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Good morning!
Since its founding in 1994, Princeton’s Western Humanities (HUM) Sequence has been designed to “introduce students to over 2,500 years of the landmark achievements of the Western Intellectual tradition,” according to the course website.
In this year’s iteration of HUM, changes to the syllabus mean that the authors now include only three women, one black man, and no black women on the syllabus, raising questions about the diversity and inclusivity of the HUM Sequence. The works removed from the syllabus include Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Complete Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, and A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft.
The tension between a class devoted to the Western canon and the desire to present a diverse array of authors has been covered in the 'Prince' in the past. In a 2021 column, former Opinion editor Mollika Singh highlighted the fact that Black students sometimes drop the course before the second semester. They noted "one of the central tensions of this course: it upholds the place in history of certain texts, writers, artists, and ideas that have been harmful to marginalized groups throughout history and still to this day without always providing a clear and necessary safe space to explore those ideas."
Faculty noted that the texts change term to term and some of the removed texts may return in future years.
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Analysis by Sidney Singer
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