Cornell University offered an astronomy class that explored the “connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness” through concepts like black holes, Fox News reported Wednesday.
The course titled “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos” aims to challenge the conventional wisdom of the strictly astronomical concepts having no racial implications, according to the catalog description.
Physicists at MIT and SUNY Stony Brook recently announced findings that the total surface area of two black holes was maintained after the two entities merged. But what were the racial implications? https://t.co/DGwoT86JGg via @HMDatMI
— City Journal (@CityJournal) June 26, 2021
Students taking the class offered in Spring 2021 were expected to familiarize themselves with works of theorists who “implicitly and explicitly” posit the connection between race and the subject matter of the hard science. (RELATED: ‘Endangers Black People’: College Faculty Removes Race From Crime Alerts)
“Theorists use astronomy concepts like ‘black holes’ and ‘event horizons’ to interpret the history of race in creative ways, while artists and musicians conjure blackness through cosmological themes and images,” the description read.
The class fulfilled Cornell’s science distribution requirement, as it covered concepts such as the electromagnetic spectrum, according to City Journal.
Cornell’s astronomy department has previously announced that it will no longer allow its graduate programs’ applicants to submit the physics GRE. The requirement was dropped due to the examination’s adverse impact on female, black, and Hispanic students, City Journal reported.
