Not entirely surprising, this is Oregon after all.
Oregon State requires two courses examining ‘systems of oppression’Oregon State University requires undergraduate students who enrolled in summer 2025 or later to complete two “Difference, Power & Oppression” (DPO) courses as part of its Core Education curriculum.The university’s core education requirements include “Difference, Power & Oppression Foundations” and “Difference, Power & Oppression Advanced.” Many courses can fulfill each requirement.Professors must complete specialized training to teach DPO courses. In addition to “difference, power, and oppression,” participants in the DPO Academy learn about “feminist and critical pedagogies” and “fundamentals of curriculum transformation.”The description of the Advanced courses explains the reasoning for the requirement.“The inequitable distribution of social, economic, and political power in the United States and globally is sustained through systems of oppression, which represent a variety of discriminatory institutional beliefs and practices,” the description states. “These beliefs and practices obscure the origins and operations of systemic oppression in daily life, such that this inequitable power distribution is assumed to be the natural order.”Courses that fulfill the requirement will prompt students to examine “how systemic power operates through the ascription of difference to reproduce structural inequities and how they and others in their field of study are positioned in relationship to those systems.”The Foundations requirement “engages students in critical reflection on the complexity of the structures, institutions, and ideologies that sustain systemic oppression, discrimination, and the inequitable distribution of systemic power and resources within and across communities,” according to the university’s website.“Such examinations will enhance and promote responsible, ethical, and anti-racist engagement in our diverse university community and society in the United States and beyond,” the description continues.Courses that count toward the requirement include “Antiracism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Practice,” “Disney: Gender, Race, Empire,” “Inventing Ethnic America,” “Biological and Cultural Constructions of Race,” and “Higher Education Goes Hollywood: Racial Narratives and Student Experiences.”
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