, Zuckerberg earned her Ph.D. in classics at Princeton University in 2014, specializing in the study of ancient tragedy. The title of her doctoral thesis was The Oversubtle Maxim Chasers: Aristophanes, Euripides, and their Reciprocal Pursuit of Poetic Identity. Her doctoral adviser was Professor Andrew Ford. While completing her graduate studies, Zuckerberg wrote a food blog called Sugar Mountain Treats. Career Eidolon and scholarship The classicist Natalie Haynes notes that Zuckerberg "is a classicist with a strong Internet pedigree". Zuckerberg is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online journal Eidolon, which publishes texts about classics that are not formal scholarship. Its authors are well-established classicists as well as new experts in the field. Aside from Eidolon, Zuckerberg's work has been published in numerous popular publications, including the Times Literary Supplement, Jezebel, The Establishment, and Avidly. She has also written for mainstream publications about the use of the classics by the alt-right movement. In a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post, she argues that the sexism and racism found in classic texts should be studied and discussed rather than ignored or, as right-wing ideologues are doing, celebrated. Natalie Haynes agrees with Zuckerberg's ideological stance, arguing that "ignoring these people is no longer the answer". Not All Dead White Men Zuckerberg's first monograph, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, was published by Harvard University Press in October 2018. It has been described as "one of the first books to examine the online formation known as the Red Pill...also known as the manosphere". The "manosphere" includes numerous factions such as men's rights activists, pickup artists, and Men Going Their Own Way. The groups are united by the belief that they are disadvantaged by contemporary society which operates in favor of women. Zuckerberg's book is a reception study. It describes how the Red Pill movement online finds support for its sexist ideology in texts from ancient Greece and Rome, tracing the phenomenon back to its origins and describing its misappropriation of Ovid, Euripides, Xenophon's Oeconomicus and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. The book touches on the links between the Red Pill community and the white supremacy movement. The "Red Pill" is a cultural reference to the