I was helping my Fulbrighter select courses for this semester, and it’s shocking. There are no courses. A lot of intro stuff but that’s it. I never come in contact with other departments’ offerings, so I didn’t know how dire things were.
Nobody is filling the vacated tenure lines, so there’s nobody to teach. I felt embarrassed. In the end, I set her up with courses at my own department but her contract specifies that she must take a course in something related to US culture, and there’s nothing. US-related stuff is limited to African Americans and immigrants. We tried history, English, political science. Bupkes. The Fulbrighter is from Ukraine, and if there’s one thing that’s not in short supply in Ukraine, it’s college courses about the country, its people, history, literature, culture.
The only course we found on US politics is titled “Political Scandals in the US.” In history, there’s nothing about independence, the Vietnam War, or anything at all.
It’s embarrassing, is what this is.
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