As many criticize higher education for pursuing indoctrination over education, Oregon State University (OSU) appears to be doubling down on a mandatory woke curriculum. The university is under fire for its mandatory undergraduate courses on “Difference, Power & Oppression” (DPO). Much of the rhetoric on the university’s website reads more like the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) than an institution of higher education.
OSU requires all undergraduate students who enrolled after the summer of 2025 to complete two “Difference, Power & Oppression” (DPO) courses as part of its Core Education curriculum, including “Difference, Power & Oppression Foundations” and “Difference, Power & Oppression Advanced.”
This is all part of what OSU calls a “core curriculum” that teaches students to be “adaptive, proactive members” of society to “build a better world.”
The University of Chicago (where I attended) developed a very different “core curriculum” that required students to take classes across different disciplines to gain proficiency in subjects from science to math to philosophy.
Schools like OSU have converted the mission into instilling a core ideological agenda, a mandatory agenda for shaping anti-racist social warriors.
The university explains that all students must take these courses to learn how to “disrupt” oppressive systems in the United States and around the world: “The inequitable distribution of social, economic, and political power in the United States and globally is sustained through systems of oppression, which represent a variety of discriminatory institutional beliefs and practices.”
Students are to be trained on how “beliefs and practices obscure the origins and operations of W
The purpose is clearly to train activists to fight against the oppressive institutions and traditions in this country and abroad: “Such examinations will enhance and promote responsible, ethical, and anti-racist engagement by preparing students to understand and disrupt these systems as they manifest in their field.”
It is telling that the faculty and administration are not willing to let students choose whether to take such courses. It is not uncommon for such courses to be offered as electives, but OSU is requiring any graduate to sit through this indoctrination as a requirement for graduation. As Campus Reform noted, DPO courses have appeared at the Yale University School of Drama, the University of Virginia, and Northern Arizona University.
The school is using a public university to instill ideological values in students as a condition of their getting a degree. They are expected to “demonstrate, by using social justice theories, how historic constructions of racism and other forms of systemic oppression result in intersecting inequities – crossroads of oppression – experienced in current times (last 10 years).”
For many students, a college degree is an opportunity to demonstrate academic competence and pursue their own careers and values in society. State schools are critical in realizing a dream of a better life for many of these students.
State tuition of $38,568 a year remains the only accessible path to higher education (nonresidents are charged $65,013). However, faculty are using these students as a captive audience to their own ideological agenda.
The ultimate responsibility for this mandatory curriculum falls on President Jayathi Y. Murthy and her administration.
This controversy is also notable at a time when many faculty are objecting to state legislators seeking to limit funding or regulate the curriculum of their state schools. Faculty maintain that they should have full funding and full control over their institutions even as they create ideological echo chambers that exclude or marginalize a large percentage of students. Many citizens do not understand why they are compelled to fund universities that use these institutions for ideological indoctrination.
Oregon is obviously a heavily Democratic and liberal state. Other schools such as the University of Oregon have shown the same bias, including giving an award to an academic who criminally attacked pro-life advocates on campus. Likewise, states such as California are unlikely to push back on far-left agendas at universities. UCLA even has “activists-in-residence” to shape the political views of students.
However, many states still view public higher education as an opportunity to learn in an ideologically neutral and tolerant environment. Yet they face institutions that are openly hostile to the views of a majority of residents or create hostile environments for students who need to take advantage of the state education system.
Just as donors should decline to support private institutions without real reform and strong intellectual diversity, state legislators should use state funding to combat that ideological agenda of faculty.
If President Murthy and the OSU faculty want to use their institution to instill ideological values and disrupt the oppressive institutions of this country, they can clearly do so. However, they do not have to do it with state money. They can seek to support their institutions with private funds from liberal donors and allow the state to spend money on institutions with greater neutrality and balance.
As shown at OSU, the faculty are unlikely to change this environment. Conservatives and libertarians have been largely purged from departments. Many do not have a single such faculty member, according to surveys. At the same time, many, including the head of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), oppose institutional neutrality.
There must be a point where the most fervent liberals in states such as Oregon will recognize the harm that is being done to higher education by yielding to such ideological impulses. It is often hard to speak up for those with opposing values, but that is the test of principle.
