Government Professor and keynote speaker Patrick Deneen criticized the University’s diversified curriculum at last Saturday’s second annual Take Back Georgetown Day, and proposed a return to a more classical curriculum, even as the History requirement changed the College’s general education requirements to include a more diverse range of courses.
“Students increasingly do not come equipped with a deep knowledge of American thought and its roots in the philosophical, literary, and religious traditions of the West,” he said. “Above all, students should be required to take a core set of courses which expect familiarity with the constitutive texts of the Western tradition – the great texts of Greece, Rome, the Bible, and its theological tradition, and the great literary and philosophical tests of the Renaissance.”
Conservative students founded the conference last year in response to a perceived liberal bias on campus. Deneen’s usage of “we” and “our” to indicate European ancestry may have applied to the audience on Saturday. Many members of the Georgetown community disagreed with his assumption. Simone Dyson (COL ‘10) disputed Deneen’s outlook.
“America isn’t defined by one people,” he said.
“I’m American. I’m half black, half Mexican. Culture’s never a simple thing and it can’t really be taught by a university.”
