According to Celine Ryan at https://campusreform.org/?id=15679, the University of Chicago English Department says this year it will only admit graduate students who want to concentrate on black studies. As Ms. Ryan wrote, “[a]ccording to its admissions information webpage [https://english.uchicago.edu/], the department is only accepting graduate applications from those who are ‘interested in working in and with Black Studies’ for this academic year. . . . ‘As literary scholars, we attend to the histories, atmospheres, and scenes of anti-Black racism and racial violence in the United States and across the world. . . . . For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies’ . . . the university’s English Department website states.”
The article continues: “‘The University of Chicago’s English Department has now made explicit that it is dedicated to political activism, not to the study of literature. No student should choose to take a class with the University of Chicago under the illusion that they are studying literature,’ National Association of Scholars Director of Research David Randall told Campus Reform. ‘Nor should any employer take an English degree from the University of Chicago, undergraduate or graduate, as a credential that actually signifies knowledge of literature. No donor who loves literature should direct any money to the University of Chicago English Department–or, indeed, to the University of Chicago as a whole.'”
We were an English major and our father was a college English professor for 40 years. We highly resent this nonsense, and our father would have if he had lived to experience this type of kowtowing to a handful of loudmouths. It is just another fresh insult to legitimate scholars everywhere. Read the below article for what we think, and what he would have thought, about this UChicago nonsense – he wrote it almost 30 years ago and it is just as pertinent today as it was then.
Actually, UChicago would appear to be the perfect landing place for those wannabe MBA blackflakes at USC (see Sept. 4 post).