A top journalism school has recently come under scrutiny over its requirement that prospective propagandists sit through a mandatory DEI course.
In order to graduate, journalism majors dumping over $13,000 a year into Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism will have to learn how to check their supposed straight privilege; how to conform to gender ideologues’ current speech codes; how to avoid the sin of “microaggressions”; and why innocuous turns of phrase are racist.
According to the
course listing, “Diversity and Civility at Cronkite” at the taxpayer-funded ASU emphasizes “the importance of diversity, inclusion, equity and civility to ensure all Cronkite students feel represented, valued and supported.”
The course, which is presently taught by Venita Hawthorne James, apparently offers “training and awareness on cultural sensitivities, civil discourse, bias awareness and diversity initiatives at the Cronkite School and ASU” and “empowers students to approach reporting and communication projects with a multicultural perspective.”
While the language employed in the listing is not particularly provocative, it is clear from documents
obtained via public record requests by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank, that “Diversity and Civility” is indeed a radical DEI course intended to ideologically condition students.
The Goldwater Institute noted that an instructor noted in one syllabus that “Diversity and Civility is an entry level course to bring thoughtful, open minded discourse to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, income, geography, and age.”
Another syllabus, more bold in its framing, noted that the course “sets the tone for your Crokite interactions. … Think of this class as the first step in your DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — practice as a journalist or communications professional.”
Among the course’s seven units is one on race and ethnicity and another on sexuality and gender ideology.
Future talking heads and journalists will reportedly learn all about so-called microaggressions. This lesson entails reviewing examples of “racial microaggressions” detailed on a University of Minnesota
webpage, such as:
“Denial of individual racism[:] A statement made when Whites deny their racial biases”;
the “Myth of meritocracy” or saying the “most qualified person should get the job”; and
the “notion that the values and communication styles of the dominant / White culture are ideal.”
Students will also learn that it is deeply problematic to suggest that “everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.”
Besides learning about the dangers of extolling hard work and rejecting accusations of racism, the Goldwater Institute indicated that journalism majors compelled to take this course will also come to understand the “difference between sexuality and gender identity and why it matters” and “recognize privileges related to sexuality and gender identity.”
To ensure ideological uniformity at the level of language use, the course reportedly refers students to an
NPR guide created in concert with the radical activist group GLAAD — whose communication director recently attacked a gay reporter online for sharing scientific evidence that undercut gender ideologues’ preferred narrative.
The guide, which is supposedly intended to “help people communicate accurately,” claims that sex is “assigned at birth” and that a normal person free of gender dysphoria ought to be referred to as “cisgender.” It also recommends providing one’s pronouns when making introductions.
One instructor who has taught the course has reportedly introduced students to examples of “Hetrosexual [sic] Privileges,” “Male Privileges,” and “Cisgender Privileges.”
The author of these lists is Sam Killermann, a radical LGBT activist who also created the “Genderbread Person” now circulated in some schools.
Killermann’s lists make abundantly clear that he has an axe to grind.
“Raising, adopting, and teaching children without people believing that you will molest them or force them into your sexuality” is one straight privilege, according to Killerman. Another is “freely teaching about lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals without being seen has having a bias because of your sexuality or forcing your ‘homosexual agenda’ on students.”
The Goldwater Institute underlined how in the third recommended reading, Killermann suggests that women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, and prisons should be open to men who claim to be females.
At the end of the gender identity unit, future journalists are tasked with figuring out how to prepare journalists to speak with a theoretical “nonbinary” client who refers to herself as a plurality.
Faculty at the school voted in fall 2021 to add the mandatory course to “advance the understanding and practice of diversity and inclusion.”
The college
told the Epoch Times that the “goal of the course is to help students appreciate people’s differences and to channel disagreements toward civil discussion.”
A spokesman for the Cronkite School also indicated that students may opt out of specific discussions by reaching out to their professor with a request ahead of time.
Timothy Minella, senior constitutionalism fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy, told the Epoch Times, “Students who decide to major in these subjects are not necessarily signing up to be progressive activists.”
“A public university that should be serving the entire public, not just the liberal slice of it, needs to return to its core mission of education, not indoctrination,” added Minealla.
The Goldwater Institute noted in its report, “Indeed, it is difficult to reconcile such practices with the explicit directives of the Arizona state constitution, which declares in Article XI, Section 6: ‘The university and all other state educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible.'”
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