Professor suspended over Black Lives Matter comment
Grand Canyon University says statement was offensive
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, a professor at San Diego State University (SDSU) has helped the school create new course for the upcoming semester that has drawn criticism for including speakers from a movement whose members have been blamed for inciting violence.
The weekly course, called "Black Minds Matter: A Focus on Black Boys and Men in Education,” will be open to the public for enrollment in October and will feature various speakers who will talk about how black men are undervalued in the classroom.
San Diego State professor J. Luke Wood, who helped create the online course, said it will connect themes from the Black Lives Matter movement to issues facing blacks in educational settings.
Craig DeLuz, a gun-rights advocate with the Sacramento-based Firearms Policy Coalition, says that a public university should not be offering a course that includes speakers from the BLM movement.
DeLuz has formed a coalition which is demanding that SDSU withdraw their approval of the doctoral level course because it likely aims to organize teachers, school administrators and college professors to engage in the political movement.
“Black Lives Matter is political movement. And even worse, it’s movement whose members have promoted segregation and violence against law enforcement”, said DeLuz, who is also a Sacramento area school board member, in a released statement. “Now we want to give them taxpayer dollars to train educators on how to indoctrinate our children? That’s insane!”
Wood himself has even mentioned that the intent of the course is to promote activism.
“We now have over 80 live broadcast and replay sites at schools, colleges, universities, and community centers throughout the nation,” he says in a recent Facebook post.
“The Black Lives movement comes to the classroom via our doctoral class (livestreamed for the general public) instructing school and college leaders on how to prepare, educate, and mobilize their educators.”
The “Black Minds Matter” course will include presentations from left-wing figures like Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, and Malcolm X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz.
DeLuz says that course is a double standard when it comes to political ideologies and activism on college campuses.
“Conservative students have to fight universities tooth and nail to get conservatives approved to speak on most campuses”, DeLuz said in his released statement. “But liberal speakers are not only getting funded to push a political ideology, the students who come to hear them can get college credit.”
“How is that fair?”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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