Shades of Pink
Our kids are alright. Other parents aren’t so lucky.

By Gov. Frank Keating, (R., Okla.)
May 19-20, 2001

y wife and I sighed with delighted relief as the college classes of 2001 graduated this spring. Our oldest daughter finished law school, while our son completed his undergraduate degree and joined the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. There is hope for them both, as there is for our other daughter, who finished college two years ago and appears to be unimpaired. All three of our children seem to have survived their travels through the left-wing fever swamps of academia, and for that we are grateful.

They have emerged…unpink!

We know that other parents aren't so lucky. Imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars to send Johnny to a top-50 school, only to have him come home for Christmas and announce that he is changing his major from Engineering to Gender Studies. Or consider if Susie, bundled off with sparkling SATs to pursue a degree in Finance, reappeared for spring break toting a textbook with a title like Off the Capitalist Pigs! from her new favorite course in Liberation Theology.

We had heard the horror stories, but I was unaware of how extreme the left-wing fringes of academia had become — and how dominant some of these crackpots have become on many campuses — until I scanned the course offerings listed by some of our most "elite" schools. Thankfully, our children didn't go to any of them, but we regard their normalcy as a near miss just the same.

Had they attended Harvard, for example, they might have blundered into the gender-studies department, where the course "Bodies and Boundaries" explores how "bodies (are) normalized and controlled, and how they in turn become instruments of governance." Whatever that means.

Harvard, that pinnacle of academic excellence, also offers a course labeled "Shop 'til You Drop: Gender and Class in Consumer Society." Or, there's "I Like Ike, But I Love Lucy: Women, Popular Culture and the 1950s." The course description says it has a focus on (surprise!) "gender politics."

I'll pass over the Harvard course on witchcraft without comment.

At Stanford, where a lot of this craziness began when the faculty tossed out classical western-civilization courses in favor of, say, Madonna studies, there's a course called "Subjectivity in Feminist Research." Lest we seek objectivity, another course summary explains "how gender inequality is created and perpetuated." Stanford also offers "Gay Autobiography" and asks the inevitable question, "What kind of politics follow from these writers' experiences?" I would guess left-wing.

Students in "Feminist Media Theories" at Stanford apparently watch soap operas and talk shows and read romance novels — things Stanford used to encourage students to avoid. The more traditional academic departments at Stanford aren't immune, either. The course description for "Introduction to Political Science" cites a focus on "control of monopoly, poverty and foreign policy." A course labeled "The American Dream" explores that goal only "as experienced by women, minorities, labor, Indians and immigrants."

The rest of us seem to be dreamless.

Yale, where William F. Buckley Jr. chronicled the academic assault on God a half-century ago, seems to have matured — and not for the better.

"Sociology of Heterosexuality," says the catalog, "begins with the assumption that heterosexuality is socially produced and reproduced," which should come as a shock to generations of biologists and obstetricians. In "Photography and Images of the Social Body," students apparently examine snapshots. "Girls' Culture" discusses, in depth we hope, "cuteness, homoerotica, the fashion magazine industry."

Columbia gives us one of my favorites — "Pirates, Boys and Capitalism," a study of the "pirate in western imagination." Course topics include "colonialism, violence, homosexuality (of course!), and rebellion."

At Columbia, scholars can pursue the oddly named "Renaissance Literature: Gender and Disorder in England," which gives them the chance to read about "witches, shrews, priests, whores, disloyal servants, murderous spouses or parents." I swear, this is not a joke.

They are apparently all crazy at Vassar. "Religions of the Oppressed As Third World Liberation Movements" cites the example of the suicidal Jonestown cult. In the School of Education, a course on children's books explores "race and class" and "politicalization." The Little Engine That Could seems to have hidden Marxist meanings!

"Religion Goes Wild" is not about raucous drummers at a folk mass, but rather the "religious aspects of environmental degradation." One wonders if the instructor admits to degrading the academic environment with this trash.

To its credit, Vassar does present a class in the emerging field of sociobiology, though its course description calling the discipline "deterministic and politically retrograde" is less than objective. In "Black Marxism" we learn how "the growth of global racism suggests the symmetry of the expansion of capitalism." Students in "Feminist Political Ecology" will be blessed by guest lectures from "feminist farmers." What do they grow?

Our kids didn't go to Brown University either, and thank God for that. In "Race, Culture and Incarceration," Brown announces that "disparities in sentencing are shaped by race and economic status," although this may not have applied to O. J. Simpson. The course, "Sister Outsiders: Latina, Black and White Working Class Women's Activism" (I am not making this up) "problematizes notions of sisterhood."

In one Brown course, "Class, Culture and Politics," the syllabus suggests topics for a student paper, such as, "the widespread violence in American life," "Victoria Woodhull, socialist and freelover" and "the iconography of social solidarity and martyrdom." The instructor wants no papers on Christian martyrdom, however; students are encouraged to consult the Encyclopedia of the American Left.

One of Brown's history courses says it all: "Democracy, Inequality and Public Policy." Every liberal's career in a nutshell!

Our three children have now survived a combined total of 15 years of higher education. I am sure there was nonsense like this at the schools they attended — all fine ones by the way — where they had the good sense to major in subjects of some utility. They are duly launched, hopefully unscathed by their close encounters with academic incompetence and ax-grinding stupidity.

And yet, I wonder: Do we need a warning label on our college and university course catalogs about some content that might be harmful to clear thought and sanity? Shouldn't the parents who pay the equivalent cost of a new house for a college degree have something to say when academics waste a substantial share of that investment on "Queer Studies?"

Tell your kids: Major in engineering.