The class offered this semester at Yale University is called "No Time for Tears: Friendships Between Black Women and White Women." The syllabus states the course will look at if these friendships can form an "equal footing" and if they can be "unfettered by the trappings of quid pro quo transactions." It even asks the question of if these relationships are "even possible."
The course also requires instructor permission to register – something The College Fix's Matt Lamb considers another negative.
"The course has been offered before, but this Yale course is exploring if black and white women can be friends – and it appears by the title to suggest that they can't, or it's not an obvious answer that they can," he tells AFN.
The 'Taylor Swift Era'
Lamb says unfortunately, his team has seen plenty of courses like this at Yale and other universities. He offered as an example Harvard, which offers a course about the political philosophy of singer/songwriter Beyoncé. It turns out she's not the only entertainer who is inspiring educational trends at U.S. colleges and universities.
According to BestColleges.com, numerous institutes of higher education have bought into the popularity of singer/entertainer Taylor Swift, offering such courses as "The Last Great American Songwriter: Storytelling with Taylor Swift Through the Eras" (Stanford University); "Ms. Americana: Taylor Swift on Ethics and Society" (Brigham Young University); and "Taylor Swift and Her World" (Harvard University).
And USA Today reported in mid-2023 that Swift's songbook is now required reading for some college courses.
"A lot of times, these universities will offer these wild courses, [then] some politician will criticize them, and they'll complain that 'higher education is under attack,'" Lamb explains.
"Yale's a private university, so it's not like the state's going to stop the course," he continues. "But this is just another reason why people don't like higher education, why there's an increased interest in apprenticeships and trade schools, and why a lot of universities are losing the trust of the American public."
