Clemson University recently introduced a mandatory “social justice” requirement, which requires students to take classes on income inequality, sex and gender, and more.
The requirement stems from the school’s “expansion” of their criminal justice program, which has now been relabeled as “justice studies” to incorporate “ethics and diversity in the field of criminal justice.” Clemson University boasted that the social justice requirement “will more fully immerse students in the world of criminal justice…[and] address the increasingly complicated ethical and social issues facing law enforcement and criminal justice organizations today.”
Clemson argues that these issues are less related to crime, and more related to “how gender intersects with race, ethnicity, social class and sexuality,” according to “Sociology of Sex and Gender,” which is one of the classes students can take to fulfill the social justice requirement.
The university explained that social justice courses are “a key component in the design of the program…[Professors] and university leaders seek to produce justice studies graduates who see the importance of issues of ethics and diversity in the field of criminal justice.”
To further learn how to effectively fight crime, students can also take classes such as “Race and Ethnicity,” “Social Class and Poverty,” and “Women in the Developing World,” in addition to many others.
Mitchell Gunter, a conservative student at Clemson, told Red Alert Politics, “Studies related to criminal justice should not incorporate heavily politicized rhetoric from often dubious sources in the media. Criminal justice studies should pertain to the law and its subsequent enforcement.”
