Two mid-level bureaucrats in the Administration of Eastern Michigan University have joined with the Black Students Union to recommend that every department on campus be required to design a required course in Black Studies. Their slideshow is online for the whole world to see. You can access it here. (Just in case howls of derisive laughter across America persuade the Administration to remove it from the EMU website, a PDF backup is here.)
Note: the proposal is really not the Administration’s. It is a proposal of the Black Student Union. Sadly, the BSU’s members are not sufficiently self-aware historically to recognize how very, very late 1960’s this is. They would not wear Afros. Why would they offer this proposal?
I can almost hear the scuttlebutt inside the faculty rooms of the departments. There will be informal contests for naming hypothetical departmental courses that might qualify.
Economics: black markets
Biology: black lung
Psychology: blackouts
English: black humor
Meteorology: black lightning
Political science: black ops
Marketing: black Friday
Accounting: black ink
Physics: dark matter (but not “black holes” — too close to employment reality)
Academia got silly in the late 1960’s. That silliness has continued to escalate. Politically correct speech has been adopted, with institutional sanctions for violations. The BSU’s proposal is just one more piece of evidence of this silliness.
The really silly people are all those parents who send their children off to college for $25,000 to $65,000 a year, when their children could earn a liberal arts B.A. from any number of accredited universities for under $15,000, total. I described this a decade ago.
(For the historical roots of the Black Studies fad, click the link.)
