Student ‘completely shocked’ by essay prompt deeming Taliban ‘not a terrorist group’
Penn State University student Kylie Stone on woke professor making students defend the Taliban.
A Penn State University student said Friday she was "completely shocked" by an essay prompt deeming the Taliban "not a terrorist group."
"I was completely shocked. I had made it through my first four years of college without having anything this insane and, of course, my last semester my teacher basically says you have to agree with me or I’m going to fail you. So it was very surprising to me," Kylie Stone told "Fox & Friends."
Stone, also a social media producer at Turning Point USA, called out the assignment from Christopher Cook, a professor of international politics at Penn State Online World Campus.
US AFGHANISTAN AID GOING DIRECTLY TO TALIBAN, NONPROFITS WARN
Cook had been teaching that the Taliban is not, and never has been a terrorist group, according to the most recent addition to TPUSA’s "Professor Watchlist."
Taliban fighters pose for photograph in Wazir Akbar Khan in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. The Taliban declared an "amnesty" across Afghanistan and urged women to join their government. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
In Cook's "Politics of Terrorism" class, he began the fall semester with an assignment for students to write an essay with the prompt: "Explain why the Taliban are not Terrorists." The assignment instructions said that the essay had to be "one page" and that students were not allowed to answer the question in "any other way."
The prompt said further, "Any attempt to avoid this prompt as written; or trying to argue otherwise will result in a failing grade. If you have any questions on the pedagogy behind this assignment– please contact me."
Cook previously tweeted a statement to back up his argument that the Taliban are not terrorists.
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"First I was like am I overreacting?" Stone recalled.
"I work at Turning Point USA so I went in, and I sat down with the ‘professor watchlist’ people. And they started looking into everything and they found his Twitter account as well and everyone was like ‘you are not insane. This is not okay to be asking a student to write this,’" Stone said.
She said the essay prompt was completely inappropriate and she's since left the class.
"I have had assignments where they asked me to argue both sides. I love doing that kind of stuff. I think it’s so beneficial to every student to be doing that but that’s not what this assignment was," she told Brian Kilmeade.
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