When I first came to Kenyon College, I was ready to declare a political science major. I had been very interested in politics for a long time and the idea of taking a class called Quest for Justice was really exciting to me. However, before the end of my first semester, I knew that this was neither the class nor the major for me.
Quest for Justice is a fallacy of a name. The class fails to truly be a quest for justice as the curriculum is so limited in its political perspectives. It fails to include a non-Western political philosopher’s perspective and features few women or philosophers of color. I do not regret taking the class, because it did allow me to become a better orator, writer and international studies major, but the course needs a major curriculum shift. It fails to meet the goal of creating thinkers that can understand what justice is.
Quest for Justice is advertised as a class that showcases readings from “diverse viewpoints.” However, for the first semester of the course, we spent the whole time studying only philosophers of the Western canon, reading only one philosopher of color and no women. The majority of that time focused on ancient Greek philosophers. I take no issue with reading such texts, as they largely inform the backbone of democracies around the world today. However, spending so much time on the Greeks does not allow for the course to look at much else.
After moving on from Greece, the course then talks about the creation of liberal democracy, ending the semester with discussions on the founding of the United States and slavery. At least we got to read a philosopher of color. Women are discussed very little the first semester, and their perspectives are never brought up. As a woman and as a person of color, this told me that the white man’s perspective was the most important political perspective.
The second semester’s curriculum was significantly better, but it still had its flaws. The semester includes a large portion on how justice affects race, culture and gender. This concentrates all the diversity of the year-long course into a month-long discussion. Furthermore, with the focus on Western philosophies, you would think that colonization would be discussed. However, you would be wrong. Quest for Justice leaves out some of the most important non-Western political philosophers who advocated against Western colonization and imperialism like Frantz Fanon, Mahatma Gandhi, Aimé Césaire and Edward Said. If I had not lived overseas, this course would leave me believing that Western, white perspectives are the most important in the pursuit of justice.
Quest for Justice needs to be more diverse to truly encompass its goal. The concept of justice does not only exist in the West, with white men at the forefront. The curriculum must do a better job of looking at “different kinds of societies,” as it claims to do currently, in order to truly accomplish the goal of helping students become well-informed about conversations about justice. Students deserve a course that does not place Western white men at the forefront and must do a better job of truly representing the quest for justice.
Mina Ruffle ’28 is an international studies and Spanish major from Burlington, VT. You can reach her at ruffle1@kenyon.edu.