The 2015-2016 school year is now in session and with it comes stories of indoctrination at the hands of college professors. Campus Reform reports that multiple professors at Washington State University have threatened students that their grades would be negatively impacted if they failed to utilize gender-ambiguous language and failed to “defer” to non-white students.
One such professor is Selena Lester Breikss, whose syllabus for her Women & Popular Culture class explicitly states that students risk failure if they use common descriptors such as “male” and “female,” which she has dubbed “oppressive and hateful language.”
The syllabus indicates that punishment for violating this rule includes but is not limited to “removal from the class without attendance or participation points, failure of the assignment, and — in extreme cases — failure for the semester.”
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Similarly, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville has introduced an “inclusive practice” in which the campus will use only gender-neutral pronouns, Fox News reports. According to Rickey Hall, the vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the university, the gender neutral pronouns are a means of “exposing our students to an increasingly diverse and global world.”
“With the new semester beginning and an influx of new students on campus, it is important to participate in making our campus welcoming and inclusive for all,” wrote Donna Braquet in a posting on the university’s website. “One way to do that is to use a student’s chosen name and their correct pronouns.”
“There are dozens of gender-neutral pronouns,” she declared. Examples of new gender neutral pronouns include ze, hir, zir, xe, xem and xyr. “These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new,” Braquet explained. “The ‘she’ and ‘he’ pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ‘ze’ when growing up.”
Back at Washington State University, Professor Rebecca Fowler has imposed strict, draconian rules for her “Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies” course. Students are forbidden from using the term “illegal alien” in their assigned writing. Each time a student uses the term, a point will be deducted from their paper.
Fowler’s syllabus also states that the course will help students “come to recognize how white privilege functions in everyday social structures and institutions.”
Fowler defended her syllabus in an e-mail to Campus Reform, wherein she wrote, “The term ‘illegal alien’ has permeated dominant discourses that circulate in the news to the extent that our society has come to associate ALL unauthorized border crossings with those immigrants originating from countries south of our border (and not with Asian immigrants, for example, many of whom are also in the country without legal documents and make up a considerable portion of undocumented immigrants living in the country).”
“The socio-legal production of migrant illegality works to systematically dehumanize and exploit these brown bodies for their labor,” Fowler continued.
WSU professor John Streamas singles out white students in his syllabus and instructs them to “defer” to non-white students if they intend to “do well in this class.”
In the guidelines in his syllabus, Streamas elaborates that he requires students to “reflect” on their grasp of history and social relations “by respecting shy and quiet classmates and by deferring to the experiences of people of color” and to “understand and consider the rage of people who are victims of systematic injustice.”
Streamas is no stranger to outrageous statements, having generated controversy in the past by calling a student a “white shitbag” and stating that WSU should stand for “White Supremacist University.”
Marxist professors with aggressive agendas are unfortunately nothing new on college campuses.
Earlier this year, for example, Professor Lance Russum at Polk State College in Winter Haven, Florida, was accused of failing a student because she refused to agree with the professor’s biased test questions that portrayed Christianity as false and oppressive against women.
On one exam, Russum posed the question, “Why did Christianity, and its male gods, want to silence these women?” with the following note:
I DO NOT want you to write about how wonderful you think Christianity is now because women can do A, B, or C. History is history and facts are facts and your opinion on if it is better now or not is irrelevant for this discussion. This is a HISTORICAL discussion about the middle ages. If you really feel the need to express your opinion on how you think Christianity is now for women you may email me, you may call my office or I would love for you to stop by for a nice cup of hot tea where we can talk about it but it does not belong in this assignment. The pieces you are reading are from some of the greatest expressions of mythology by women ever, the question is to honor that voice in that moment of history.
One student refused to answer the question, writing instead, “The questions assigned are not open-minded questions. They instead are designed to lead course participants decisively to accept that Christianity is false and oppressive of women.”
“Furthermore, these questions are objectively unanswerable,” she continued, “specifically when compared alongside the questions that we were instructed to neglect.”
She failed that assignment, as well as other assignments that criticized Christianity for its “dominance by powerful men” and for trying to “regulate the bodies of women.”
According to the religious freedom advocacy group Liberty Counsel, Russum was clearly “seeking to impose his own values on students.” “Mr. Russum should not be permitted to use his position to punish students who do not conform to his anti-Christian views,” Liberty Counsel’s Chairman Mat Staver stated. “No student should be subjected to such outrageous bias and outright hostility to their values by a professor.”
Last year, Thrin Short, 16, and Joan Short, 21, were staging an anti-abortion protest with the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara 4 in a designated “free speech zone” when Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young approached them and stole their pro-life signs. Miller-Young, who teaches feminist studies at the university, grabbed the signs from the girls, and when the sisters attempted to retrieve them, they claim Miller-Young kicked and pushed them.
Professor Miller-Young, according to the National Review, “specializes in black cultural studies, pornography, and sex work.”
