DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Or, What’s the Matter with Kansas?
● Shot: University of Kansas to offer ‘Angry White Male Studies’ course:
University of Kansas students will soon be able to study the rise of the “angry white male.”
The college course, called Angry White Male Studies, will dive into “the deeper sources of this emotional state while evaluating recent manifestations of male anger” in the United States and Britain since the 1950s.
The course catalog description states: “Employing interdisciplinary perspectives this course examines how both dominant and subordinate masculinities are represented and experienced in cultures undergoing periods of rapid change connected to modernity as well as to rights-based movements of women, people of color, homosexuals and trans individuals.”
Although the class can be taken for credit and is being offered in the fall, one Kansas lawmaker is not amused.
Rep. Ron Estes, a Republican, wrote on Twitter that the course “divides the student population” and wondered why the University of Kansas did not offer a class to “unite people and empower women.”
Because that’s not how higher education rolls in Kansas, apparently, and hasn’t for sometime. Which brings us to…
● Chaser: Bobby Kennedy’s Fascist Moment:
As [Robert] Kennedy began [to speak at Kansas State U. on March 18th, 1968], his voice cracked, and those near the stage noticed his hands trembling and his right leg shaking.
After praising [Al] Landon’s distinguished career, he said, “I am also glad to come to the home state of another great Kansan, who wrote, ‘If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.’ ”
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He raised his fist in the air so it resembled the revolutionary symbol on posters hanging in student rooms that year, promised “a new America,” and the hall erupted in cheers and thunderous applause.
Summer reruns begin early in the Midwest, apparently. But then, as the piece by Warren Henry at the Federalist we linked to earlier today noted, “All Democrats’ ‘New’ Ideas Are Just Repackaged Failures Baby Boomers Like.”