TOW #23 "Getting A Degree in Victimhood" excerpt

     In 2011, UCLA altered its requirements for English majors. Instead of being required to take courses on Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, English majors must take a total of three classes in classes like: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies. Victoria Mac Donald, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, is outraged at this curriculum change, and notes how it exemplifies just how obsessed our society is becoming with "victimhood". Especially in schools, we have been focusing too much on the oppression of the past, and the circumstances of certain people rather than the great work they have produced. In her article"Getting a Degree in Victimhood" Mac Donald use negative diction and testimonial to condemn UCLA for focusing too much on victimhood rather than the more important aspects of the humanities.
     Mac Donald is not shy about using extremely negative words to attack UCLA's decision to change their curriculum. She writes, that "Course catalogs today babble monotonously of group identity" and "The UCLA coup represents the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics.". With negative words like "babble monotonously", "narcissism", "shallow categories", the author talks about the change in an extremely derogatory way, belittle the board at UCLA and their decision. The audience gets a feeling about just how foolish their decision to change the curriculum was, as well as the ridiculousness of the movement in education that it is reflecting. Thus with her negative diction Mac Donald condemns UCLA.
       Mac Donald also uses testimonial to show UCLA's mistake in the ciriculum change, by quotes W.E.B. Du Bois. She quotes him saying: "Du Bois, living during America's darkest period of hate, nevertheless heartbreakingly affirmed in 1903 his intellectual and spiritual affinity with all of Western civilization: "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas. . . . I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension." With the inclusion of this quote, Mac Donald asserts that UCLA's decision is not only foolish, but unnecessary. If they are doing out of a case of white guilt, well even prominent African-American rights leader, during a times of segregation no less, advocated the merit in these writers. Quoting Du Bois gives Mac Donald's argument more backing, helping her condemn UCLA.
      Mac Donald's article explores a very interesting trend in education, one that she is not happy about. Her discontent is evident throughout her article with her use of negative diction and testimonial. 



Shakespeare=Empire?