Proposed Course at California College Said to Run Into PC Buzz Saw

A professor has accused Monterey Peninsula College of favoring political correctness over academic freedom, after a campus committee shelved a course he had proposed because he refused to describe how it would deal with multicultural issues.

David Clemens, a professor of English, says the Curriculum Advisory Committee, which reviews all proposed courses, is attempting to push classes “beyond content and into sociology.” He takes issue with a committee policy that requires course sponsors to answer a question about “how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class, and gender issues.”

In describing “More or Less Human?,” a course that would discuss literary and film depictions of machines and humans, Mr. Clemens decided not to directly answer the question. Instead, he wrote a lengthy rebuttal, likening the question to “an ideological loyalty oath.” Despite his response, the proposal was approved unanimously by his department, the humanities division and its head, and the vice president for instruction.

But the advisory committee rejected Mr. Clemens’s response as well as a topic outline that he subsequently submitted. After its last meeting of the year, in May, the committee informed him that it had not accepted his proposal, citing a “Title 5 regulation” that requires the race, class, and gender information. But according to Mr. Clemens and even the committee’s chairwoman, Pat Lilley, Title 5 of the California Education Code contains no language that requires a response to the question.

The committee enforces the policy across all disciplines, including the sciences. Mr. Clemens has pointed out that even a recently proposed course on herb gardening had to explain its treatment of race, class, and gender issues to the panel. But Ms. Lilley has said that Mr. Clemens was the first person to raise a “serious objection” to the procedure since she started as chairwoman six years ago.

“The course is still pending; it has not been denied,” she said, but she declined further comment, saying, “Any other discussion is irrelevant.”

Mr. Clemens, who argues that the requirement is unconstitutional, said litigation might be an option, though “one would hope it wouldn’t come to that.”

“I have a profound belief that students should not be indoctrinated into any kind of ideology,” he said.

http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A16