There’s been a lot of talk about Butler University’s anti-Trump college course. The course description claims that Trump is “perpetuating sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nationalism, nativism, and imperialism.”
It’s important to remember that Butler isn’t alone in letting its anti-Trump flag fly.
At Cornell University, Peter Katzenstein is offering a far more benign-sounding class that is clearly designed to bash the president.
In perusing the course roster for the fall semester, one class stands out as honest enough to admit from the start that it will be bashing President Trump: Peter Katzenstein’s Government 2817, entitled America Confronts the World.
The course description reads,
Donald Trump and Barak [sic] Obama give us two visions of America and of the world: xenophobic nationalism and pragmatic cosmopolitanism. America and the world are thus constituted by great diversity. The first half of the course seeks to understand that diversity in American politics and foreign policy viewed through the prisms of region, ideology, region, race, class and religion. The second half inquires into the U.S. and American engagement of different world regions and civilizations: Europe, Russia, North America, Latin America, China, Japan, India and the Middle East. U.S. hard power and American soft power find expression in far-reaching processes of American-infused globalization and U.S.-centered anti-Americanism reverberating around the world. Advocates of one-size-fits-all solutions to America’s and the world’s variegated politics are in for great disappointments.
That totally sounds like an unbiased comparison of two presidents facing similar issues, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, Harvard University may not be offering a class for credit at this point, but it offered up its own “resistance school” for students to make use of.
Then there are the more subtle ways schools are showing their dissatisfaction with the sitting president.
For example, the University of Wisconsin held an anti-Trump art show.
The University of Wisconsin, Madison has debuted an anti-Trump art show and sale that includes exhibits that depict everything from a bleak sky to a woman being penetrated by an oil pipeline.
The Wisconsin Union Directorate Art Committee is displaying the art show, entitled “First 100 Days,” from Saturday, April 29 to Wednesday, May 24.
“Artists from all political backgrounds are welcomed and encouraged to submit a work for consideration,” noted the committee, but the MacIver Institute exclusively described projects that depict President Trump’s first 100 days in a negative light.
So, conservative art students could submit work, but only if it wasn’t suggestive of support for Trump.
Then we have the University of Pennsylvania panel titled “Joining the Resistance: Perspectives from Business, Politics, and Religion.” The panel’s three guests all opposed Trump.
The list goes on and on.
Of course, some may think this is fine. After all, we do value dissent in this country.
Unfortunately, a Google search for anti-Obama college courses turns up remarkably little indicating colleges took a similar position against President Obama. The closest you’ll find is a satirical piece from the Weekly Standard claiming that colleges’ anti-tobacco policies were anti-Obama.
While colleges may still claim to be places of open discourse, it’s clear they’re nothing of the sort. They have jumped fully into the ideological waters and have picked their hill to die on. They cared nothing about opposing Barack Obama, but instead see value only in “resisting” Donald Trump.
Further, the mainstream media would have gone nuts had colleges actually offered anti-Obama courses.
Tell me again why right-of-center students should consider any of these schools?
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