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Friday, December 23, 2005
Missing the Point of "Higher Education"
Michelle Malkin has linked to the Young America's Foundation list of " America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses" a.k.a. the Dirty Dozen. Of course, Malkin is complaining that these courses represent leftist activism in higher education and suggests that they are completely useless. The list shows that some people see things that aren't there (er, like a war on Christmas?):
A little more of my commentary follows this partial list:
Princeton University’s The Cultural Production of Early Modern Women examines “prostitutes,” “cross-dressing,” and “same-sex eroticism” in 16th - and 17th - century England, France, Italy and Spain (emphasis added).
Like something out of a Hugh Hefner film, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania offers the class Lesbian Novels Since World War II.
Alfred University’s Nip, Tuck, Perm, Pierce, and Tattoo: Adventures with Embodied Culture, mostly made up of women, encourages students to think about the meaning behind “teeth whitening, tanning, shaving, and hair dyeing.” Special projects include visiting a tattoo-and-piercing studio and watching Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodybuilding film, Pumping Iron.
Harvard University’s Marxist Concepts of Racism examines “the role of capitalist development and expansion in creating racial inequality” (emphasis added). Although Karl Marx didn’t say much on race, leftist professors in this course extrapolate information on “racial oppression” and “racial antagonism."
Students at the University of California—Los Angeles need not wonder what it means to be a lesbian. The Psychology of the Lesbian Experience reviews “various aspects of lesbian experience” including the “impact of heterosexism/stigma, gender role socialization, minority status of women and lesbians, identity development within a multicultural society, changes in psychological theories about lesbians in sociohistorical context.”
Duke University’s American Dreams/American Realities course supposedly unearths “such myths as ‘rags to riches,’ ‘beacon to the world,’ and the ‘frontier,’ in defining the American character” (emphasis added).
Brown University’s Black Lavender: A Study of Black Gay & Lesbian Plays “address[es] the identities and issues of Black gay men and lesbians, and offer[s] various points of view from within and without the Black gay and lesbian artistic communities.”
Now, the list put out by the Young America's Foundation represents all that is wrong with America today. As an anthropologist, it is frustrating to read about how conservatives get up in arms about things that cannot be examined on a superficial level. Sure, a course in lesbian psychology isn’t for everyone because not everyone is interested in the subject. But how can it possibly be a waste of tuition dollars and an instance of “leftist activism” when the goal of the course is to educate the student on the experiences of someone other than themselves? This is the entire point of college and it frustrates the hell out of me when people don’t realize this. The Young America’s Foundation, Malkin, and other conservatives are simply not comfortable with confronting the true face of America. They preach diversity and acceptance but they refuse to acknowledge the legitimate nature of the people that make up this culture. It sounds harsh to say, but anything that isn’t Jesus-oriented or based on a conservative western view of culture must be leftist propaganda and thus dangerous. It seems to me that this view stems from a deep-seeded fear of reality which in turn limits the ability of the individual to see the value in the Other. To me the most disturbing item on the list is Harvard’s Marxists Concepts of Racism which looks at “the role of capitalist development and expansion in creating racial inequality. How can this be considered a useless course? Only through the narrow and limited (and often caucasian) window of ignorance that characterizes much of conservative thought in the United States.
Posted by Will at December 23, 2005 01:28 PM in Academia