Analyzing millions of college syllabi, the authors find courses on contentious issues overwhelmingly assign ideologically aligned texts while rarely pairing them with prominent critiques. Example: Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow is ubiquitous, yet James Forman Jr.’s Pulitzer‑winning counterpoint appears with it in under 4% of syllabi, and other critics even less, keeping total counter‑assignments under ~10%.
— If classrooms systematically shield students from major disagreements, it challenges universities’ claims to intellectual diversity and informs concrete curriculum and governance reforms.
msmash
2026.01.06
55% relevant
By reporting that schools favor excerpts and anthology products over whole books, the article points to how syllabus design and vendorized curricula compress literary exposure and may narrow the range and depth of texts students encounter—an instantiation of how classroom materials gate which ideas reach students.
Jon A. Shields
2025.10.16
100% relevant
The study’s co‑assignment rates (Forman <4%; Fortner <2%) with The New Jim Crow drawn from a large syllabi database.
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