English students at Yale University have launched a petition calling on English professors, lecturers and instructors to get rid of a core course requirement that seeks enrollees to study writers like Milton and Shakespeare.
The undergraduates of the Ivy League university have argued that a prestigious institution like Yale University should "decolonize" and not limit readings to "white male authors," The Guardian reported.
This, after Adriane Miele, a writer for the college publication Yale Daily News, wrote a scathing column criticizing the promotion of literary work that "actively oppresses and marginalize non-white, non-male, trans and queer people."
The classes for English majors include writers like T.S. Eliot, Alexander Pope, Edmund Spenser and Geoffrey Chaucer. While, the aforementioned names have had a profound effect on the current state of literature in the world, students also think that Yale should not foster "a culture that is hostile to students of color."
The campaign has elicited a variety of reactions from teachers and alumni of the department. Professor Jill Richards has conceded that two semesters of white male poets is "unacceptable" and that changes should be made in the curriculum soon to accommodate the development.
However, Katy Walman, a English literature graduate of the Connecticut University, wrote a think piece for Slate criticizing the protest for suggesting that students no longer need to learn from dead white poets. Though she acknowledged that the lack of opportunity for people of diverse race, class, gender and sexuality in the past was a "tremendous injustice," she also said that the current course makeup only reflects the "tainted history" of literature, a big part of which was dominated by "straight white cis-men."
Another prominent issue critics of the campaign raise is the fact that there are not enough early modern writers who are gay, transgender or in the minority, Reason reported.
