There are 652 women’s and gender studies programs in the United States; undergraduate women’s studies courses enrolled nearly 89,000 students in 2005-06; and 30.4 percent of women’s studies faculty are faculty of color, versus 19 percent of faculty nationally.
Gender and/or women’s studies classes are reported to be populated entirely by women and gay men, and African American classes almost entirely by black students. Department by department there are far more men, and far more whites, but African American and Women’s Studies make the total breakdown seem a little less egregious, which makes the college look better.
Meanwhile, English Departments have stopped teaching Shakespeare, let alone Chaucer, two of the seminal authors in the English language. (Slate January 17th).
Were Epicurus still around his ataraxia index would be hitting an all-time low. What on earth do they think they are doing? Educating? One despairs.
It is offensive to me that students should be allowed to take these non-rigorous courses and have no option to learn about and absorb the great authors of the past. Political correctness gone crazy. Some of the colleges have been taken over by subversives with no love for the language or history of the country. I find myself in the company of the Republican critics. Along with clearing out the militarists and offenders against human rights, et al, we must also clear out their mirror images in academia. Historically there is only a sliver of paper separating the extreme left from the extreme right. Up ataraxia!
You either believe in the market or you don’t. If this is what is in demand then you can’t criticize the colleges for offering it. Young people think Shakespeare is a has-been and that is a fact of life, and you are ain’t gonna change it. Stop being so elitist.
I did a course on Women’s Studies but it was one course among several. Can’t see what’s wrong with that.
Rock on! and welcome to the fight!! You would find yourself standing with more than “Republican critics” if you were to dig deeply into America’s academic and political history of the last thirty years.
As a battle-scarred veteran of three decades of fighting that sort of fragmented academic confusion and political extremism — and battling at a scene of contact (e.g., Virginia) I can assure you that we’ve been a’fightin’ for a very long time. Often we longed for the scientists and others to join what seemed like important battles. Only since 2000 has that begun to happen.
Academically, it’s not the isolated course that’s good or bad, it’s the fact that no courses are taught that would give a comprehensive framework to make sense of the small slice of reality that’s being presented. Understanding is seriously compromised.
Thousands of us have fixed bayonets and charged out of the safe trenches since the 1970s. We lost most of those fights but sometimes the historical amnesia cuts more keenly than the loss itself. It’s not the desire for ex-post pats-on-back, it’s the danger of losing what was learned about how the vested interests operate. THAT insight into American power realities was invaluable. Those fights and what we learned from them seem to have fallen down the memory hole as though the battles you mention are of recent vintage rather than thirty and even forty years old.
Whew! I feel ataraxia washing over me now that that’s off my chest.
A wonderful piece of writing! Thank you! it must have been traumatic. Thank you for trying to maintain a civilized education system against all odds!