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Students will be required to take courses on ‘power structures behind racial differences’ in 2025

Gettysburg College is incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in its curriculum and prioritizing candidates for faculty positions who contribute to its mandatory “race, power, and equity” courses.

One public policy scholar told The College Fix that this is “another attempt to push certain political ideologies on students.”

Starting in the fall of 2025, all Gettysburg students “will take a course that considers the institutional, structural, and cultural components of race, power, and inequity,” according to the school’s description of the new curriculum.

“The course goes beyond recognition of racial differences to explore power structures behind racial differences,” the description states.

According to one scholar, this is not uncommon.

“Over the past decade or so, there’s been a growing trend throughout academia to remain relevant on certain issues that most Americans are really not concerned about on a daily basis,” Terris Todd said. He is the director of outreach for Project 21, an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research that promotes the views of African Americans who emphasize individual responsibility.

Todd told The College Fix:

“The issue of race, power, and equity can only be genuinely addressed by someone who has no bias at all (which is hard to find) or by students having real-life experiences themselves. Why make the course mandatory? Because the college staff is fully aware it’s not a course that many would see as relevant to their interests. This seems to be another attempt to push certain political ideologies on students that are typically not interested nor having an issue with these topics at all.”

Another change next year is the school’s Provost Office will be “giving weight in the next round of tenure-track faculty hiring to the potential for new faculty to contribute courses toward the race, power, and equity component of the new Gettysburg curriculum,” according to an email reviewed by The Fix.

In the 2025-26 academic year, the Provost’s Office will “partner with [the] Chief Diversity Officer to hold orientation sessions within faculty committees on the importance of bias awareness during their decision-making work,” according to the email.

Todd told The Fix this isn’t uncommon. “Colleges and universities are well-known to hire faculty who align with their own ideologies. This is done to make it much easier to keep a narrative alive and center stage on their campuses,” he said.

He said while they have the liberty to do so, he would caution against it “in an academic setting because it’s a strong indicator that the school is not really supportive of the diversity of thought.”

“They would rather have a ‘professional’ in compliance versus someone to challenge their divisive pedagogy,” Todd said.

MORE: 103 things higher ed declared racist in 2024

Similarly, a student at Gettysburg College who wished to remain anonymous told The Fix via a phone interview it is not appropriate for the school to hire faculty based on what they can contribute to a certain ideology.

Incorporating DEI into the curriculum “is not going to positively contribute to the campus culture at all or to the student’s education,” the student said.

“Certain rhetoric and forced dialogue” could cause resentment where it did not exist before, the student said.

Unless the school’s objective is to make “white students…feel bad,” DEI in curriculum is not “going to have the effect” the school intends, he said.

The student also told The Fix that Gettysburg, a private college in Pennsylvania, currently has two required diversity credits. Students must complete one course listed under “Global Understanding” and another under “Conceptualizing Diversity.”

The increased focus on DEI at the school follows a probable race hoax in which a student etched the n-word on a peer’s chest as an apparent prank, The Fix previously reported.

Not long after the “likely hate crime hoax,” the “new DEI programming at Gettysburg College” was announced, The Fix also reported.

According to Gettysburg’s new curriculum description, students will soon be required to take a course that develops “analytical and reflective abilities to help them understand how cultural worldview frameworks are developed and increase their cultural self- awareness.”

The school’s official “Diversity Statement” reads that Gettysburg’s “perspective on diversity and inclusion is grounded” in its “core values.”

Further, the school is “committed to providing a diverse and inclusive learning and working environment because it enhances the educational experience for all students.”

The College Fix reached out to Gettysburg’s Deputy Chief Communications and Marketing Officer Mike Baker, Vice President for College Life Anne Ehrlich, Chief Diversity Officer Eloísa Gordan-Mora, Provost Jamila Bookwala, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and President Robert Iuliano for comment via multiple emails in the last two weeks. None responded to questions about the reasons for the new DEI initiatives.

The Fix also contacted the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education and Zach Monroe, the director of marketing at the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, but neither provided a response.

MORE: Legal scholar asks if Gettysburg College ‘hate crime really did occur’

IMAGE: The Heritage Foundation/YouTube

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