Allahpundit first tackled this story nearly a month ago but I frankly thought it was little more than a poor joke which would quietly disappear in embarrassment. Some of the special snowflakes at Yale were complaining about the standard literature course on Major English Poets. The problem with such an academic endeavor should be obvious to anyone living in the era of Social Justice Warriors and the Black Lives Matter movement. All of these poets from past centuries in England were white! It’s offensive, obviously, and needs to be done away with.
The reaction to the story changes from one of humorous disdain to stunned amazement, however, when Yale’s faculty begins making sounds along the lines of agreeing with them. (Fox News)
The English faculty at Yale looks prepared to surrender to social justice warriors demanding a rewrite of the storied “Major English Poets” course.
The faculty’s chair appeared to make concessions after calls for the compulsory course be “decolonized” because it features too many white male authors.
In a petition demanding that minority writers be injected into the curriculum, students left their teachers little room for dissent.
They concluded: “It is your responsibility as educators to listen to student voices. We have spoken. We are speaking. Pay attention.”
The list of damages submitted by the students sounds horrific indeed. They informed the professors that they were “alienated” by the large number of authors such as Shakespeare and Chaucer who “actively harm them.” Having had to sit through similar coursework myself, I can attest that I felt pretty close to being actively harmed as well, but mostly out of a fear of brain damage from being bored to death. (Sorry, Professor Whitman, but I really never got into poetry.)
The idea that English Lit majors should do away with this coursework because almost all of the famous authors of the period were white is an attempt to rewrite or simply flush history down the drain. I wonder what other majors are in need of similar treatment? If you happen to be in the physics department hoping to get into cosmology you may as well forget that profession right now. Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, Halley, Newton, Kepler… not a “diverse” face in the bunch. Scrap the entire program. While we’re at it, English History itself is looking pretty suspect as well. I’ve done a quick scan of the list of English Monarchs going back to the theoretical days of Arthur and I can’t find a non-white face in the bunch. My, my… we should be clearing out a lot of free space in the university library here in short order and saving some money on maintenance costs.
I’m not saying it’s time to burn the universities down, but… never mind. I’ll just close yet again with my usual reminder for parents considering sending their top performing children off to this bastion of learning. The single year tuition at Yale is $45,800. Hope you’re getting your money’s worth.
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