The College Fix

Black political expert criticizes Yale University course

A class offered by Yale University this semester will study friendships between white and black women, according to the university’s course catalog.

The course, titled “No Time for Tears: Friendships between Black Women and White Women,” will seek to determine whether these friendships can develop on “equal footing” and be “unfettered by the trappings of quid pro quo transactions,” according to the syllabus. However, an expert on black politics criticized the course.

Students will “interrogate with brutal honesty the stakes that underwrite Black women’s relationships with White women,” according to a copy of the syllabus reviewed by The College Fix.

The course will be taught by Professor Tasha Hawthorne, who serves as dean of Yale’s Pierson College.

Hawthorne has not responded to requests for comment on her goals for the course. The Fix sent an email on Dec. 16 and tried to follow up via phone, but received no response in the past two weeks.

The course uses “contract grading,” which generally makes it easier for students to get good grades just for making an effort.

Students are guaranteed a B+ in the class if they meet the contract’s requirements, regardless of grades received on individual assignments.

This is seen as “an actively anti-racist approach to assessment” and a way of “participating in educational justice and equity,” according to the syllabus.

The evaluation portion of the syllabus suggests traditionally graded courses promote “bias related to being White Anglo Saxon Protestant, speaking and writing standard English, growing up in a first language English-speaking community, having parents with collegiate education, attending high schools with AP or IB classes, etc.”

The course includes several readings about calling white women “Karen,” a term that generally refers to a complaining white woman, sometimes with the implication she is racist. The syllabus can change, however, according to a note from the instructor.

The list of readings includes a report by TIME titled, “How the ‘Karen Meme’ Confronts the Violent History of White Womanhood,” a Vox article titled, “How ‘Karen’ became a symbol of racism,” and a journal article titled, “Querying Karen: The Rise of the Angry White Woman.”

The focus of Professor Hawthorne’s work in academia is the “intersection of gender, sexuality, genre, race, and politics,” according to the university’s website.

Black politics expert calls course premise ‘absurd’

A black political activist criticized the premise of the course as “absurd” in emailed comments to The Fix.

“The course makes presumptions that Black women and White women are not currently on equal emotional and social footing and may not, therefore, be able to develop sincere friendships,” Linda Lee Tarver told The Fix via email. “The push for diversity, equity and inclusion in academia has perverted sane instruction.”

Tarver is a former Michigan Civil Rights Commissioner, author, and a former board member of Black Voices for Trump. She is also an ambassador for Project 21, which promotes black conservative values.

The one-credit course will satisfy humanities and arts or writing requirements for students who choose to participate.

However, not all students are eligible to take the class. The African American studies course is marked “Instructor Permission Required,” meaning the instructor subjectively selects students for registration.

Tarver sees this selection process as “problematic.”

“Impressionable students paying…for this course will be, in my opinion, academically robbed,” Tarver said.

The university previously offered the one-credit course last spring, as reported by Young America’s Foundation.

Hawthorne’s teaching career is comprised of primarily race related courses.

During her time as a graduate student at Cornell University, she taught a class on “Race, Power, and Privilege” and “The Sociology of the African American Experience,” according to her LinkedIn.

Before working as a professor and dean, Hawthorne was co-director of the Brace Center for Gender Studies at Phillips Academy, a private boarding school dedicated to “creating an equitable and inclusive school in which students from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences…learn and grow together.”

Phillip’s Academy is the only secondary school to have a center for gender studies.

The center exists to “develop platforms for understanding oppression and lifting up voices that are often silenced” and “educate students to be activists for equitable policies and spaces,” according to the academy’s website.

MORE: ‘Race and ethnicity’ course loses funding at Indiana U.

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