It’s that time of year again. Soon-to-be college freshmen are whooping it up before being shaped into adults—cruising to Whataburger in mom’s Prius, sneaking cans of ruby grapefruit White Claw Hard Seltzer. Soon it will be goodbye to innocence and hello to an exciting new adventure. But first there’s—ugh—your summer reading assignment.
I’m all for reading, but when I dug around to see what books were assigned this year, I was thunderstruck. The selections are clearly intended to make new students “woke”—a push toward political awareness, an initiation into the cool social-justice league.
Stanford’s “signature common reading program” has two books and a collection of essays this summer. The first is “There There,” a novel set in Oakland about the “plight of the urban Native American.” It’s always troubling to see the word “plight”—you know you’re about to be manipulated.
