Requirements that Universities of Wisconsin students take an ethnic or cultural studies class would be eliminated under a UW proposal to redesign general educational curriculum, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
The aim of UW system administrators is to standardize general education requirements to comply with reforms approved during the biennial budget negotiations, which seek to ease the process for students to transfer credits between UW’s 13 universities.
Critics of the change among students and faculty equated the proposed elimination of the ethnic studies requirement with erasing part of history.
The proposal also follows Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s July announcement of the shuttering of UW-Madison’s diversity, equity and inclusion office, and the recent decision to close the equity and well-being department of its human resources office.
