As part of his ongoing campaign against “liberal bias” on college and university campuses, FrontPageMag.com founder David Horowitz frequently takes aim at Humanities departments and their supposed “indoctrination.” Today, Horowitz sets his sights on Women’s Studies:
A year ago the biggest issue in education after budgets was whether “Intelligent Design” should be taught in the nation’s schools. Opponents called it a form of “creationism” and the press dubbed the ensuing legal battle as the biggest clash between faith and science since the Scopes Monkey Trial. In a stinging rebuke to the religious right, a Pennsylvania judge ruled that “Intelligent Design” had no place in classrooms because it was “a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory,” thus violating the separation of church and state.
Yet at that very moment professors in American universities were teaching a form of secular creationism as contrary to the findings of modern science as the Biblical claim that the God had made the world in seven days.
The name of this theory is “social constructionism,” and its churches are Women’s Studies departments situated in universities across the United States.
Discussion of the ways gender roles are constructed by society, according to Horowitz, contravenes biological evidence that men and women are different. Therefore, the argument goes, those who think “Intelligent Design” creationism has “no place in classrooms” ought to think the same about this feminist theory. Of course, there’s a problem with this analogy: the question is whether “Intelligent Design” creationism should be taught in high school science classes as fact, as the judge Horowitz cites made clear.
Horowitz, the author of “Indoctrination U” and “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” ominously cites the catalog of Kansas State University, where Women’s Studies majors are required to “have demonstrated their familiarity with key Women’s Studies concepts such as the social construction of gender.” Horowitz translates this to mean that “In other words, a student cannot graduate from the Kansas State Women’s Studies program unless they believe in the ideology that makes up its core, and demonstrate that they do believe in it.”
For Horowitz, who lobbies state legislatures pass his bill to limit “controversial matter” in college classrooms, being familiar with ideas is the same as believing them. What does he think about Kansas State’s Center for the Understanding of Origins, which has exposed students to the “Intelligent Design” debate?
