“The Task Force has mistaken a liberal arts education with a politically liberal education,” the Daily Princetonian editorial board wrote. “But serious academic inquiry is premised on a scholar’s commitment and ability to conduct research that is not guided by ideological presuppositions — be they of the left or right.”
As Princeton considers curriculum changes focused on social justice and identity politics, the student newspaper this week pushed back in a scathing editorial. Students warned of an “anachronistic, politicized [proposed] curriculum,” telling administrators that “there is no room for officially established University dogmas.”
Last month, Princeton’s General Education Task Force issued an in-depth 47-page report, recommending six main changes to the Ivy League’s undergraduate curriculum. Among the proposals, incoming students would be required to take at least one course on structural inequality and the “intersections of culture, identity and power.”
Classes meeting that requirement would focus not just on diversity, the task force wrote, “but rather the complex ways in which aspects of cultural identity (such as race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, indigeneity, sexual orientation and religious identification) are connected to the expressions of power within both contemporary and historical social structures.”
The Daily Princetonian editorial board cautioned that the requirement would impose political perspectives and discourage students from critical thinking.
