The featured image of this post used to be a joke, but it’s becoming reality. This school used to require two of these courses, and now they’re doubling the requirement.
From City Journal:
A Bachelor’s in DiversityAt Northern Arizona University, a course titled Intersectional Movements of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality promises to analyze “how intersectionality, and the matrix of inequality, have shaped the production of knowledge” and to provide “a critical lens through which intersectional epistemologies can be foregrounded.” Another, Introduction to Queer Studies, covers “queer theory and activism,” the “social and historical construction of gender and sexuality,” and the “role of allies and social change.” Trans Existence and Resilience, meantime, promises to “examine trans epistemologies as well as critiques of Eurocentric models of thinking about genders that explain peoples’ existence within Western frameworks and ontologies.”Each of these courses counts toward one of NAU’s two “diversity requirements,” which students must satisfy to complete their degrees. Now, NAU plans to take the requirements even further, mandating that students take four of such courses—a policy that the university’s own diversity-curriculum committee describes as “unprecedented.”These new requirements follow a concerted effort on NAU’s part to weave diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) “into the fabric of the institution.” In a forthcoming case study for the National Association of Scholars, I explore how Arizona’s universities teach American history and civics. The study shows that, increasingly, civic education is simply overshadowed by DEI initiatives, which often provide a gloss on American history and politics using the watchwords of identity politics: oppression, systemic injustice, and intersectionality. NAU provides the most striking example.NAU’s new General Studies Program, approved by the Arizona Board of Regents in October 2021, requires students to take four Diversity Perspectives courses, one in each of the following categories: Global Diversity, U.S. Ethnic Diversity, Indigenous Peoples, and Intersectional Identities. Meeting notes for the university’s Diversity Curriculum Committee even acknowledge the boldness of this move. “The 12 credits of diversity requirements,” the notes maintain, “are unprecedented and puts [sic] NAU at the forefront of higher education.”
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