Yes, I know, “leftist universities” in the headline is redundant. . .
That our colleges and universities are slowly committing suicide by various means that are, for now, mitigated and numbed by things like student loan debt forgiveness, is a thesis I’ve been working on for a while. I think I may have spotted the next shiny thing that may push them into oblivion.
A few days ago Inside Higher Ed published an opinion article by two professors about what to do if the Supreme Court strikes down race-based affirmative action next year as seems likely. (“Professors of what?”, you ask? Take a wild guess. Answer at the end of this post.*) The theme is: what can be done then?
The authors offer a creative suggestion. Noting that high schools are ratcheting up racial propaganda, why not have universities backstop this trend in the following way:
While these race-conscious curricula and policies are receiving staunch resistance in conservative states, universities committed to the ideals of racial justice might push back by requiring their applicants to think and act on issues of racial justice. Could racial equity be expanded by requiring all applicants to have taken an ethnic studies class or by requiring students to include in their application a statement on their commitments to racial justice? Though universities may soon be denied the ability to consider race in admissions, they can consider a commitment to racial justice as part of a holistic admissions process.
“A statement on their commitments to racial justice.” In other words, your admission to our college will now be contingent on your confessional statement of agreement with radical racial ideology. In addition to a foreign language, math, and other traditional requirements, you will now also have to have suffered formally through racialist propaganda in high school.
Oh please, please, Oberlin, Kenyon, Swarthmore, Chico State, etc—start this application requirement as soon as possible. It will make fully explicit the colleges that are fully surrendering to wokism, and serve as a useful consumer warning to prospective college students and their parents. And won’t the student body assembled under such a rubric be just delightful to have in the classroom?
* The authors of this article are described in IHE as follows: “Antar Tichavakunda is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati who studies critical race theory and Black students’ campus experiences. Suneal Kolluri is an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside. He has written about college readiness in relation to common core, race/ethnicity and Advanced Placement.”
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