UCSC students salivate at the opportunity to protest. Be it tuition hikes, education cuts, “The 1%,” etc., yet they for some reason ignore the fact that the academic departments on campus fail to execute their primary obligation: to educate. The Feminist Studies Department isn’t academic in the slightest, rather it’s a political indoctrination program run by radical feminists seeking to propagate their own sectarian ideals. Classes are designed solely for the advancement of political agendas, not providing quality education as the UC Regents have identified as a moral and contractual relationship between the University and its students. Below are four examples of academic malpractice within the Feminist Studies Department:

1) Feminist Studies 1-An Introduction: Architect of the Feminist Studies Department, Bettina Aptheker, wrote in her 2006 autobiography Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought For Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel that she redesigned the “Introduction to Feminism” course, “making it more overtly political, and taught the class in the context of the women’s movement.” In her own admission, Professor Aptheker claims that this course isn’t academic, it is instead purely political and violates the UC Regents Policy on Course Content which states, “Misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination…constitutes misuse of the University as an institution.”

2) Angela Davis: Albeit then California governor Ronald Reagan requested in 1969 that she should be prohibited from teaching again within the University of California system because of her affiliation with the Communist Party USA in addition to being the third woman placed on the F.B.I.’s list of 10 most-wanted fugitives for charges of murder and kidnapping, the Feminist Studies Department has granted Angela Davis the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita. Miss Davis has yet to have produced anything remotely academic that isn’t entirely Marxist in over four decades as an “educator.”

3) The Social Construction of Gender: A number of courses within the Feminist Studies Department introduce the theory of the social construction of gender, which suggests that society determines behavioral differences between men and women regardless of biological factors. This theory is taught as if it were scientific fact based off extensive empirical evidence.

4) Feminist Studies 20-Feminism and Social Justice: According to the course’s syllabus, students enrolled in FMST 20, “will examine and critically analyze select post-World War II movements for social justice…from feminist perspectives.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this course is strictly examined from “feminist perspectives” given that its instructor, Bettina Aptheker, has dedicated her career to perpetuating her own one-sided radical feminist perspectives. Nonetheless, it is her obligation as a professor to facilitate an academic environment that allows for students to come to their own conclusions.

The next time students decide to cause tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damages vandalizing the university protesting tuition hikes; they should consider the billions of dollars the University of California receives annually from taxpayers to fund academic departments that fail to comply with the UC Regents Policy on Course Content. However, that would require logic on the students’ behalf.