THEY'RE SO INCLUSIVE THEY CAN'T TEACH ANYTHING.

(Apologies to Yogi Berra.)  How else, though, characterize a decision by a curriculum committee at Yale to cease offering a fairly standard art history course, Renaissance to Modern, because there aren't enough role models, or something.

According to The Yale Daily News, the art department has decided that the class might make some students uncomfortable due to the "overwhelming" whiteness, maleness, and straightness of the artists who comprise the Western canon (though that last label may be dubious). Indeed, the focus on Western art is "problematic," course instructor Tim Barringer told the student newspaper.

"I want all Yale students (and all residents of New Haven who can enter our museums freely) to have access to and to feel confident analyzing and enjoying the core works of the western tradition," said Barringer. "But I don't mistake a history of European painting for the history of all art in all places."

Indeed not, and there's a relatively straightforward way of expanding the coverage, say, by starting around the twelfth century and mixing in other forms of religious art with the altarpieces and ikons, and ending with the invention of photography, which freed the artist from the commercial obligations of making accurate portraits to keep the patrons satisfied.

That way, though, there's no opportunity to have purity tests, or to teach potted political economy.

In its final iteration, the course will "consider art in relation to questions of gender, class and race and discuss its involvement with Western capitalism," according to the latest syllabus. Art's relationship to climate change will also be a "key theme."

"I'm really looking forward to seeing what works the students come up with to counteract or undermine my own narratives," said Barringer.

Art students who wish to master the Western canon will still find plenty of other courses that satisfy their interests. But the removal of the introductory course makes it difficult for non-majors with a casual interest in the subject to study it.

"My biggest critique of the decision is that it's a disservice to undergrads," one student, Mahlon Sorensen, told The Yale Daily News. "If you get rid of that one, all-encompassing course, then to understand the Western canon of art, students are going to have to take multiple art history courses. Which is all well and good for the art history major, but it sucks for the rest of us."

If I were still involved in curriculum committees and catalog revisions, it's likely I'd react a little bit like the defender of a cartel to any introduction of sociology or economics, the latter being my former department's responsibility, and I might raise a few questions about the Medieval Warm Period in the works presented.  I might also note that the canon of art prior to photography is likely very different from what sorts of experiments caught on after photography, and my version of the new course would likely satisfy Mr Sorensen's curiosity.  That, plus you really can't do impressionism and American primitive and cubism and all the other schools, or is it marketing ploys, that emerged once the tyranny of depicting things relatively as they were ceased to be an imperative.

Here's Reason's Robby Soave, summarizing.

But diversity by addition is vastly preferable to diversity by subtraction. When a university eliminates an introductory art class because a tiny number of ideologues object to the whiteness and maleness of it all, it feels like they are declining to teach history because some people don't like what happened. The West's outsized influence on the events of the last several centuries may very well be problematic, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.

Somebody had to have an outsized influence on the events of the last several centuries, would you rather it be predatory animals or space invaders, rather than inquisitive humans?

But is it really the purview of art historians to offer potted political economy simply to make uninformed youngsters comfortable with their prejudices?  Commentary's Christine Rosen correctly points out that doing so likely turns off more potential students than it recruits, and it's likely to end badly.

There will also always be someone who will be offended by something, of course. The difference today is the enthusiasm with which institutions themselves (which once defended the display and teaching of controversial works) are dismantling their own cultural capital in response to such perceived offenses.

Dismantling their cultural capital, and depriving the students they're supposedly preparing to Rule The World of the opportunity to play with ideas without getting hurt.  That, too, is likely to end badly.