Writing at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher absolutely slaughters Woke LSU for a thoroughly noxious proposal in front of the Faculty Senate which his sources say is expected to pass.
The resolution reads as follows…
Dreher provides some context…
AAAS2000 (African & African American Studies) would be a course in which students are indoctrinated in “antiracist” ideology, Critical Race Theory, and the like. From the description here, it is not mere history; it is highly ideologized history (“intersecting oppression”). And if this passes the LSU Faculty Senate, taking this course in left-wing racialism would be a requirement of graduating from LSU. Just imagine how difficult it would be for any student to challenge the professor in this class. To do so would cause one to out oneself as a racist, in the eyes of these ideologues. Dissenters will be intimidated into silence.
One of those dissenters works for the university, and reached out to me to say:
This proposal comes from faculty members affiliated with AAAS [African & African American Studies], but what is interesting is that the Black Student Athletes Association has provided the impetus for this proposal. This is just great: student athletes at LSU dictating academic requirements and curriculum for the entire university, with the complicity of LSU faculty who would like to impose a singular racial world view on all students enrolled in the university.
You’ve got to take 39 hours’ worth of required courses in six major areas to get a degree from Woke LSU regardless of your major. You have to take six hours’ worth of English composition, six hours of analytical reasoning, three hours of arts, nine hours of humanities, nine hours of natural sciences and six hours of social sciences. Dreher is saying that this proposal for a Woke Studies requirement would either add to that and bump the total up to 42 hours of required courses, or displace something on the current list.
So what’s going to go from the list above to make room for the mandatory Grievance Studies class? LSU requires no classes in Greek philosophy and thought, none in literature, none in history, none in philosophy, or in any of the foundations of a traditional Western education. You may take these courses to fulfill general requirements above, but you are not required to do so. But if this proposal passes the Faculty Senate, the university will have declared that it is more important for LSU graduates to have had instruction in “intersectional oppression” than Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, or any of the other greats.
What does that tell you about the future of the university?
It tells you that Woke LSU is no longer interested in being an institution of higher learning, but is instead transforming itself into a factory for social justice warriors.
Fierce Fascists For The Future, or something.
Dreher goes through a lot of official information he found on LSU’s faculty hiring practices, which are VERY clearly discriminatory. LSU is hiring straight-up on the basis of race now, not to mention it’s an essential requirement of the hiring process that candidates demonstrate how “woke” they are. LSU’s investing top dollar into the effort to insure there is no diversity of thought among their “diverse” faculty, too; the university’s Chief Diversity Officer pulls down a whopping $185,000.
And Dreher poses precisely the right question:
Remember me telling you that Louisiana is a very red state? Where is the legislature? Would the majority of taxpayers of the state of Louisiana — of which I am one — stand for this if they knew it was happening? I am a 1989 LSU graduate, and have my oldest child at LSU now as an undergraduate. I would like to consider sending one or both of my other children to LSU when the time comes. Will I be paying to have my children radicalized by a mandatory class on Critical Race Theory at a public university (or have my children compelled to learn ketman, the art of lying to power-holders to avoid getting in trouble)? Can I have confidence in the quality of instruction if the university is so fanatical about hiring on the basis of race? Note that LSU requires future hires to prove their “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” before hiring. I think about the best professors I had at LSU in the 1980s, and while I would bet that they were quite liberal politically, what if they weren’t? What if they were just really good at their jobs, and standouts in their fields, but could not or would not, on principle, demonstrate loyalty to the politicized criteria of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? Who cares what they think privately? Can they teach well? Are they fair to all students? Do they produce quality research?
Exactly. Where is the Legislature?
They appropriate money every year to fund this. No one has ever bothered to call LSU on the carpet for an examination of the utter rot and waste of taxpayer dollars being inflicted on the state and its best and brightest students.
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Understand something: cultural Marxism in hiring and curriculum at Woke LSU does not make for improved education. It is precisely the opposite. It creates racism; it doesn’t combat it. And it poisons black students most of all; when you teach a black student at LSU that he or she is at a disadvantage because of the color of his or her skin, due to the “systemic” (meaning: imaginary, as visible racism is rare in 21st-century America) bigotry out there, then you are not equipping that student with the confidence and the skill to compete in the marketplace with everyone else.
What this signifies is that Woke LSU is increasingly a ripoff and that no one should send their children to the university. The people in charge of Woke LSU are running a scam on students, parents, and taxpayers.
And it’s long past time that the Louisiana Legislature, which is in charge of funding this place, start cleaning up the mess. Demand that this cultural Marxist indoctrination cease, and if it doesn’t, start squeezing LSU’s budget until it does. Otherwise, get ready for boycotts and lawfare, because the people of Louisiana won’t stand for it much longer.
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