The forces that be at the University of California at San Diego (Thurgood Marshall College), according to Inside Higher Ed, have been locked in combat over the fate of Comp 101, aka “Dimensions of Culture.”
A cohort led by two graduate teaching assistants– not re-hired for the upcoming academic year– charged that the course, originally designed to “challenge hegemonic assumptions about race, class, gender and sexuality” has degenerated into “uncritical patriotic education that fails to interrogate the injustice integral to the founding of the U.S. and the current state of U.S. society.”
The program’s administrator, Abraham Shragge, says that he is resisting efforts “to turn this into a program of political indoctrination.” Also encouraging, students have been speaking out against its tendentiousness:
Students consistently complain of a left-leaning bias in the curriculum on evaluations…
The Web site NoIndoctrination.org, gives a glimpse: One student in 2003 describes the course as perpetuating “the ideology that the United States is nothing beyond a despicable and hypocritical country that continues to oppress minorities and the disadvantaged.”
Folks in the California system taking a stand? Always very welcome, and deserving of our support.