UMass Amherst ramps up diversity requirements in wake of Trigglypuff
Marlo Safi - Collegiate Network Fellow
The latest general education requirements at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst include two classes that direct students to “create change toward social justice.”
According to The College Fix, the university claims it has used the phrase on its website for years, but one professor contends that it was not actually added until recently.
UMass was recently the scene of campus chaos conjured by Milo Yiannopoulos, Steven Crowder, and Christina Hoff Sommers in April when the UMass College Republicans Club invited them to the university to discuss free speech and inadvertently gave birth to the phenomenon known as “Trigglypuff.”
Now, incoming freshman at UMass are required to take classes in diversity pertaining to the United States as well as globally as part of the two-course requirement, which, UMass Amherst professor Daphne Patai told Fox News, is just another effort to “control not only language, but attitudes and thoughts.”
According to the General Education guide on the University’s website, all students are required to complete a two-course “Social and Cultural Diversity” requirement, which explores social justice on both the domestic and international levels.
The “Diversity: United States” courses focuses on social groups or backgrounds “marginalized by US dominant social and cultural norms,” such as women, “people living outside gender or heterosexual norms,” people of color, and other “peoples who experience disadvantage based on their social/economic class, ability, religion
The “Diversity: Global” courses, on the other hand, focuses on issues such as “global imperialism and colonialism, diaspora and migration, religious identity and conflict, the role of patriarchy and gender/sexual identity and nonconformity, economic globalization and marginalization on a global basis, and challenges to global sustainability.”
Courses that satisfy the diversity requirements are expected to adhere to three “Guidelines” outlining learning objectives for the program.
The first Guideline seeks to engage students in the experiences of those who have unequal access to resources that stem from “race and ethnicity, national origins, language, socioeconomic class, gender and sexual orientation, religion, age, and ability,” while Guideline #2 focuses on the dynamics that produce inequality, particularly emphasizing the “life experiences of peoples marginalized by mainstream cultures and economies and/or the differing ethical or religious perspectives of people from a range of backgrounds.”
The third Guideline urges students to recognize the “inequalities and injustices they are likely to encounter as college graduates,” and encourages them to “engage with others to create change toward social justice.”
“There is still a distinction between teaching and indoctrination, between exploring a viewpoint and endorsing it without allowing divergent perspectives to be heard,” Patai observed despairingly. “We are supposed to teach our students how to think, not what to think.”
Accordingly, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has given UMass a “Yellow” speech code rating, meaning the University has at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.
First Amendment lawyers and experts say ambiguous policies, the chilling of free speech, and the rise of diversity and sensitivity classes like those at UMass are becoming a norm at universities.
"It is a widespread and deeply ingrained trend around the country… Exceptions are few and far between,” Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer who focuses on the First Amendment, told Fox News.
Bonus Footage: The video that started it all:
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