Jane Shaw over at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy is having second thoughts about her annual alumni gift to her alma mater. “One point in Wellesley’s favor, by the way: its president hasn’t signed the ‘Presidents’ Climate Change Agreement,’ an expensive will-o’-the-wisp effort to ‘take a stand’ on global warming,” she writes. “And English majors are still required to study Shakespeare.”
“Are those good enough reasons for me to support Wellesley with my money?” she asks herself. “Probably not.” Jay Schalin, also of the Pope Center, suggests some targeted giving. “Almost every college has, at the very least, one or two student organizations that work the free-market side of the street,” he writes. “Some, such as UNC-Chapel Hill, have a dozen or more.”
“Even Jane’s old school has a campus Libertarian Club, as well as a Republican Club.” But if the former is an alternative to the latter, how free market is the campus GOP?
I stopped giving my small donation ($100 per annum) to my alma mater about 20 years ago. The University of Scranton offers a course in Feminism: Theory and Practice taught by Dr. Sharon Meagher ― 3 credits. “In this course we will explore the relationship between feminist analyses of sexism and political practices aimed at eliminating it,” the university website reveals. “To this end we will examine divergent political traditions and show ways in which feminists have criticized, appropriated, and made use of them in their own work.”
“Special attention will be paid to the interrelationship of gender, class and race. This course may be counted toward the Women’s Studies Concentration.”
“I took 218, Phil & The City, and Feminism: Adv. Topics with her and she is completely and utterly awesome!” one of Dr. Meagher’s students wrote of her on Ratemyprofessors.com. “Impossible to do badly if you put in some sort of attempt and the class is really fascinating.”
“She hooked me into joining the WS Concentration!”
“You learn a lot in the class and actually retain the information for a long time,” another reviewer wrote. “I took this course over a year ago and still remember everything.”
“I got accustomed to applying principles from this class everyday of my life.”
“It was just memorizing her opinions,” a naysayer wrote. “It stunk.”
“To me, not actual philosophy!” Well, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Ignatius, two of the Jesuit university’s patron saints, might not recognize it.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
