The College Fix

‘Why It’s OK to be Fat’ author teaches ‘Philosophy of Oppression’ class

A University of Alabama course looks at the “Philosophy of Oppression,” which includes “racism, sexism, and sizism.”

The course description for Philosophy 430 also says students will “consider questions of responsibility” for “victims of oppression…to resist the oppressive circumstances they face.”

Part of this opposition to “oppression” might include “civil disobedience.” These are some of the “questions” that will be considered, according to the course description.

Other questions include “what does it mean to belong to a certain race, or to be a man or woman.”

The course is not currently listed this semester; however, Professor Rekha Nath taught it in the most recent semester.

She initially expressed interest on Jan. 13 in responding to questions about defining sizism, alternatively spelled as “sizeism,” “civil disobedience,” and what the professor wanted students to learn in the class. However, after The College Fix provided more information about the article as requested, Nath stopped responding.

Nath, the author of a book called “Why It’s OK to Be Fat,” did not respond to two follow-up emails in the past two weeks.

According to her faculty bio, Professor Nath “specializes in social and political philosophy,” publishing on “global justice, equality, and responsibility.”

The university’s media director Deidre Simmons did not respond to requests for comment.

The Fix reached out to Simmons twice via email, requesting a copy of the syllabus, further information on how this course fits in with the university’s general mission, and possible concerns that identity classes like this might draw scrutiny from Republican lawmakers. She did not respond to the requests sent in the past several weeks.

In 2024, the state passed a law banning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices and protecting women from men using sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms. The legislation also restricted the teaching of “divisive concepts” in K-12.

A political scientist who has studied DEI problems at red state universities, including University of Alabama, criticized the course in emailed comments to The Fix.

Professor Scott Yenor said DEI can come into universities from the “top,” such as from administrators or “bottom up from the faculty, whose disciplines are infected with critical theories.”

“Alabama’s DEI ban concerns, mostly top-down administrative matters,” the Boise State University professor said, referencing “trainings, DEI statements, hiring practices, admission practices.”

“This philosophy class is an example of a discipline with woke leanings or infested with wokeness,” he said.

Yenor said the “only way to really get at such classes is to go after programs that are not consistent with the University’s mission as the legislature understands it.”

He said the legislature could remove classes like this by “revisiting the mission” of the university to “not only to state what it is about positively, but also to state what it is not about.”

Other universities in Republican strongholds also offer courses focused on racial, sexual, or other identity politics.

For example, Purdue University in Indiana offers a geographic information system course that uses critical race theory.

The course, as recently reported by The Fix, “will provide students with a critical overview of the role power, culture, justice and injustice, and oppression have played in the practice and history of cartography.”

Students will also learn about “critical theories of race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, class, ability, colonialism, and the State” and how “maps can expose and resist oppression and inequality.”

MORE: UMich ‘dismantling oppression’ program takes just 12 hours

IMAGES: University of Alabama; Ivan4es / Shutterstock.com

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