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Course’s goal is to push feminist agenda, conservative group warns
A new spring course on masculinity at the University of Cincinnati aims to “transform organizational systems” and help “heal” men, according to the professor.
Professor Sean Harvey told The College Fix via a phone interview that he will teach “Men, Masculinity, and Society” for the first time at the school next semester.
Harvey said he currently teaches a course called “Men, Masculinity, and Extremism” at the American University, where he is also a fellow at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab.
He reached out to UC’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department and determined “there was a need” for the class.
“I think it was just the right timing,” he said.
Asked what he hopes his students gain from his course, Harvey said that they “expand their view.”
He said he will teach students about “the realities, the lived experiences, the stories, and also the conditions that are contributing to how men are developing.” He hopes they are then able to explain different methods of engaging men and boys, the professor said.
He added that men are often misunderstood because people judge them strictly through their own personal lens and perspective.
“I think men and boys learn about masculinity through systems,” he said, adding that “we have to look at men’s healing and transformation combined with an understanding of systems because they have a symbiotic relationship.”
Harvey said he sees this course as an opportunity to “potentially heal or help men come into their best selves, but also to transform organizational systems that can really elevate all.”
“I take an approach of how do we engage all men, not just the men we’re most comfortable with,” Harvey said.
Asked if the course was designed more for male or female students, Harvey said he hopes to attract more men than typically enroll in classes of this kind.
“But it is really open to anyone across the gender continuum or gender spectrum,” he said.
“I think this work is about helping men really come into their best selves,” rather than trying to fix or change them, he said.
Harvey described his class as conversation based, instead of lecture oriented, because this is such a “complex” topic.
“I think it’s an opportunity for the students to be in an inquiry, to question, to really have a place to ponder their own questions, to research their questions,” he said.
Harvey added that he hopes to “give space” for the students to be “experientially engaged, to have deep discussions, to make meaning of what we’re seeing and to hear diverse perspectives.”
However, a spokesperson with The American Principles Project criticized the course for its distinctly feminist perspective. The APP is a conservative organization that promotes traditional family values.
Anna Poff told The College Fix that the course will be focused “on pre-determined ideology based on false conclusions and material.”
“We have moved so far away from a true understanding of masculinity that this course is just going to be another sad show of telling men that they are worthless, that they are the problem,” she said.
She further clarified that a course on masculinity would be useful if treated holistically, aimed at discovering the true meaning of humanity and masculinity. But she is not hopeful that this will be the case in the UC course.
“The goal of this course is to push a feminist agenda, as stated by the department head,” Poff said.
She suggested that the curriculum instead cover “the great men that built western civilization from the ground up.”
“Prominent Biblical figures, the ancient Greeks and Romans, artists and thinkers of the renaissance, great men who contributed to the birth and growth of this country, and men whose heroic actions in war inspired movies like ‘The Patriot’ and Audie Murphy’s ‘To Hell and Back,’” she said.
Poff also said that the goal of this curriculum should be to demonstrate “unapologetically” the deeds of the “great men” of our past in order to inspire the men of today to rise to the occasion. It should also show women that “masculinity in its true sense is protective, not toxic.”
She added that “in a world where millions of our young men find themselves at the lowest rung of society, it’s disheartening to see schools prioritizing this gross ideology.”