What is most telling is the lack of self-awareness by these academics in their creating their own oppressive environment. In higher education, their mandatory courses are the very evidence of “systemic inequities” and “inequitable power distribution” that is “assumed to be the natural order.” It is a lesson that will not be lost on many students who find themselves isolated and marginalized in their own state school systems.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Love the sound of leftys screeching in the morning. LOUDER Please!
Do you seriously believe those students are actually Manchurian Candidates with the capabilities to seek out and “disrupt” oppressive systems in the United States and around the world”? Heck, they’re mindless, stupid 22 years old without drive or ambition or any common sense, or how to survive the modern world without the help of their parents while living in their basements until the parents die. And then they become the new generation of homeless.
Good one. ” It is a lesson that will not be lost on many students who find themselves isolated and marginalized in their own state school systems.” JT.
College mandatory courses will not eradicate the marginalization that leads to isolation.
It is a Human Condition that is wired-in which utilizes oppression for survival.
Mandatory College courses will not exorcise this behavior.
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AI string: ( Why did Kane kill Abel )
According to the Book of Genesis, Cain killed his brother Abel primarily out of jealousy and anger because God favored Abel’s animal sacrifice over Cain’s offering of crops. When both brothers brought their gifts to the Lord, Abel offered the firstborn and best of his flock, which God accepted. Cain, a farmer, brought a portion of his crops, but God had no regard for it. This rejection filled Cain with deep resentment, leading him to lure Abel into a field and commit history’s first recorded murder.
The Biblical Narrative and Motive
The Offerings: Cain presented fruit from the ground, while Abel brought the best firstborn lambs of his flock.
Divine Rejection: God accepted Abel’s offering of faith and blood, but rejected Cain’s offering.
The Warning: God confronted Cain about his anger, warning him that sin was crouching at his door and urging him to choose what is right.
The Murder: Ignoring the divine warning, Cain invited Abel out to the field and slew him.
Spiritual Context: The New Testament expands on the motive in 1 John 3:12, stating that Cain murdered Abel because “his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous”.
What garbage.
“The inequitable distribution of social, economic, and political power in Oregon State University is sustained through systems of oppression, which represent a variety of discriminatory institutional beliefs and practices.” That works, and not just of OSU but for many universities across America.
Speaking of oppression: I remember the results when I once challenged a foaming-mouth leftist professor on his condemnation of Edmund Burke. That was an educational moment.
Diversity (i e. class-disordered ideologies), Equivocation, and Indoctrination. #HateLovesAbortion
Let me see. Receive Federal funds. Teach students how to destroy the country. Wow!
Note to Marxist academics. Study up on how the Red Guard turned on their handlers. Students turning on their professors is as old as time.
Excellent post JT👍
Ever stop to think those kids want that sort of education.
You really think they simply walk into that school with a blank mind and are then forced into DEI ideology courses?
Good thing consumers can buy the education they want without some crazies (MAGA) dictating what they can learn.
These are mandatory courses, not electives.
You missed the point, they chose to attend OSU for a reason.
Sounds like your education, or better said, lack of, taught you to hate what you can’t understand. Meaning, you relish your ignorance.
I recommend Americans that feel oppressed travel to North Korea to find out about oppression and how to fight oppression. It’s such a liberty loving freedom loving free from oppression country you might just even decide to stay their permanently. In prison!
What a stupid comment.
MORON ANON sounds like an 8 year old!
Whatever you say jerkoff. Opps, Dustoff.
by using social justice theories,
_____________________________
Heck Oregon high schools are a joke. (Oregon high schools still require students to pass coursework in math and English to graduate, but the state has suspended the mandatory “Essential Skills” standardized testing requirement for reading, writing, and math through the 2027–2028 school year). But learn to protest, you get a gold start.
“Oregon high schools are a joke.” Are you saying you’re still in high school and that you’re a joke? No surprise there.
MORON ANON IS A JOKE! DAILY!
Still playing that stupid game Dustoff.
Not Dustoff or Estovir YOU DF MORON!! Crappy replies from MORON ANON DAILY!!!
Oh oh, did yo just shit your panties?
They are emotionally driven. Can’t be reasoned with.
“Can’t be reasoned with.” Really? Have you at least tried?
Yep
Great, now show us the proof.
OK proof? you want proof? your replys are emotionally driven and I can prove it. Ready?
What replies?