Here it comes: 'Obesity Studies' in 'higher' education
Victimhood is now so socially and psychologically desirable that sooner or later, everyone[i] will be a member of one or more victim groups.
A key step in the legitimization of victim status is recognition in academia, through the creation of "XYZ studies" courses at first, and later on recognition as a major, a department, and eventually graduate degrees, so that newly minted professors can be sown like seeds in the soil of academe. "African-American studies" was the first and largest example, with departments, majors, and graduate degrees all over the nation. But now we have something new, via Dan Jackson of Campus Reform:
Oregon State University will offer a spring course on "fat studies" in order to teach students how "weight-based oppression" is a "social justice issue."
According to a syllabus for the course obtained by Campus Reform, students will examine "body weight, shape, and size as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and ability."
Given the "obesity epidemic" that obsesses progressive bullies, there are a lot of obese people on campus, as throughout society. They no doubt feel very bad about their unhealthy condition, and now they will offered a chance to blame others. If enrollments soar, there will be a demand for faculty to teach courses.
Instead of rigorous thought, too many campuses have focused on therapeutic treatment of emotional disturbances, with the "safe spaces" and other limits on free expression.
[i] Rather than producing any semblance of equality, this would only lead to endless litigation over who has the greatest degree of victimhood.