Education

University Of Chicago To Offer ‘The Problem Of Whiteness’ Class During Winter Semester

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Chrissy Clark Contributor
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The University of Chicago is slated to offer students a class titled “The Problem Of Whiteness” during the upcoming Winter semester, according to the school’s course catalog.

The course description calls whiteness “a conspicuous problem within liberal political discourse” that has “worldmaking (and razing) effects.” Students will study material through the lens of critical race theory — the theory that views all interactions through the lens of race.

“Critical race theorists have shown that whiteness has long functioned as an ‘unmarked’ racial category, saturating a default surround against which non-white or ‘not quite’ other appear as aberrant,” the description reads. “This saturation has had wide-ranging effects, coloring everything from the consolidation of wealth, power and property to the distribution of environmental health hazards.”

University of Chicago sophomore Daniel Schmidt tweeted a picture of the course name and description Tuesday, claiming the course is an example of “anti-white hatred” from faculty on campus.

“Since I began studying at the University of Chicago a year ago, I have documented on my Twitter all the anti-white hatred I’ve seen. Without a doubt, this is the most egregious example,” Schmidt told the Daily Caller. (RELATED: School Official Removes Student’s American Flag Despite Pride Flag Displays Across Campus)

A white women, Teaching Fellow Rebecca Journey, was scheduled to teach the class. Journey completed her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2021 and studies “how the evolutionary and reformist logics of eugenic ideology animate the aesthetics of green urbanism in contemporary Denmark.”

Journey did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

The University of Chicago told the Daily Caller that “the instructor for the course has chosen to move the offering to Spring Quarter.”

This article was updated to include comment from the University of Chicago. A previous version of this article inaccurately stated that Katie Hickerson was a professor of the course.