Rice University, a prestigious academic institution, is currently offering a course on “Afrochemistry” that seeks to address “inequities in chemistry and chemical education.”
According to an online course schedule and catalog, this chemistry class has no final exam and goes from Jan. 8 to April 19, 2024. (RELATED: Teachers Conference Plots How To ‘Inspire Activism,’ Teach Critical Race Theory)
“Students will apply chemical tools and analysis to understand Black life in the U.S. and students will implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry,” a course description from the catalog noted. “Diverse historical and contemporary scientists, intellectuals, and chemical discoveries will inform personal reflections and proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical education. This course will be accessible to students from a variety of backgrounds including STEM and non-STEM disciplines. No prior knowledge of chemistry or African American studies is required for engagement in this course.”
Rice University was founded in 1912 as a private institution of higher learning and scored 17th under the category of best “national university” in U.S. News’s 2024 rankings. The course was cited in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) as an example of how even hard scientific subjects were getting co-opted by postmodernist and deconstructionist ideologies. Such co-option was deemed in that WSJ article as being symptomatic of how these anti-scientific and anti-dissent ideologies “are beginning to appear almost everywhere and are getting support and encouragement from the scientific establishment.”
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Jerry Coyne, a professor emeritus at Chicago University and biologist, wrote on his blog that the poster advertising for the course noted that the course was “The Study of Black-Lives Matter” and complained that such courses only polluted science through its replacement of hard science “with progressive activism.”