A longtime Catholic liberal arts university has announced it plans to kill study programs in theology, math, English and more so that it can spend more money on programs that draw more student “interest.”
The plan that already has been announced to faculty and students at Marymount University in Virginia would eliminate bachelor’s degrees in religious studies, philosophy, math, art, history, theology, sociology, England, economics and secondary education.
The school announcement said it wants to “reallocate resources from those programs to others that better serve our students and reflect their interests.”
Constitutional scholar and popular legal commentator Jonathan Turley said the move poses several problems, including that student choices “are not the guide for universities on core academic standards. Universities are places where students come to be educated, not dictate the meaning of education.”
Then he noted low graduation rates are problems for the school’s admission and education programs.
“Solving low graduation rates by eliminating whole core subjects is like solving a low attendance rates at church by eliminating Sunday services,” he said.
The school’s chief, Irma Becerra, said, “Over the long term, it would be irresponsible to sustain majors [and] programs with consistently low enrollment, low graduation rates, and lack of potential for growth. Recommendations and decisions on programs marked for elimination are based on clear evidence of student choices and behavior over time.”
WND is now on Trump’s Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
Turley noted, “Rather than make the difficult choices to be more competitive as a liberal arts university, Marymount is jettisoning core degrees to play the market. It is a form of academic self-mutilation that cuts away the very degrees that define a liberal arts university. It will prove fatal to the reputation of this university and sever its connection to traditional higher education.”
A report from Fox News called the plan “controversial.”
“Marymount University’s plan has sent shockwaves through the campus community, drawing widespread condemnation from students and alumni,” the report noted.
“Cutting portions of the School of Humanities as well as math and art programs would be detrimental to the diversity of our student body,” student government president Ashly Trejo Mejia wrote in a letter to the school’s president, Fox reported. “We fear that removing programs will alter the foundation and identity Marymount University was built on.”
Marymount was launched in 1950 as a two-year women’s Catholic school before it expanded to its current university status. It has, until now at least, some 4,000 students.
Faculty, too, wondered about the school’s commitment to its educational mission.
“If they want to change the mission, then say that and say what that change is,” Ariane Economos, director of the School of Humanities and the liberal-arts core curriculum, said in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education. “But getting rid of theology and religious studies at a Catholic university, that doesn’t fit with the mission.”
Turley explained, “The problem is not the obvious irony of eliminating theology degrees at a university that once prayed for God to ‘Direct Us by Thy Light.’ The problem is the university is reinventing itself in a new image, but is offering no vision of what that image entails beyond what the market will bear.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Long the world’s most Christian nation, America today is being taken over by a new “official” national religion, one being imposed on the entire populace by every major societal institution, from government, media and big tech, to academia, entertainment and business.
This new state religion is Wokeism. “Going woke” conjures up visions of someone claiming to be acutely sensitive (“awake”) to “systemic social and political injustice.” And not just alleged bigotry against blacks, but toward every other “minority” as well, from LGBT folk – especially everything transgender and “nonbinary” – to “undocumented immigrants.” All of them, being VICTIMS, intrinsically more virtuous than the shameful oppressor class: primarily heterosexual white males.
This new “woke” consciousness has turned America upside-down – from the nationwide Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, to tearing down of historic monuments, to demanding multi-million-dollar reparation payments for blacks, to appointing transgenders as top government officials, to rampant reverse discrimination in every area of life, to the U.S. military imposing mandatory “diversity training” and transgender pronoun use on all personnel, causing recruitment to disastrously plummet.
Yet there is hope. Being “saved” – which in Wokeism is called being “woke” – is largely a matter of worshipping victimhood by becoming an “ally” and “defender” of all the many victim classes, and a determined enemy of the straight white male oppressor class. Thus, “joining the righteous” as an ally – even if one is cursed to be a straight white male – opens the door mercifully for salvation, even to the most wretched.
That is the power of the religion of Wokeism. And it’s explored as never before in the February 2023 issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine. If you’ve ever wondered, for example, exactly how the most radical elements in American society are successfully pressuring the biggest corporations into adopting the most outrageous and immoral policies imaginable, even when doing so permanently damages and devalues the company, the stunning answers are in this issue of Whistleblower, titled “WOKEISM: AMERICA’S OFFICIAL STATE RELIGION.”
For 25 years, WND has boldly brought you the news that really matters. If you appreciate our Christian journalists and their uniquely truthful reporting and analysis, please help us by becoming a WND Insider!
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
