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Harvard cancels over 30 courses; far-left History & Literature classes hardest hit

Goodbye to ‘Marx at the Mall,’ ‘Global Transgender Histories,’ Dua Lipa 

Harvard has canceled over 30 fall semester courses encompassing 20 departments, but the History and Literature department took it on the chin the hardest.

According to The Crimson, Hist-Lit Director of Studies Lauren Kaminsky said class offerings dropped from 19 to 13 classes after five lecturers either departed or chose to do something else.

The canceled Hist-Lit courses include “British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa,” “Marx at the Mall: Consumer Culture & Its Critics,” “Global Transgender Histories,” “Indigenous Genders and Sexualities in North America,” “The Making of Race across Latin America,” and “Global Histories of Capitalism.”

The course description for “Global Transgender Histories” noted students “will become familiar with some of the global vocabulary of gender identities beyond the binary and will understand the historical impacts of phenomena such as racism, imperialism, and [the] medicalization on gender identities.”

Students also would’ve “discovered” the diversity of “gender-variant people” via “religious texts, poetry, art, legal cases, travelogues, newspapers, films […] and oral histories.”

In “Indigenous Genders and Sexualities in North America,” students would have gained knowledge about the “foundations of settler colonialism” and the “resistance to it” via “poetry, memoir, speculative fiction [and] media.”

MORE: Florida State U. drops ‘race, gender’ course after only 2 students enroll

They also would “interrogate” various works in order to grasp “the anxieties, joys, and power that arise when Indigenous people embrace their bodies.”

Two Crimson editors expressed misgivings about the cancellations; Zion Dixon said he was “kind of disappointed” about not being able to attend “Global Transgender Histories,” while Angelina Ng was “very sad” about the axing of “British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa” — the short notice caused a “scramble,” she said.

The Harvard Salient reports there is still a smorgasbord of far-left course material to choose from at the premier Ivy (some of which, at present, may or may not still be available). “Feminism in the Age of Empire,” for example, “critically engages the possibilities and limits of liberation through the global history of feminist ideas of freedom.”

In “Indigenous Literatures of the Other-Than-Human,” students will read 20th and 21st-century Native depictions of “other-than-human beings” and (Natives’) relationships with such — which are “integral to Indigenous ways of understanding difference.”

And “Queering Education” looks into the alleged “hidden curriculum” in American schools which privileges heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and “gendered identities.”

MORE: Diversity course enrollment drops after school stops ordering students to take it

IMAGE: MR. Nattanon Kanchak.Shutterstock.com

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Associate Editor
Dave has been writing about education, politics, and entertainment for over 20 years, including a stint at the popular media bias site Newsbusters. He is a retired educator with over 25 years of service and is a member of the National Association of Scholars. Dave holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Delaware.