Universities offered students in the U.S. the opportunity to enroll in many courses that push gender ideology and left-wing activism during the 2023-2024 school year.
Princeton University offered a class titled “Black + Queer in Leather: Black Leather/BDSM Material Culture” in the Spring 2023 semester, according to the university’s course catalog. The class will survey black BDSM culture via research available in libraries and individuals involved in the groups that participate in the culture.
“We will consider the fragility of archival engagement with these communities by surveying existing BDSM archives in research libraries, community groups, and individuals and their personal ephemera,” the course description reads.
Princeton made headlines in 2022 following the addition of this course to the catalog as well as “FAT: The F-Word and the Public Body” and “Anthropology of Religion: Fetishism and Decolonization.”
Tuition at Princeton costs more than $59,000 per year and can cost more than $76,000 including housing and food costs, according to the university’s website.
Westminster College in Salt Lake City offers a course titled “How to Be a Bitch,” according to their course catalog. Students are encouraged to “unpack” the words “bitch” and bossy,” which are “interesting but problematic.”
One course offered at Wesleyan University, titled “Queer Russia,” offers students an overview of the influence of queer people on Russian culture, according to the university’s 2023-2024 course catalog. The course “focuses on gender and sexuality in exploring an alternative cultural history of Russia, which highlights its queer legacy from the nineteenth century to the present.”
The university offered another class titled “Bad Sex” which debates the value of sex and questions if modesty in sexual relations is a worthwhile pursuit, according to the 2023-2024 course catalog.
“What is it about ‘casual encounters’ and hookup culture that so disturbs? Why is sex a magnet for anxieties about selfishness and irresponsibility? Why do we think of anonymity and intimacy in sex as mutually exclusive?” the course description asks.
Wesleyan announced it would cover abortion-related costs and emergency contraception for students in the fall 2023 semester. The university charges more than $66,000 a year for tuition and nearly $20,000 for housing, according to their website.
Occidental College in California offers a course titled “Black Queer Thought,” according to the university’s 2023-2024 course catalog. The course critiques “the demands of heteronormativity, white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism.”
The course also explores “how the cultural producers in question complicate and elaborate upon the sometimes static and often U.S.-centered definitions we hold for ‘Black’ and ‘queer,’” according to the course’s description.
The Southern University of Oregon (SOU) offered a class titled “Decolonizing Transgender” in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the university’s course catalog. The course examines the development of the word transgender across “social, cultural, historical, legal, medical, and political contexts.”
The course can be taken as a part of the university’s “Certificate in Transgender Studies,” according to the school’s website.
The University of Chicago offered a course titled “Queering God” that questions if God is queer and what queerness has to do with the concept of God. “What does queerness have to do with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?” the course description reads.
The university made headlines for its “Queering God” class in July. The school also offered a class titled “The Problem of Whiteness” initially in December 2022 but later moved the course to the Spring 2023 semester after backlash to the course.
A course titled “Unsettling Whiteness” was offered by Northwestern University in the 2023-2024 school year, according to the university’s course catalog. The course seeks to make the “historical, political, and cultural formation of whiteness in Western modernity visible” for analysis.
Students at Northwestern hosted a speaker in April that accused Israelis of eating the organs of Palestinians. Tuition at the school for the 2023–24 academic year was estimated to be nearly $65,000 and nearly $92,000 with all expenses including books, fees, room and board, according to the university’s website.
Davidson College offered a course titled “Latinx Sexual Dissidence and Guerrilla Translation,” according to the university’s 2023-2024 course catalog. The class seeks to mix feminist, queer, body positivity and leftist activism all into one class.
“Students will study the rhetorics and aesthetic strategies of feminist and queer activist collectives focused on social issues such as immigration, transgender rights, anti-racism, economic equality, anti-speciesim, body positivity, and prison abolition with a pro-pleasure, leftist perspective,” the course description reads.
Westminster College, Princeton, Wesleyan, Occidental College, SOU, Northwestern, the University of Chicago and Davidson College did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comments.
Brandon Poulteron January 1, 2024
