Posted on 12/23/2005 11:04:20 AM PST by DBeers
Students are paying an average $21,000 in annual tuition to attend the nation's colleges, which teach subjects such as the "unbearable whiteness" of Barbie dolls and "same-sex eroticism" in Renaissance Europe.
Those courses -- at Occidental College in Los Angeles and Princeton University, respectively -- were among the "most bizarre and troubling instances of leftist activism supplanting traditional scholarship" at U.S. colleges and universities named this year to the "Dirty Dozen" list by Young America's Foundation.
The Herndon-based conservative youth group also singled out for criticism courses such as "Lesbian Novels Since World War II" (Swarthmore), "Marxist Concepts of Racism" (Harvard) and "Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll in Ancient Egypt" (Johns Hopkins).
"We researched over 55 courses, and we gleaned 12 of the most outrageous,"
~SNIP~
Marxism, homosexuality and racial theory were recurrent themes in college classes named on the list, which included:
• "The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie: Race and Popular Culture in the United States," in which students explore ways in which "scientific racism has been put to use in the making of Barbie." Occidental College made the YAF list twice, with a course called "Stupidity," which says that "stupidity ... makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beavis and Butthead."
• Johns Hopkins' "rock 'n' roll" class about ancient Egypt offered a slide show of Egyptian women "vomiting on each other."
• In "The Psychology of the Lesbian Experience," students at the University of California at Los Angeles review "various aspects of lesbian experience," including "the impact of heterosexism/stigma."
• Of Harvard's "Marxist Concepts of Racism," Mr. Mattera said, "Karl Marx didn't say much on racism or sexism, but leave it to a left-wing professor to come up with something."
~SNIP~
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
How about this course:
"Leftist idiocy in modern Universities"
And it should NOT be an elective!
Unfortunately, he died before his studies generated any momentum, and the work has never been taken up again.
Well, it is known that the idiots can levitate and even soar to great heights [who hasn't seen them in high positions?]. Hence it is self-evident that stupidity can be stronger than gravity.
To me, college leftists relevance is defined by the fact that they sees a personal victory in what they sees as America's defeat. In this, they just reflects the larger new democratic party. As much as they deny it, the leftists democrats have positioned themselves to win when America loses. They seem to be more than willing to sell out the interests of this country and teach it to others if it would help them win back power.
FReepmail me and little jeremiah if you want on/off the ping list.
The professors who teach this crap know that they aren't up to the scholarly demand of teaching something meaningful. So they offer up these garbage courses with cutesy names and no real content to their deans. The deans couldn't care less (they are too busy going to parties and socializing with their liberal friends). Meanwhile students figure the course has to be an easy A and maybe you won't even have to go to class most of the time. And so it goes... everybody taking the easy way out in life instead of challenging themselves.
I agree, the underwater basketweaving classes were getting too full.
Actually, that one sounds interesting.
Trashing Western Civilization, fomenting intellectual, social and cultural anarchy, and undermining the moral underpinnings of America....
As if it weren't enough that the NEA has brainwashed public school children with the same agenda.
I've found one good thing with my college - Catholic University of America - you can say "Merry Christmas" without any disciplinary actions against you. I actually just said "Merry Christmas" to my advisor, and she replied in kind.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1546062/posts
More on stopping U-M’s class “How to be Gay”
AFAMI NEWS ^ | Dec. 5, 2005 | Gary Glenn
Posted on 12/23/2005 8:52:16 AM PST by kindred
CONTACT: Gary Glenn 989-835-7978 Professor David Halperin 734-647-5884
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, brings back “How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality & Initiation”
family group renews criticism of tax-funded college class “How to be Gay”
U-M catalogue calls class “an experiment in the very process of initiation it hopes to understand.”
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A statewide family values group Monday renewed its criticism of a controversial University of Michigan class — offered this fall for the first time since 2003 — again calling on state lawmakers to pressure university officials to drop the course altogether.
The American Family Association of Michigan, in a letter to supporters statewide, condemned U-M for again offering the class, titled “How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality & Initiation.”
“Every time U-M offers this ludicrous class, you and I cannot fail to speak out against it,” Glenn wrote. “And we must take full advantage every time of the invaluable opportunity to point to (the class) as proof of homosexual activists’ ‘political militancy,’ to expose their use of our public education system to indoctrinate young people, and to hold accountable those politically correct or timid politicians who stand silently by and do nothing to stop it.”
The mailing included pre-addressed postcards to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mi., the office of U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, and Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Kalamazoo, who in response to the class in 2003, introduced a proposed constitutional amendment that would give legislators more oversight and control of university class offerings in Michigan. It also urged taxpayers to contact the Legislature.
“Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn’t mean that you don’t have to learn how to become one,” according to the U-M Fall 2005 course catalogue’s description of the class. The course “will examine the general topic of the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay male identity. …(The) course itself will constitute an experiment in the very process of initiation that it hopes to understand.”
See full course description here:
Openly homosexual U-M Professor David Halperin, the course instructor, frankly discussed the purpose of such classes in Australian Humanities Review:
“Let there be no mistake about it: lesbian and gay studies, as currently practiced in the U.S., expresses an uncompromising political militancy. Indeed, nothing short of political militancy suffices to establish such courses of study in the first place. …Lesbian and gay studies scholars have…lobbied…to adopt and enforce anti-discrimination policies, to recognize same-sex couples, to oppose the U.S. military’s anti-gay policy, to suspend professional activities in states that criminalize gay sex or limit access to abortion, and to intervene on behalf of human rights for lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men. …The fact is that lesbian and gay studies simply is the academic wing of the lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender movement.”
In 2003, Halperin refused Glenn’s offer to meet for a face-to-face public debate on the merits of the class. When U-M offered it in 2000 and 2003, the state House of Representatives fell a handful of votes short of cutting the university’s funding in response, and AFA-Michigan’s protests generated national news coverage, including:
"Unfortunately, he died before his studies generated any momentum, and the work has never been taken up again."
Really? I could've sworn the US Senate was being used as a Test Case lately. ;)
Shocking!
LOL
I had a phrase written on the front of my notebook in college: "Two things are universal - hydrogen and stupidity". Served me well.
Hydrogen is not universal - there are places and times without it. But stupidity IS universal.
Are you telling me I wasted my college education? :)
They are all in fact poisonous fruit of the same evil plant...and they all flock together and stick up for each other, and make sure that conservatives on faculty are vilified and kept from getting tenure, or hired in the first place.
A young college student recently told me about a conversation with his college's Dean. Dean said, "My job isn't to teach students; it's to get as many students through the college as I can". I was stunned at first, but after thinking about it, it made perfect sense. Colleges have become profit centers and their administrations are the CEOs and VPs of the corporation. Instead of teaching students what they need to succeed in their respective professions they "give the customer what he wants". Hence, courses like "Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll in Ancient Egypt". What college kid wouldn't want that on his schedule, or be seen toting the textbook around? Kewwwwwwwwwl!
On the bright side, I have noticed an increase in the quality of waiters and waitresses in the local restaurants, so their tuition wasn't a total waste.
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