Virginia is a very purple state, evenly divided between conservatives and liberals, but its universities are not equally balanced ideologically.
A simple way to gauge how “woke” universities are is to search for certain terms in their course catalogs. The more “woke” words that appear in the titles and descriptions of courses and programs, the more left-leaning the university is likely to be.
Harry R. Lewis, a computer science professor and former dean of Harvard College, recently did this to demonstrate how radical Harvard had become. Terms like “social justice,” “decolonization” and “oppression” have become ubiquitous in its course catalog.
Replicating Lewis’ approach for the 15 public universities in Virginia reveals some unexpected patterns.
The term “social justice” appears 72 times in the course catalog of James Madison University, 59…
