Scholars from area studies and gender studies have long advocated including the classics in their interpretations. So have most advocates of a more interdisciplinary, multicultural curriculum. The resistance has come from the other side, from classicists who feared that putting their field into a global perspective would somehow reveal it to be less important or less unique than they had claimed. The result is that the classics are now very unique, so unique that they are almost non-existent. This is not what anyone wanted.
Classicists have a lot to offer both in content and methodology.
As part of an ancient world that was more connected than we previously realized, however, they are an important part of our efforts to understand a new global reality. The truth is that while you can't understand the ancient world without considering its non-western components, you also can't understand it without its western components. Classicism also has a lot to offer in terms of methodology. It was, after all, the first interdisciplinary approach to scholarship in the West. It was also the first form of area studies.