As someone who tried to be an English major for a few semesters, I can tell you that most English departments have pointedly abandoned concepts like ‘literary merit’ and ‘the Western canon’ in favor of ones like ‘diversity’ and ‘social awareness.’

That summer reading lists only continue to harp on such doctrines instead of actually teaching students about literature will come as no surprise to many.

Stephen Edwards at The College Fix writes:

Summer Reading Lists and Indoctrination – One And The Same

OPINION
The news media have portrayed a recent dispute over summer-reading requirements at colleges in South Carolina as a debate over academic freedom and political censorship. Lost in the outcry is the fact that academics are shirking their responsibility to teach their students.

The University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg assigned Out Loud, a collection of stories and essays gathered from an LGBT radio program based in Columbia. As a part its College Reads! summer reading program, The College of Charleston assigned Fun Home, a graphic novel about the author’s experiences with her gay father and the realization of her own homosexuality.

After the schools refused to select different books, or allow students an opportunity to select an alternative book if they objected to the books’ content, the Legislature approved a budget that cut public funding for the reading programs. The cuts amounted to $52,000 at The College of Charleston and $17,142 at USC Upstate.

Eventually, the funding was restored by lawmakers on the condition that the money be used to follow a state law requirement to teach students the “principles of the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers, including the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals.”

By now, incoming freshmen at both schools have read the gay-themed books and moved on with their lives. The temptation will be to let this controversy subside like so many others. But before it is lost in the popular memory, this issue can tell us a great deal about academia and its biases.

Choosing Fun Home and Out Loud for summer reading programs reveals that institutions of higher learning are all too willing to privilege a political agenda over what one would assume is their inherent purpose: educating students.

While the outcome in South Carolina may be viewed as a victory, it is not an ultimate solution to the underlying problem – that many academics see summer reading programs as opportunities to present a single side of an issue in the hope that students will come away with the same political ideas they have.