The Rice University Course Catalogue:
CHEM 125 – AFROCHEMISTRY
Long Title: AFROCHEMISTRY: THE STUDY OF BLACK-LIFE MATTER
Department: Chemistry
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Language of Instruction: Taught in English
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Level(s): Undergraduate Professional,Visiting Undergraduate, Undergraduate
Description: Students will apply chemical tools and analysis to understand Black life in the U.S. and students will implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry. Diverse historical and contemporary scientists, intellectuals, and chemical discoveries will inform personal reflections and proposals for addressing inequities in chemistry and chemical education. This course will be accessible to students from a variety of backgrounds including STEM and non-STEM disciplines. No prior knowledge of chemistry or African American studies is required for engagement in this course.
“Black life-matter!” Get it?
_________________
Pointer: Stephen Greene
Ethics Alarms 
This sounds like a completely absurd Babylon Bee stories that progressives thought was a good idea so they made it happen.
Oh. Bloody. Hell.
Maybe it’s a trap. If a student is silly enough to waste a semester on a course with that description, the school retroactively rejects him or her. Or transfers them to Harvard….
That is funny because a number of the Rice Chemistry faculty were denied tenure at Harvard. Harvard denied tenure to almost every chemistry professor from the early 1970’s until the late 1990’s. They used the most promising young faculty in the country working on the hottest areas to get a multitude of publications for Harvard. After the faculty had worked themselves half to death for 7 years, Harvard dumped them for the hottest young faculty working in the CURRENT hottest areas. Rinse and repeat. Rice hired quite a few of these ‘rejects’.
This must be a course at Brown Rice University.
See, this proves I’m slowing down. Time was when you would have never had a chance to make that joke…
I blame my illness on continued exposure to Mystery Science Theater 3000. As an aside, I see several of my recent comments have been rather trivial, much like this one. I will work to be more substantive in what I write.
I’m making soup with black rice tomorrow. Not sure if that makes me racist, woke, or just ready to teach chemistry a couple hours south of here.
Crazy as it seems, but there is, in fact, a Brown Rice University – the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University. I know, I know . . .
As for Rice University, I wouldn’t be surprised if this course is dig at DIE initiatives. Remember, Rice University is a private university in Houston (and quite frankly, has one of the most beautiful campuses I have been on – I studied for the Texas Bar Exam at Rice’s library because the intensity level at my law school’s library was, to say the least, psychotic). While trends liberal, it has a contrarian culture that is something to behold.
Rice has a long history of taking pot shots are current/culture event. For instance, Rice does not have a marching band playing at sports events. They have The Mob, which consists of students in the Rice music program (again, phenomenal). They perform at halftime.
As luck would have it, a few years ago, Rice hosted Texas A&M, which fancies itself a football powerhouse with a long tradition of winning football teams (12th Man, and all that . . .)(disclaimer: our son is a second year sophomore at A&M and considers himself a -2 percenter). The Mob likes to play the host’s theme song during its show, often times poking fun at it. Most guest teams chuckle and move on to the next quarter. Well, The Mob thought that A&M should be taken down a peg or two so The Mob played the A&M theme song, only fully transcribing and playing it backwards. Aggies were aghast at the indignity. Rice students, though, thought it was hilarious. I did, too.
Rice engineering and architect students also caused a bit of a campus ruckus when they turned William Rice’s statue around in Quad, under the watchful eyes of everyone, only then for the administration to display disdain for young adult high jinks.
So, this course might just be something students made up and posted on the school’s website as an approved course just see what would happen. I hope so. That would be awesome.
jvb
I could see the department being mandated to include more ‘DIE’ material in their department and put this course in. This could be like the time a University President ordered every faculty member to put some mechanism in their course to keep the students from skipping class and send a report on it to the President. One professor changed his grading scheme to 3 unannounced exams (each worth 25% of the grade) and a final worth 25% of the grade. He waited until about 1/3 of the way through the semester, to a nice Monday when a large number of students were missing (about 200) and gave the first exam. The students threw a fit, and to protest, they swore to skip class on Wednesday, too. The professor heard about it and gave the same exam on Wednesday (counting as the second exam). So, 200+ people just got 0 for 50% of the course and had to withdraw. The president called the professor, screaming at him for doing such a thing. The professor replied “Why are you yelling at me, YOU are the one that mandated this. I sent you the plan and you said nothing about it. “
Heh, I love the Aggie War Hymn as a song (no idea what the lyrics are). But a band having the ingenuity to play it backwards? Yeah, that’s hilarious.
When I was in the marching band in college, we had our own versions of our leading rival’s fight song. Need I say that the lyrics were not fit to print? Not to mention singing it in 3/4 time, which just added to the indignity.
I should add that I really love the music for a number of college fight songs, including A&M, Oklahoma, Michigan, MSU to name a few. Then there’s Sousa, oh my.
so much depends
upon
a profound
hyphen
positioned
about
black life and
matters
Language of Instruction: Taught in English
Wot? Use that imperialist colonizer’s language? Why not teach this course in Jive or Eubonics?
I would love to see a class listed as being taught in ‘Jive’. How about a course on General Relativity?
But wait. There’s more. A Princeton PhD in Chemistry who gets hired by the DEI cabal who is “passionate about the intersection of science and social justice.”
Source: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/11/04/more-on-the-ideological-erosion-of-science/
Well, it certainly appears that she’s qualified to teach this course.
Shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone:
https://chemistry.princeton.edu/news/grad-student-qa-brooke-johnson/
Well, there goes my theory.
jvb
But.. But that man in the picture there doesn’t have an afro. So how could this be afrochemistry?