Michigan State University students preparing to be educators themselves are required to take a course rife with divisive leftist racialism, screenshots and course materials obtained by Young America’s Foundation show.
The course is TE 101: “Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education,” worth three credits and considered “Required Teacher Preparation Coursework” by MSU. Notably, it is required for all focus areas within the school’s elementary and secondary education programs, even for students pursuing specialization in English, science, and mathematics education.
The course’s one required book, per the Fall 2025 syllabus reviewed by YAF, is We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teacher and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love.
For a hint at the biased content of the book, as well as the course, consider the following excerpt titled “WHITE WELLNESS” below:
“Whiteness cannot enter spaces focused on abolitionist teaching. Whiteness is addicted to centering itself, addicted to attention, and making everyone feel guilty for working toward its elimination. Whiteness will never allow true solidarity to take place. Those who cling to their Whiteness cannot participate in abolitionist teaching because they are a distraction, are unproductive, and will undermine freedom at every step, sometimes in the name of social justice. Being an abolitionist means you are ready to lose something, you are ready to let go of your privilege, you are ready to be in solidarity with dark people by recognizing your Whiteness in dark spaces, recognizing how it can take up space if unchecked, using your Whiteness in White spaces to advocate for and with dark people. And you understand that your White privilege allows you to take risks that dark people cannot take in the fight for educational justice.”
The syllabus for TE 101 — which includes a land acknowledgement that MSU “occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg” and other peoples — states that “Above all else, we will prioritize your health (both physical and emotional) and safety” during the semester.
“Additionally, we are also committed to the Guiding Principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards, and the principles of the Abolitionist Teaching Network,” the course’s “guiding frameworks” section explains.
The syllabus also says the mandatory course “explores the ways social inequalities, systems, and structures affect schooling” and has a focus “specifically on race and its intersections with other social identity markers, including gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, religion, and nationality.”
That is, it’s just another course created to indoctrinate the next generation — of teachers, in this case — with the Left’s radical and divisive theory of intersectionality.
Among the Left’s nefarious uses of its power in higher education, this is one of the most caustic: churning out class after class of leftist educators who perpetuate the radicalism they were force-fed for years by leftist professors who teach leftist curriculum while forcing strict adherence to leftist orthodoxy.
