UC-Berkeley Revamping Biology Courses to Include ‘Anti-Racist’ Social Justice Content

UC-Berkeley Revamping Biology Courses to Include ‘Anti-Racist’ Social Justice Content

The people who claim to be part of the party that loves science are destroying science. This is ruining the study of science.

From the Why Evolution is True blog:

Berkeley to change biology courses into social-justice courses

Well, here we go again. Unsurprisingly, the University of California at Berkeley has revamped its biology curriculum, turning courses in three departments into propaganda mills as well as vehicles for learning biology. This initiative was announced by Berkeley itself at the website below (click to read).

Here’s some of the announcement, showing that the revamping was at the request of the graduate diversity council of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Note that the courses are in three departments, and have large enrollments.

Ten large-enrollment courses in the Departments of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), Integrative Biology, and Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology were substantially revamped over the summer to better incorporate inclusive and anti-racist approaches to course design and teaching practices.

Using the recently developed toolkit “Advancing Inclusion and Anti-Racism in the College Classroom: A rubric and resource guide for instructors,” graduate assistants with course background or pedagogy expertise were paired with instructors to develop specific and actionable plans for course improvement in future semesters. Revised courses include:

• NUSCTX 166: Nutrition in the Community
• NUSCTX 104AC: Food, Culture, and the Environment
• ESPM 50AC: Introduction to Culture and Natural Resource Management
• ENERES 160/ESPM 176: Climate Justice
• ESPM C115C: Fish Ecology
• ESPM C115A/IB C171: Freshwater Ecology
• ESPM C114: Wildlife Ecology
• BIO 1B: Introduction to Biology: Evolution/Ecology/Plant Diversity
• ESPM C46: Climate Change and the Future of California
• IB 35AC: Human Biological Variation

. . .”Our teaching practices, especially in large introductory classes that can act as gatekeepers, have a multiplicative impact on our students’ lives—for good, or for bad,” wrote the team that authored the toolkit. “As instructors, we have a unique opportunity and responsibility to move toward anti-racist teaching practices.”

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