When I went to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the curriculum was normal. Normal majors, normal courses to fulfill those requirements of study (they also gave you the option to craft your own major), and even the more progressive courses were at least grounded in sanity. The Women’s Studies Department was unabashedly to the left, but they were still your run of the mill progressives, or to put better it—they didn’t espouse the insanity we see spreading all over at other campuses. No one was publicly shamed for saying All Lives Matter, no one got triggered, there were not safe spaces, and the social justice warriors only subjected the rest of the student body to gender-neutral bathrooms…for one day.
At Dartmouth, associate professor and “queer theorist” Eng-Beng Lim will offer a course bashing conservatives, gun ownership, and “phallocracy.” Yes, liberal academic bias is expected and well known, but this is just ridiculous. The Dartmouth Review had the details:
Lim posted the syllabus without comment, but it was later confirmed in a College press release that he is teaching the course this summer.[…]
Week 1 From Gender to Gun Performativity
This week serves as an introduction to a range of topics within queer theory, including the broad field of made-up vocabulary. The syllabus has at least five such words, including “phallogocentrism.”
Week 2 Surviving Killabilities
“Killabilities” appears to reference the material in this section that details “systematic” violence against queer people and other minorities.
Week 3 Laughing at Masculinist Rage, Corruption and Mass Shooting
As its title implies, this week is primarily third-wave feminist literature, anti-conservative rants, and accusations that firearms are phallic symbols.
Week 4 Getting Toxic and Terrifying
This week hits all the core concepts of the class. It focuses on “toxic masculinity,” which it then associates with mass shootings, attacks “Islamophobia,” and rounds everything out by attacking the police.
Week 5 Empire, Trump
If there was a wrong way to attack Trump, this week covers it. It then accuses America of being a fascist empire. Or something like that.
Week 6 Orlando
Many articles in this section, drawn largely from tabloids, fall just short of ISIS apologia. Others focus on tangential topics to the exclusion of the event itself.
Week 7 Gun Phallocracy: Colonial and Capitalist Deadlocks
Blame the guns. If that fails, blame the Republicans/NRA. This week looks like the Facebook feed of a Bernie Sanders supporter.
Week 8 Performance & Patriarchal Pathologies
Presumably, the mix of topics presented under this heading constitute The Patriarchy.
Week 9 Queer nightlife: safety, joy, erasure and complacence
Two words: safe spaces.
We’ve certainly seen progressive drivel on our college campuses, but this one ranks pretty high up there. We’re a “fascist empire”… get lost, bro.