"But it couldn't be pursued any voise either."
Posted on 06/27/2006 9:43:45 AM PDT by JSedreporter
From a recent debate on college-level women’s studies courses, we get a glimpse of why graduates with that degree are hard to find, though such classes have become commonplace in most universities.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to learn what a women’s studies degree does. My guess is it qualifies you for a future teaching women’s studies,” said Professor Mike Adams of University of North Carolina at Wilmington as the students laughed loudly and applauded the debaters.
After a lengthy historical explanation of how women’s studies arose from women’s movements which were birthed by civil rights movements of blacks, Dean Gay L. Gullickson of the University of Maryland concluded that “research and teaching on women could not be pursued better by forsaking women’s studies.”
“On an intellectual level, courses about women’s issues are a good idea and they are also good pedagogically,” said Gullickson.
Women’s Centers are different in that they are student-initiated and organized, but they are good and students have the right to create them, according to Gullickson.
Professor and Townhall.com columnist Adams, however, had something very different to say at the debate before Eagle Forum Collegians.
“Women’s resource centers are not student-organized. In 2000, UNC-Wilmington established an ad hoc committee of feminist Democrats who wanted to create a women’s resource center and they created a survey,” said Adams.
The survey did not ask students if they wanted a women’s resource center, instead it listed a series of proposed activities for the upcoming women’s resource center (WRC), said Adams.
With a stacked deck of mostly female respondents caused by the school’s 70-30 female-to-male student ratio, Adams explained, the students still only approved 5 percent of the activities.
“67 percent approved self-defense courses. I like that, I want them to have guns,” said Adams, earning loud applause, “but [UNC-Wilmington] already had self-defense courses.”
“In 2001 we had [the center], but no physical location and no classes were ever offered. But they [the feminists] used the survey as justification to create it,” Adams said. Even after two female students were killed in separate incidents in 2004, no self-defense classes were offered at the center, according to Adams.
What these people really wanted to do was promote their agenda, said Adams, who further explained that the WRC began advertising for Planned Parenthood, he told them they were required by law to allow Lifeline Pregnancy Center to advertise too. Rather than advertise for Lifeline, they chose to remove Planned Parenthood advertising.
“Abortion is the holy sacrament for them,” said Adams.
“The kinds of women’s centers I mentioned are the kind found all around the country, not those established by faculty,” Gullickson said in her rebuttal.
Gullickson also disagreed with Adams regarding balanced viewpoints. “That would mean you would have to argue FOR slavery…In all cases you do not have to present both sides,” she said, “I’d also like to say I don’t know any feminists for whom abortion is a holy sacrament, but they believe in equality.”
Adams responded with an explanation of when viewpoint neutrality is required: “when you open a public forum with funding the University must remain viewpoint neutral.” Adams also said his WRC is just like others across the country and that when he called 12 different schools and asked to speak to one pro-lifer among WRC staff there were zero out of 120 people.
During Q and A, Gullickson said that professors cannot cover everything in a class and it is their job to define subject matter and students can always choose what courses to take. She also said calling women’s studies “notorious” is a caricature.
I was able to ask Gullickson how she can say that women’s studies is good for research when, as Carrie Lukas points out in her new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism, these texts have misinformation and missing information that women need to make life decisions.
“I don’t like textbooks,” said Gullickson, “I don’t use them when I teach and I haven’t read the book you are referring to so I really couldn’t say.”
Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer for Accuracy in Academia.
If feminists really believe that women should be equally represented in all professions, then in college they should go straight to the registrar's office, drop their "Women's Studies" major, and apply to the programs in which they feel more women belong. They won't, because:
1) They are are all talk, all feeling; no action or reason
2) A field that's based on a lifetime of complaining about non-issues actually pays a living wage in this country. Unfortunately.
You can get me another beer.
In my naivete, I thought the Dean was recommending leaving women's studies!
How true! If you have the time, go and read Adams' series on feminism, it's all archived at townhall.com.
I stopped reading the article when a WS professor claimed the Women's Movement sprang from the Civil Rights Era (that is, the 60s). For a historian she doesn't know much history.
"But it couldn't be pursued any voise either."
Not even, I asked a law-studying women's studies major if she had ever heard of Camille Paglia, and I got the "unfocused glassy eye."
Doubly sad because prof. Paglia actually belonged to the feminist "movement" (defined as the movement that existed in the 60's and 70's).
Hey, ugly lesbian skanks need to scam a living too! And what better gig than by teaching "Womyns Studies?"
"if only the world would stop and listen to ME then things would be joyous."
That's a tag line waiting to happen!
“I don’t like textbooks,” said Gullickson, “I don’t use them when I teach and I haven’t read the book you are referring to so I really couldn’t say.”
Meaning, "I haven't [any intention to] read the book you are referring to so I [can avoid addressing your point by saying] really couldn't say."
It's been said before, but "women's studies" is simply an academic scam -- it's a self-licking ice cream cone that serves only to create new tenure tracks for ideologues and mediocrities who can't hack it in a legitimate discipline.
I can't believe parents actually pay for their daughters to study this crap.
“I don’t like textbooks,” said Gullickson, “I don’t use them when I teach and I haven’t read the book you are referring to so I really couldn’t say.”
Well, I'd like to see someone try to teach calculus, engineering, law, physics, chemistry, etc., etc. without a textbook. But I'm sure she considers her subject matter to be just a difficult and valuable -- if not more so -- than those topics.
It's called feel-good self-delusion, peeps, and it's one of the most common characteristics of the far left/feminazis (redundant, I know), as is foisting those delusions through the guise of "teaching."
No, idiot. It means you cannot keep someone else from arguing for slavery.
If you can't win an argument on a fair basis, maybe you don't have a very good case.
I've been in plenty of business meetings where the comment was made, "If only we had one more technician/engineer/electrican/nurse/etc, we could get this project done."
I've never heard that statement apply to any of the 'Studies' majors - ie, 'Women's studies', 'Latino Studies'.
If that isn't an argument against being in a soft major like "(fill-in-the-blank) Studies", I don't know what is.
You want equality? How about we ban baby-killing for both men and women?
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