George, I have to ask:
Could there be a more emblematic example of the problems with American higher education ? with its glut of worthless degree programs, grade inflation, student- and TA-led “instruction,” professors off researching bizarre and irrelevant subjects to fulfill the publish-or-perish creed, narcissistic “studies” courses and departments, and those “everyone gets an A+” politicized courses and departments being justified for stimulating “critical thinking,” rapidly rising college costs to students and taxpayers, and administrators shrieking that “there’s nothing left to cut” when tax revenues disappoint budget writers ? than Fatness Studies?
Surely any course or discipline described as a “subject[] pursued primarily by activists” ought to receive an immediate and irrevocable NO from university administrations.
Also, I admit further perplexion over the blitheness with which Disability Studies is now dropped in an article. Naif that I still am in matters of college “subjects pursued primarily by activists,” when I first heard of the idea, I thought it was a parody of such subjects.
Alas, I was forgetting Cordato’s Law. Meanwhile, the Chronicle reporter was forgetting Working Class Studies.