University Requires ‘Equity and Inclusion’ Course Despite Federal Guidelines

Drake University still requires “equity and inclusion” coursework despite receiving federal funding, even though the Trump administration has banned DEI initiatives at universities that accept taxpayer money.

All students at Drake University are required to complete coursework addressing topics such as race, gender, class, LGBTQ+ status, and other identity-based social and political categories. These include such unpromising courses as "Perspectives in Race, Ethnicity, and Gender," "Transitional Justice," "Gender and War," "LGBTQ Health: Issues," and "Psychology of Prejudice."

Besides accepting federally funded student aid, Drake receives federal agencies’ grants. Yet the Trump administration mandated a ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education and just won a court victory in favor of the ban earlier this week. Apparently it's time for the feds to investigate Drake University and tell them to ax DEI or find another source of funding than federal taxpayers.

The university’s website very clearly and disturbingly states the following:

All students are required to take a course that achieves stated Equity and Inclusion learning outcomes.This requirement is to be completed within the student's major.

Students in Equity & Inclusion courses will be able to:

    1    Analyze the effects of race, gender, class, LGBTQ+ status, and other identity categories, and the ways in which these categories are perceived and judged, on U.S. socioeconomic and political systems, such as government, law, health care, public education, administration of natural resources, and business.

    2    Reflect critically on their own positions within local, institutional, and national contexts, including the ways in which these positions may be privileged, maligned, or excluded within these systems.

Drake then lists classes that have counted for the equity and inclusion requirement. Besides the ones I already listed earlier in this article, the university offered "Reading and Writing About Class," "Organizational Behavior," "Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies," "TV Tropes," and "Reading Race and Ethnicity." So much for judging people on content of character, not on skin color. Apparently there's a whole science to "reading race." Drake charges about $13,500 just for room and board, separate from tuition, annually.

And this is why at many colleges and universities, particularly public institutions, getting a college degree is worse than useless; it is actively harmful. A college degree is practically a declaration of having turned off one's ability to think rationally. My liberal arts degree at a small, private Catholic college was very worthwhile, but the more I talk to other young people and read coursework from other universities, the more I realize my experience was an outlier. It's no wonder more young people are turning to trade schools, which provide training in a very useful skill and a good chance of employment afterwards. Why pay a high price to learn to "read race" and divide everyone up into arbitrary Marxist classes?

As for the young Americans who do go to universities like Drake and receive a thorough brainwashing, just imagine how they will help send our society spiraling further down the tunnel of insanity and inanity.

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