RALEIGH—This month’s selection for Course of the Month comes courtesy of a tip in NoIndoctrination.org, a web site devoted to the passé idea of open inquiry in academe. It is an introductory sociology course offered at Elon University:

SOC 111 INTRODUCTORY SOCIOLOGY

This course provides an introduction to basic theoretical principles and research methods of modern sociology, including such issues as the relationship between culture, personality and society; the fundamental forms of social structure; social institutions such as religion and the family; and social processes such as deviance and social change.

The particular section of SOC 111 discussed on NoIndoctrination.org is the “Honors” section taught by Professor Angela Lewellyn Jones. The student reporting on the class said Jones was intolerant of dissent within the class from her strident feminism. Jones “declared her status as a feminist numerous times in class,” spoke of “her disdain for male success,” and stated that prohibiting abortion is a sexist act since it takes away a woman’s right to correct a ‘mistake’ and forces the female to be confined to the shackles of motherhood.”

The course reading material was as unbalanced as the lectures. It included “readings on Marx and communism,” and “all reading held pro-feminism, anti-government, pro-choice diatribes,” the student wrote. “Not a single reading was balanced by a different perspective.”

In her lectures, the student wrote, she never mentioned “non-feminists” except to “dehumanize” them or call them “Philistines.” She would curtail class discussion “contrary to her own views,” and if students pressed forward regardless, “she would snap at them in very unprofessional manner.”

Students who voiced opinions contrary to Jones’s were “ridiculed for their opinions and later ignored or silenced.” In one incident, the student wrote, “a friend of mine dropped the course around midterm because of Jones’s unfair treatment of him. When someone in the class asked about him a few weeks later, Dr. Jones told the class that he just wasn’t smart enough to handle the demands of the course.”

According to the student, dissent in Jones’s class was met by more than ridicule:

Any student who voiced contrary opinion was not only subjected to having everything they said in class dissected under a microscope and negated, but having their grade lowered significantly. On numerous occasions, dissident students would meet outside of class and discuss how their grades drastically changed on assignments the week after expressing opinions. Since the grading in the class was all subjective (no objective tests), such grade drops alarmed these “Honors” students whose status in the honors program depended on success in the class. As a result numerous students quelled their opinions for grades sake, including myself.

In short, “what I learned in the class,” the student wrote, “was that men are all oppressors, African-Americans cannot stand on their own feet and need government handouts to survive, and such problems were not meant to be discussed by different parties because dissenters aren’t thinking in a ‘sociologically mindful’ manner and are ill-informed.”

Jon Sanders is an assistant editor at Carolina Journal.