During the past few decades, so-called “identity studies” programs — such as women’s studies and black studies — have proliferated in American colleges, with extraordinarily deleterious consequences.

Why deleterious? Because, as I discuss at length in my book The Victims’ Revolution, which is about to be published in paperback, they’re not about education — they’re about indoctrination. It need not be this way. Women’s studies, for example, might profitably examine, in a scholarly and dispassionate way, the roles and contributions of women in various cultures; black studies might cover the history of Africans and of the African diaspora, with serious courses on, say, black American literature, a corpus that is at least the equal of many national literatures.

But that’s not what “identity studies” is about. Instead of introducing students to high culture, to complex ideas, and to aspects of the world previously unknown to them, these programs encourage narcissistic navel-gazing and lockstep thinking. They teach students to view themselves and others not as unique individuals with minds of their own but as members of groups — groups of either victims or victimizers — and to see group victimization all around them, in every nook and cranny of their lives.

Consequently, these programs breed resentment and division and a feeling of impotence in kids who, during their college years, should instead be pumped full of excitement, ambition, and hope. Moreover, the programs eat up valuable time that could be better spent learning math, science, history, geography, and other traditional subjects — in which today’s college students are doing far, far worse than previous generations.