Georgetown U. to Require ‘Social Justice’ Courses on School’s History of Racism, Slavery

Georgetown University is set to require “social justice” courses on the school’s history of racism and slavery for its undergraduate students, starting next semester.

A subcommittee consisting of Georgetown students and faculty members that was tasked with redesigning the university’s “Engaging Diversity” core curriculum component recently announced the new “Pathways to Social Justice,” which forces students to take a number of courses surrounding diversity concepts, according to a report by Campus Reform.

One of the courses included in the Pathways to Social Justice curriculum includes a class, titled, “University Seminar in Race, Power, and Justice at Georgetown,” according to the core curriculum’s proposal document.

“This course will focus on Georgetown’s history, including the enslavement of people of African descent, as well as how that history intersects with national and global experiences of slavery and emancipation, settler colonialism, imperialism, and contemporary struggles for justice,” the document states.

The course also creates “a common vocabulary” for all Georgetown students to use when talking about racial equity and social justice.

The subcommittee also explained why it changed the name of the curriculum requirement, writing, “The replacement of the term ‘Diversity Requirement’ with the title ‘Pathways to Social Justice’ will demonstrate and signal our recognition that the time is now for a transformative cultural change in our curriculum and anti-racism practices.”

Subcommittee student co-chair Amanda Yen told Georgetown’s student newspaper, the Hoya, that the new requirement is also “interrogating structures of power, privilege and oppression rather than just recognizing the plurality of human experiences.”

Last summer, Constitutional law scholar Ilya Shapiro announced his resignation from Georgetown University, saying that the school has “yielded to the progressive mob, abandoned free speech, and created a hostile environment.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.