Reed College Allows Bullying Students to Change their Curricula

Students at Portland, Oregon’s Reed College whined that their curriculum “perpetuates white supremacy” because they had to take a course that dealt with the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman canon.  In their classes, they were encouraged to think about “issues of continuing relevance pertaining to ideals of truth, beauty, virtue, justice, happiness and freedom, as well as challenges posed by social inequality, war, power and prejudice.”  In other words, this class wasn’t “woke” enough.

Big deal.  The students who complained — they go by the name Reedies Against Racism — are mere students.  College students, as you might know, are characterized by partying, smoking pot, and eating Tide pods…. not for being adept at choosing curricula.  That’s what adults are for.  That’s why parents send their kids to college, is so they can benefit for academic professionals.  However, these student protests grew increasingly hostile and disruptive.

What is surprising is that the administration caved to their ridiculous demands.  The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote a scathing piece criticizing the administrations inability to rein in their students’ lunacy:

When a parent complained online about the disruptions, a Reedies Against Racism participant “tagged the parent’s employer in a post,” the Atlantic newssite reported. English professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia said protesters were so intimidating that she suffered “physical anxiety—lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite, inability to focus—in the weeks leading up to my lecture.”

Protesters shouted down lecturers, forcibly grabbed microphones, and shut down class. The faculty finally voted to prohibit protestors from attending the class, and the college had to issue no-contact orders to stop them from harassing staff.

But even as the school punished unruly protestors, the faculty voted to advance the decennial review of the Humanities 110 course. Reed College now says it will scrap some of the traditional texts and focus half the course on Mexico City and Harlem. Reedies Against Racism still isn’t satisfied. In a statement on Facebook last week, the activists called for faculty to cut more “white” texts from the curriculum “as reparations for Humanities 110’s history of erasing the histories of people of color, especially black people.”

Reed’s curriculum has plenty of other courses that deal with “the histories of people of color,” so this is more about blocking the study of the core texts of Western civilization. That Reed would agree to this, and especially under political pressure, is an insult to the meaning of a liberal arts degree.

Parents, parents, parents.  You have the power to stop this insanity.  Tuition at Reed College is over $52,000, but I wouldn’t send my kid to this cesspool of mob rule it the tuition were free.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: sending your kids to places like this is a form of parental abuse.  Just say no to liberal college fascism.

Hat Tip: Wall Street Journal

Image Credit: Dale Cruse on Flickr