Georgetown University has approved a new “Pathways to Social Justice” requirement for students that teaches, among other things, the school’s role in racism and the history of slavery.
Next semester, undergraduates will be required to take a one-credit seminar, “Race Power and Justice at Georgetown,” as well as two other courses that meet the “pathways” requirement. These courses include “Business Arabic” and “Environmental Justice,” according to Campus Reform.
The subcommittee’s approved proposal notes that the “Race Power and Justice” seminar “will teach the history of slavery of people of African descent in Georgetown and how that history intersects with national and global experiences of slavery and emancipation, settler colonialism, imperialism and contemporary struggles for justice.”
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Georgetown University and the Key Bridge outside of Washington, DC (Beklaus via Getty Images)
The course will also “develop a common vocabulary for all Georgetown students to continue to engage in conversations about racial equity and justice and should be taken in first or second year.”
The new requirement will replace the existing core educational requirement “Engage Diversity” which has been in place since 2016.
Biology professor Heidi Elmendorf, who sits on the subcommittee, said the changes were made to balance historical and modern perspectives.
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White-Gravenor Hall at Georgetown University in Washington DC (Oleg Albinsky via Getty Images)
“Part of that was tackling issues of structural inequalities of power and privilege rather than relying too singularly on diversity as a stand-alone concept. And part of that was looking at our own world – including Georgetown – when we look at these issues rather than always looking elsewhere,” she added.
Subcommittee members also noted that changes had been made to remove confusion about what counts as “domestic” and “global” courses to meet the requirement. The new system aims to streamline the process and limit the number of courses under the umbrella to meet the baseline requirement.
To be counted as a pathways course, faculty will need to demonstrate how their class meets three of the five learning objectives: inclusive scholarship, intersectional approaches to identity, historical legacies of inequality and their contemporary impacts, imagining national, regional and global justice and comparisons.
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Prospective students visit the Georgetown University campus, where tuition is $60,000 per year. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Speaking to The Hoya, the subcommittee’s student co-chair Amanda Yen said the new requirement will interrogate “structures of power, privilege and oppression” rather than simply recognizing the “plurality of human experiences”. .
The university’s main campus executive faculty approved the changes, which will take effect in the fall, beginning with the class of 2027.
In October, Georgetown established an annual $400,000 “reconciliation fund,” a form of reparations to be used in community projects to positively impact the descendants of men, women and children enslaved on the plantation. Maryland Jesuit.
The fund began as a student-led proposal to atone for the sale of 272 slaves in 1838, organized by two Jesuits to keep the university afloat. Georgetown has memorialized those sold and now offers admission preference to their descendants, but has not yet offered financial reparations.
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Georgetown University did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.