UCLA Mandates Diversity Class Because Students ‘Afflicted with Bigotry’

After twenty years of lobbying for a mandatory diversity class for all students, the University California Los Angeles faculty finally got their way.

Friday the university announced that almost all UCLA students will be required to take a course on ethnic, cultural, religious or gender diversity. The decision reflects a huge victory for the academic left by continuing to imbue education with a multi-cultural agenda.

The Los Angeles Times reported that  the Faculty Senate voted 916 to 487 in favor of the mandate. UCLA will begin teaching the course to incoming freshmen in fall 2015 and to new transfer students in 2017. The new requirement will apply to all students in the College of Letters and Science which makes up 85% of all UCLA undergrads.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, a strident advocate for diversity education at the College of Letters and Science, asserted that,

A diversity-focused course requirement has been a long-standing priority for me because of its clear value to our students, so I am very pleased with the campus wide faculty vote approving the proposal… I want to thank the many faculty members and students who have worked hard for several years to make the diversity requirement a reality.

On the other side of the political correctness aisle UCLA political science professor Thomas Schwartz contends that the course is totally unnecessary. He finds it insulting to UCLA students to suggest that they are so bigoted they would need a course like this.

“The idea that 21st century American 18 year-olds who have been admitted to UCLA are so afflicted with bigotry that they must be forced to endure an attitude-altering course is preposterous. It is like forcing Norwegians to get inoculated against malaria,” Schwartz wrote.

The Times reported that some of the opponents to requiring the diversity class argue that UCLA is strapped for cash and can’t afford to add new curriculum. Moreover they are skeptical that these classes improve ethnic relations and complain that they typically foster left leaning political ideology.