[throw94949499]

Just checked with ai about Berkley (I like this uni from telly):

EECS B.S.: You must complete six humanities/social-science courses. Two are Reading and Composition courses, and four come from approved areas such as history, philosophy, arts, international studies, or social sciences. At least two must be upper-division.

https://engineering.berkeley.edu/students/undergraduate-guid...

All Berkeley undergraduates must complete one approved American Cultures course dealing comparatively with race, ethnicity, and culture in the United States

https://undergraduate.catalog.berkeley.edu/earning-your-degr...

We can argue about subject names, but if teacher openly promotes marxism, anticolonialism and misandry, etc..., for me it is "woke garbage", even if the subject name is "history" or "international studies".

[LPisGood]

Putting a broad label of “woke garbage” on simple liberal arts requirements of taking a few classes from “history, philosophy, arts, international studies, or social sciences,” almost does not even justify a response. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’ve never taken such a class, but I can assure that unless you live in a reality so warped by politics, that basic logic and reason is out the window, classes covering those subjects are serious, thoughtful, and rigorous at accredited US universities.

[nekusar]

Thing is, I have takrn a class like that. Was a political science class. Extreme hard right (chinese dissident, hard anti-left).

I wrote the requisite papers. All of them were F, with no commentary. I brought this to the department chair, and the grades changed to b's and a-'s.

He was absolutely grading on political position for the paper, and not a proper discussion of content per the rubric.

And, aside from going to the chair every time, theres little you can do to fight this sort of obvious bias.

[names_are_hard]

I don't understand how this happened. Surely you picked up enough of the lecturer's views during the lectures and you knew what you had to say to get a good grade. So why didn't you do it?

The way I see it, the humanities classes are there to make sure you learn the non-technical aspects of life well enough to be a functioning member of the adult world. To succeed in life, one of the things you need to be able to do is read the room and decide what to say and what to skip. As a hiring manager, I want to hire people who get it and aren't always bumping heads or causing unnecessary friction.

So in that sense, success in these courses is a good signal for hiring managers.

P.S. You ultimately did succeed in getting that signal, because you got them to change your grade using resourcefulness and persistence. Which are also important soft skills I want as a hiring manager. So overall I would say the system is working just fine.

[nekusar]

What you're saying is I should be happy to oblige corruption and sycophancy. Like hell, quite frankly.

This guy was teaching his own pet unsubstantiated 'theories' as a political science class. Anybody who argued or otherwise didn't agree with his garbage was flunked out, or attempted to be flunked.

People like that in areas of power, should hr held to a high standard, or fired from those roles. Same goes for hard-left AND hard-right propaganda. In my case, he was reviewed, and later dismissed. I'm sure I had a hand in his firing.

He was doing a great injustice to political science proper, and to all of his students. By definition, we didn't learn political science.

[LPisGood]

Frankly, I have never seen such ridiculous things. Having taught students have claimed similar things about professors and seen the exact opposite, I am hesitant to believe you. I have never in my life seen a professor unwilling to explain a grade or give helpful feedback, especially on an essay.

It sounds like you had a professor committing malpractice on the verge of being fired.

[throw94949499]

Friend told me that teacher followed neutral curriculum, but every five 5 minutes there was smugly inside joke about "rape culture" or "white man bad". Kind of like bad standup performance.

Try to bring up something factually correct like: cristian culture in 19th century UK abolished slavery worldwide, and you would get harassed and kicked out of school!

And you do not have to take my word on that, they proudly announce their values on website!

[hn_acker]

> Try to bring up something factually correct like: cristian culture in 19th century UK abolished slavery worldwide

Correction:

> cristian culture in 19th century UK

(mostly) got rid of (its own sector of) the worldwide slavery system created by... Christian culture in 15th century what-is-now UK, among other predominantly Christian countries.

[LPisGood]

> Try to bring up something factually correct like: cristian culture in 19th century UK abolished slavery worldwide, and you would get harassed and kicked out of school!

These are the sorts of things that are easy to say but just completely don’t hold water in any serious university setting. If you made this argument in a paper and properly cited sources and formed reasonable arguments based on the historical record I’m quite certain any historian, even a woke leftist atheist one, would happily give good marks.

[watwut]

The woke horrors of having take history and composition. Or art and reading. Or, OMG sociology!

Oh no! A class about culture or race or gender! Famously race dont matter, except when choosing military leaders.

[throw94949499]

Black History Month lectures at $100/hour. Amazing deal!

[watwut]

Imo, this inherent issue with learning about history of non-whites gives the game away. It is as if the history of blacks or women or whoever else was some kind of threat.

[nekusar]

Vouched for this.

When I worked in IT at a second-tier university (not Ivy), I saw some of the classes that passed for humanities. And you have profs who are legit teaching cited facts, and some who teach their political persuasion as facts.

BTW, depending on the school, the hard left/hard right flips. Schools of law, economics, engineering - are usually hard right.

Now its also an experience that conservatives in classes also perceive facts as 'wokeism'. Facts aren't woke, but damn, don't try to say that to them.

And lest to say, Marx did have cogent commentaries about universities regressing to STEM, since in a capitalist economy, the 'profit' is only measurable in how much you can help a capitalist produce. But people still freak out about even teaching Marxism fairly. (Howls of woke.)

What's hilarious is that for all the yelling of 'competition is great', capitalists are incapable and unwilling to compete with socialism and communism, and will do any dirty trick to NOT teach those.

[LPisGood]

> the hard left/hard right flips. Schools of law, economics, engineering - are usually hard right.

This is just objectively not true at all, accept in cases so specific that mentioning it as a general rule is misleading

[nekusar]

"Ur not true" is not objective in any way.

Counterpoint, I'm right. Look at figure 3.

https://www.independent.org/tir/2022-23-winter/the-hyperpoli...

[LPisGood]

It’s certainly the case that some departments are more to the right than the most progressive ones, but this is a far cry from what was described above - “hard right.”