A chilling effect
Youngkin’s review of university courses sets troubling precedent
Not content to serve merely as Virginia’s chief executive, Gov. Glenn Youngkin apparently fancies himself as a college president. Perhaps that’s why his administration wants to review individual course syllabi at two commonwealth universities, to prepare for a job once he leaves office.
Surely someone who has been insistent on the need for open debate and academic freedom on Virginia campuses wouldn’t do anything to endanger either, because a governor ordering reviews of individual courses would have a chilling effect on both.
Only a few months ago, Youngkin addressed a gathering of college presidents on the University of Virginia campus to promote academic freedom, saying that it’s essential for commonwealth campuses to be places that foster open debates in which all perspectives are welcome.
“When it comes to freedom of expression, we have to create an environment that protects the ability to challenge conventional thinking,” Youngkin said in his speech. “Challenging beliefs and fostering an environment for these debates is exactly why we all exist.”
Turns out, he didn’t mean a word of it. As he has shown time and again, the governor wants academic freedom on his terms alone.
That’s underscored with the revelation that Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera is reviewing syllabi for classes at George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth universities.
GMU is considering adopting a program to begin in the fall that would require students to take two “Just Society” courses from a list of 30 offerings. These include classes such as “Globalization and Culture,” “Political Geography” and “Globalization and Social Change” as well as “Scientific Racism and Human Variation” and “Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies.”
VCU is working to implement a racial literacy requirement that would see students take two courses from a list of 17 proposed areas of study. Among the concepts submitted for consideration are “Educational Leadership and Civil Rights” and “Human Dimensions of Leadership” along with “Writing about Race” and “The Psychology of Race and Racism.”
The administration has not said why it requested the syllabi for those courses or what it intends to do with that information. A Youngkin spokesman has said only that the courses are “a thinly veiled attempt to incorporate the progressive left’s groupthink on Virginia’s students. Virginia’s public institutions should be teaching our students how to think, not what to think and not advancing ideological conformity.”
And yet it seems ideological conformity is precisely what Youngkin wants. The chief executive diving into the minutiae of course offerings, regardless of reason, creates a chilling effect on educators and universities as a whole. What academic would risk a fight with the governor over a proposed course knowing it might be subject to such high-profile scrutiny? Better to not propose it at all.
Requiring these types of courses doesn’t tell any student what to think, but rather exposes them to ideas and concepts they will confront when they leave campus. Classes such as these are meant to foster robust debate about difficult topics, challenging students to draw their own conclusions about how to address them.
It seems the governor would rather those debates not happen. Perhaps he’d prefer that these classes and others like them be stricken from Virginia universities and that students be sent into the world ill-equipped to succeed in a diverse, multicultural society.
This follows the governor’s efforts to silence public school teachers shortly after taking office, when he established a snitch line and invited Virginians to report educators teaching the nebulous “inherently divisive” concepts. That effort flopped, as this one should as well.
“In no way should the purview of the office of the governor dictate what is being taught in schools,” former Gov. Douglas Wilder, Virginia’s first Black governor and a Youngkin ally, wrote on his “Wilder Visions” blog.
If he becomes a college president in his post-gubernatorial career, Youngkin is more than welcome to haggle with students and faculty about individual course offerings. Until then, the governor should stick to governing and let teachers teach.