Posted on 04/11/2016 8:34:03 PM PDT by Art in Idaho
An effort by a group of Stanford University students to restore a Western Civilization class requirement has been decisively rejected by the student body, with voting results released Monday showing it mustering less than 15 percent support.
The ballot initiative was promoted by members of the school’s conservative-leaning Stanford Review. If passed, it would have called for Stanford to require that all freshmen complete a two-quarter course covering “the politics, history, philosophy, and culture of the Western world.” Stanford once possessed a similar requirement, but eliminated it after a student campaign in the 1980s that denounced it as fostering racism, sexism, and other perfidious -isms.
Supporters managed to collect 370 signatures on their petition, enough to include it as a ballot measure for Stanford’s spring student government election.
But it turns out Stanford has no enthusiasm for requiring the study of Western civilization. In election results released Monday, the proposal failed by an overwhelming margin, with 342 votes in favor and a whopping 1992 votes against.
In contrast, over 90 percent of students voted in favor of an initiative requiring the school to administer a new campus climate survey designed to find the rate of sexual assault on campus. The school already administered such a survey in 2015, but it outraged activists by finding a sexual assault rate of just 1.9%, which they deemed far too low.
The mere suggestion that Stanford require studying Western civilization had generated immense outrage among certain Stanford communities. A low-income advocacy group at the school suspended a member based on the suspicion that he wrote an anonymous piece supporting the proposal. A hostile column in The Stanford Daily warned that accepting the proposal would mean centering Stanford education on “upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations.”
"A hostile column in The Stanford Daily warned that accepting the proposal would mean centering Stanford education on “upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations."
I went to the bookshelf and got my Western Civilization 101 book out. One of the best courses I ever took in college. Still there, underlined and all, and still filled with so much interesting history.
I was fascinated and intrigued by the Greeks, the Romans, the Greeks attempts at democracy, the Greek and Roman wars, the slow advance of civilization, the dictators, both harsh and benevolent, the multiple attempts at civilized government. The various proclamations, the Magna Carta, the Church through the ages and much more.
I came away thinking man has been working at 'getting it right' for many millennia.
We now live in a pinnacle age in the greatest country ever devised by the mind of man and these illiterates want to tear it down. Well, I'm here to tell them that Western Civilization coupled with the Age of Enlightenment were the basis for the founding of our Sacred Republic. If they truly believe their Marxist/racist tripe, they should move to another country. America will never be your utopia, We are Americans and proud of it! Don't Tread on Us!
Addendum to members of the Stanford Review: Hold your own private 'Western Civilization Study' group. Don't let them stop you! It's still a free country. Assemble and learn!
They really need to get the **** out. They could make America “a better place” if they’d just leave. Cuba and North Korea would love to have them.
Bunch of self-serving ingrates. Denouncing the very thing that the foundations of their institution stands for. If they weren’t such gutless worms, they would all reject their admissions to Stanford and go to a Black community college so they can all be down with the struggle.
Hatred for Western civ. is what brings progressives and jihadists together as bedfellows.
the proposal failed by an overwhelming margin, with 342 votes in favor and a whopping 1992 votes against.
Fools. Western civilization is the reason these pampered know-nothings have the freedom to express their naive opinions.
Perfectly said.
Who is engineering this nationwide operation behind the scenes?
K-12 public school graduates show their ignorance.
BINGO! I thought the exact same thing. west Civy Nights on Fridays. Just enrolled my son in a Classical Education Program. They go on campus two days per week and the parent follows the lesson plan for the other three days. They are required to learn Latin and have Bible study and discussion in the mornings.
The future of America....
Of course. Why would you want to learn anything about the civilization in which you live?
My College named the course “Western Society.” It consisted of FOUR semesters of Four credit hours each. It was the best course that I had in Four years. A comprehensive exam was taken after the second year. A “pass” was required to receive a degree. The syllabus was created by a genius, who happened to be an ordained minister. That course, alone, was worth the tuition paid. The school had another degree requirement: passing a swim test. Don’t laugh, it was worth it for many who did not swim to learn the basics.
The Stanford Review students should transfer to Hillsdale College, Kenyon College or the University of Chicago.
Stanford 80s alum here.
This is one reason why Stanford gets no money from me.
(Another is its entirely voluntary decision to file an amicus brief in the Michigan racial-preferences cases in favor of, well, racial preferences. I say “voluntary” because U. Michigan is a public school; Stanford isn’t in the same legal category.)
My girls will go to a school like Hilldale or a service academy.
The left worked relentlessly to take the universities, and they have had them for decades. This is the result.
When I read articles like this, I think that no matter who we elect, it won’t make a bit of difference. We have already sunk to low to come back up.
I’d guess that 95% of professors in other than the hard sciences (where it’s only a bit lower) are flat out Marxists. The shaming of white students has worked—they now have been bullied and brainwashed into hating themselves, their so-called “white privilege”, their country and its history, and their new religion (since they have abandoned God) is Climate Change.
Our country has become a nightmare. And it will get worse.
Liberal academia has done its job.
That’s my alum’ and I am a Stanford grad.
The Business school I graduated from is still sane and promote capitalism until now. It’s the REST of the limp-wrist departments who came up with this libtardic insanity.
I still remember once we had to go a diversity training class which was stupidly mandatory. All we had to do “non-ethnic” classmates were to ‘apologize’ for the rest of the semester. It was an Oscar worthy performance on my part to lie to these assholes...
Them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.