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Seattle University has put its dean on administrative leave following a student uproar over a liberal arts curriculum that they claim is “too Western.” The dean’s misdemeanors included recommending that students read a book by civil rights activist Dick Gregory entitled 'n-word'. Even by today’s blinkered standards of student activism, SJW students have got this one horribly wrong. 'n-word', Gregory’s 1964 autobiography which he co-wrote with Robert Lipsyte, is a modern civil rights classic.
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While I strongly support their right to air their grievances, I ask these students to ask themselves if the scale of their movement is appropriate for a curriculum discussion. Can students adequately connect a recommendation to read my autobiography with their larger curriculum issues? I am not offended by Dean Kelly's use of the word “'n-word'.” In fact, I am pleased that she has the foresight to want to give these young men and women the knowledge, insight and experience of a civil rights activist that might just help them understand life a little better. I am disappointed that they seemed to have stopped at the title instead of opening the book and reading its contents.
I am disappointed that they seemed to have stopped at the title instead of opening the book and reading its contents.
''n-word' Brown' stand gone, Coon cheese next on hit-list David Barbeler | September 26, 2008 - 12:54PM An anti-racism campaigner says Coon cheese is next on his hit-list after the Queensland government ruled a controversial grandstand being rebuilt in the state's south would not be renamed after E.S. "'n-word'" Brown. Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust chairman John McDonald yesterday told AAP that while the grandstand bearing Brown's name was to be demolished in coming days as part of an upgrade, the "N word" would be used on a plaque or statue at the new ground. But late yesterday, Sports Minister Judy Spence ruled it would be inappropriate to use the racist term in any way.
The "Major English Poets" sequence, a mandatory two-course commitment for English majors, is particularly problematic, according to the students. These classes cover Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot. It's not the most diverse line up, to be sure, but it's the one that best reflects history the way it actually happened. Inarguably, these are the most influential poets in the English language.
originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Chickensalad
It's about as stupid as Yale English majors not wanting to study English anymore. It seems the curriculum contains just too much English literature study.
The "Major English Poets" sequence, a mandatory two-course commitment for English majors, is particularly problematic, according to the students. These classes cover Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot. It's not the most diverse line up, to be sure, but it's the one that best reflects history the way it actually happened. Inarguably, these are the most influential poets in the English language.
So they don't want to spend two courses studying the foundations of English literature? It's too white and male for them. Seems to me there is plenty of room in the curriculum around their two courses to take other courses dedicated to more diverse voices writing in English, but I guess two courses just makes it too hostile.
Why study English if you can't be bothered to learn the roots of the literary canon, even if they are white and male by an overwhelming margin?