A working group of professors and students at Bates College has recommended the school require all majors to offer two courses on “race, colonialism, white supremacy, power, and privilege,” according to a copy of the plan obtained by The College Fix.
In doing so, according to the group’s recommendations, each department could alter existing classes to fit the racial education requirements.
Bates College is a private liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. It hosts about 2,000 undergraduate students, and the school estimates tuition and fees to be nearly $78,000 per year.
For instance, the group suggests courses like Math 105 (Calculus I) could “situate race, white supremacy, colonialism, power, and privilege centrally and attend to them throughout the course.”
If the plan is implemented, students would be required to take one introductory course and one advanced course centered on race. For example, STEM majors could satisfy the advanced requirement by taking “Math 233: Mathematics for Social Justice.”
The report recommends that in order to fulfill the racial education requirements, a math class must include “understanding how mathematical methods can expose racial and other injustices, and the role of mathematics as a gatekeeper and driver of injustice.”
In biology, a course must include “the context of a genetics course to understand the social construction of race, and the fact that there is nothing biological supporting these hierarchies and historical injustices.”
Hellbound and Down 