The College Fix

‘Critical cartography’ course will explore ‘oppression’ and ‘interrogate power dynamics’

The “oppression” and “injustice” of maps is the subject of a Purdue University course offered this semester.

“Critical GIS,” taught by Professor Melissa Chomintra, “will provide students with a critical overview of the role power, culture, justice and injustice, and oppression have played in the practice and history of cartography.”

“In this hands-on course students will learn the basic [geographic information system] skills and techniques that will help them understand place and space through critical theories of race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, class, ability, colonialism, and the State,” according to the course description.

Students at the public university in West Lafayette will learn how “maps can expose and resist oppression and inequality.”

There is no research paper in this class – instead, students will “engage with a digital research platform that enhances research impact and scholarship reach while applying such tools to interrogate the power dynamics contained within them.”

Professor Chomintra (pictured) did not respond to two emails and a voicemail left in the past two weeks by The College Fix.

The Fix asked for a copy of the syllabus, more information about resisting “oppression and inequality,” and what “power dynamics” means in the description.

Chomintra’s research interests include “feminist geography,” “feminist information literacy” and “critical race theory,” according to her faculty bio.

The media team and chief spokeswoman Erin Murphy did not respond to requests for comment. The Fix emailed twice and left a voicemail for Murphy, asking for a copy of the syllabus and how the course benefits Indiana taxpayers. The Fix also emailed the general media relations email once in the past two weeks.

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A former Villanova University professor criticized the course in emailed comments to The Fix.

“Taxpayers might rightly question whether they should be paying for a course that is so obviously aimed at enlisting students in political activism,” Steve McGuire with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni told The Fix.

He said the course’s emphasis on activism is “exactly the kind of politicization that universities should be avoiding.”

McGuire, a campus freedom fellow for ACTA, also said the course may violate the American Association of University Professors’ rules on academic freedom.

“The AAUP’s founders explicitly admonish the professoriate not to indulge in indoctrination ‘with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion,’” McGuire said.

McGuire said the course shows why campus leadership “need to remain vigilant,” since former President Mitch Daniels has led on free speech issues and added a civics requirement.

“This course highlights the need for university leaders and board members to continue monitoring and guiding their institutions and insisting that academic processes adhere to high professional standards of quality that avoid faddishness, politicization, and indoctrination,” McGuire said.

Finally, the former professor said information science courses “should focus on giving students a rigorous education in the fundamentals of the discipline rather than allowing faculty to offer politicized courses designed to advance their own ideologies or political opinions.”

He said campus leaders “should have stepped in to insist on significant revisions or that the faculty member teach a different course.”

“The institution has no obligation under academic freedom to sponsor every course or topic that a faculty member wishes to offer.”

MORE: Yale course asks if science can ‘be made queer’

IMAGES: Purdue University; Ylanite/Pixabay

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