‘Indoctrination’: Annual study finds cultural icons, Marxism, gender theories in college classrooms

Students beginning their college careers may learn cultural analysis from Bad Bunny, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, alongside some Marxist theory and gender studies, according to a new report.

Young America’s Foundation (YAF) released its 32nd Comedy and Tragedy report, detailing collegiate courses at Ivy League, Big Ten, ACC and SEC schools. The annual report began in 1995 to reveal, especially to parents, “what is happening behind closed doors” on college campuses, YAF Media Coordinator Rob Tandy told Heartlander News in an interview.

“Higher education has been hijacked by progressive ideology, transforming too many of our colleges and universities from places of learning into institutions of indoctrination,” YAF President Gov. Scott Walker said in a press release. “This report pulls back the curtain on what students are being taught and exposes just how deeply ideological agendas have taken root on campus.”

Changed name, same ideology

Even though many schools have closed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices or altered their names, these courses demonstrate “the underlying ideology hasn’t changed,” Tandy said.

“We’re still seeing courses focusing on Marxism, identity politics, race, gender ideology, and a lot of the time, those conservative values are missing from the conversation entirely,” he said.

The ideology has permeated nearly every campus, even Ivy League schools that boast of being “the most prestigious institutions in the country,” Tandy said. Numerous classes consider LGBTQ ideology, including “How to do things with Homosexual Bodies” – a real course at New York’s Columbia University.

Such shocking electives reinforce the name of YAF’s report: Comedy and Tragedy.

“Comedy and Tragedy. The name is kind of ironic in itself because it goes to show, especially when you start reading through the course names and the course descriptions, they seem absurd,” Tandy said. “That’s where the comedy aspect comes from. They seem absurd at face value, but the tragedy is this is actually what’s being taught to our students.”

Modern cultural lens defines every subject

Princeton University, an Ivy League school in New Jersey, offers students a course on Puerto Rican singer and rapper Bad Bunny: “Thinking with Bad Bunny: The Cultural Politics of Race, Language, and Empire.” Bad Bunny’s name appeared multiple times throughout the nearly 200-page listing of college courses.

“It was kind of like a contagion amongst a lot of schools,” Tandy said. “This wasn’t just a one-off. There were a lot of mentions of Bad Bunny, and a lot of it is about Latino culture in America. And sometimes in the course descriptions it gets into the disparity that Latino Americans face in America.”

In addition to other cultural icons as class foci, a course at New York’s Barnard College offered a revisionist name for one of the world’s greatest writers: “Black Shakespeare.”

“Some of the courses documented on the following pages may initially appear absurd. But there is nothing funny about the consequences,” the report states. “Behind the bizarre course titles and identity-focused curricula is a serious effort to shape how an entire generation understands America, history, race, sex, politics and society.”

Many courses teach historical analysis through the lens of modern trends, such as the University of Alabama’s “Introduction to Classics through Internet Memes.” Other courses across various universities include “Archaeology of Sex,” “Representing Fat Bodies” and “Is Star Wars a Religion?”

Religion meets woke ideology on college campuses

Religion is by no means an excluded topic at these increasingly woke universities. In fact, the colleges have instead embraced spiritual ideas to pair with the contemporary narrative of self-freedom and inclusion. The University of Miami offers “Voodoo to Wakanda: Africana Religion in Film and Media,” and the University of Central Florida offers “Mummies, Zombies, and Vampires: Anthropology of the Undead.”

Swarthmore College, a liberal arts school founded in 1864 in Pennsylvania, offers numerous religious courses, many of which “almost sound like a mockery of the Bible,” Tandy said, noting how gender ideology and white supremacy have infiltrated spiritual specializations. Two religious courses at Swarthmore are “Rape, Slavery, and Genocide in Bible and Culture” and “Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology.”

“When universities consistently promote one ideological perspective while excluding or discrediting others, they undermine the intellectual diversity that should be at the heart of higher education,” the report states.

Group-think silences freedom of thought

The classroom is no longer an environment for students to sharpen their own thinking, analysis and opinions, but rather a place of indoctrination, Tandy said.

“A lot of the time, what we found is it’s no longer education,” he said. “It’s not teachers teaching students how to critically think and how to embrace different ideas. It’s more so an indoctrination. Teachers are teaching their students what to think and not how to think, and that’s a problem.”

Courses even encourage students to teach their own children this in the future, such as Williams College’s “Parenting for a Feminist-Queer-Trans World.”

Understanding the real content promoted in these classrooms explains the radical cultural and political shifts happening in America today, Tandy said, noting the numerous classes on Marxism.

“Look at the growing trend of socialism, especially in the younger generation,” he said. “Well, there’s a reason for that. This is what they’re being told to think, and this is what they’re being taught in school. So, it’s no surprise when you see that ideology rampant.”