Reed College

Against Racism (RAR) and presented a list of demands for the college they described as being on behalf of students from marginalized backgrounds. The primary demand concerned Reed's mandatory freshman Humanities course, proposing that the course either be changed to be more inclusive of world literature and classics or to be made not mandatory. One element of the class deemed racist by the protestors was the use of the 1978 Steve Martin song "King Tut" in a discussion about cultural appropriation. Students began a protest campaign against the curriculum by sitting in during lectures with signs with quotations from various African-American and non-white academics. Other protests separate from the Humanities course also included efforts to shout down speakers, including Kimberly Peirce after she was accused of profiting from transphobia while making the film Boys Don't Cry. The group eventually focused on Reed's banking relationship with Wells Fargo, based on allegations that the bank had invested in the Dakota …