A report from The College Fix notes that a political theory course offered at Ithaca College in New York this semester intends to teach students “about Abortion Bans, Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation, and more from an Intersectional Feminist Lens,” according to an entry posted on the college’s Intercom online bulletin board by the course’s instructor.
Screenshot: Online Intercom Bulletin Board – Ithaca College
The bulletin board post asks in the first line, “How should we interpret and resist abortion bans and anti-LGBTQ legislation?…” (emphasis added).
The College Fix author Jeannie Yuen writes that though the course began with 13 students enrolled out of 20 available spaces, three students have apparently dropped the course:
At least three students have dropped from the course in the past two weeks – there are now 10 students enrolled as of Feb. 5. When The College Fix first looked on Jan. 22 there were thirteen students enrolled out of twenty seats.
Professor Sumru Atuk, who teaches the course, did not respond to multiple requests for information via email through voicemail in the past several weeks. The Fix asked for the course’s syllabus and about the specific pressing issues the course will cover.
Professor Atuk “researches femicide/feminicide in Turkey and Mexico” and “institutional dimensions of gender-based violence, feminist theory, modern and contemporary political theory, theories of biopower, and digital political participation,” according to her personal website.
Oddly, the course’s actual description as shown on the college’s course registration site mentions neither abortion nor “abortion bans” — and certainly nothing about learning “how to resist abortion bans.” Only the online bulletin board entry, posted by Professor Atuk, mentions the inclusion of abortion-related material in the course (see the course catalog image provided by The College Fix below).
The course registration entry states nothing about activism being part of the course at all. It simply mentions that the course “discusses theories pertaining to the subjugation of women…” along with other topics, and is “a study of feminist ideology” that will discuss “key questions” and “develop a synthesis of much of the literature… to compare the contemporary women’s movement with historical forms of women’s struggle.”
This description seems a far cry from learning how to resist an “abortion ban.”
Photo of Ithaca College Feminist Theory class: The College Fix
Many college campuses have unfortunately become echo chambers for pro-abortion ideology instead of halls of true learning, and the hostility of some college professors is a glaring reminder of this.
In 2023, a professor at the University of Albany, also in New York, was arrested for disrupting a pro-life display on campus, unplugging a large LED display. As she was arrested, students shouted vulgarities at the police.
In 2017, a professor at Fresno State University encouraged students to erase chalked pro-life messages that had been written on campus sidewalks by students from the university’s pro-life campus group, for which the pro-life group had obtained permission. The professor allegedly told students, “College campuses are not free speech areas.”
As Live Action News also noted in 2023, pro-lifers have faced a great deal of opposition on college campuses:
… A student threw urine on pro-life demonstrators at the College of William and Mary [in 2022]. Students working with Students for Life of America were also told to kill themselves at the University of Missouri [in 2022]. And yet another group of students at the University of Iowa was attacked at a student engagement fair around the same time as the Missouri incident.
Just last month [in April 2023], pro-abortion students attacked pro-life students with eggs at the University of Arizona, and in March, students and apparent Antifa members grew so disruptive and threatening at Virginia Commonwealth University that SFLA president Kristan Hawkins was prevented from speaking or even taking audience questions and was escorted out for her protection.
A study of the political landscape of abortion in a college classroom seems appropriate; however, using the classroom to teach students how to “resist abortion bans” seems to have little to do with education and everything to do with activism.
