It’s been tough watching the faculty activism at Bowdoin over the last few years. The op-eds, the public lectures, the postering, the encampment support, the stacking of faculty governance committees, the social media posts. This fanatical, obsessive streak within the Bowdoin faculty has pervaded all corners of the College, from the dining halls to playing fields to lecture halls to art exhibits to communal spaces to online sites. What’s been most eye-opening about this faculty obsession is how it has been allowed to politicize the curriculum. This politicization has been cleverly executed. How does an obsessive, zealous activist leave an imprint on as many student minds as possible? By telling a one-sided story, over and over again.

The Middle Eastern and North African Studies department lists 27 courses on its website. Thirteen of those 27 courses have at least some focus on colonialism. One course is about Palestinian literature of loss and resistance. Another is on the “anti-colonial tradition.” Another is on nationalism and Marxism in the Middle East. Another is about camps and prisons in the Middle East, another is on revolutions in the Middle East (“Palestinian Revolution” as a case study), and another is on race and settler colonialism (with a particular focus on Palestine).

The Middle Eastern and North African Studies department at Bowdoin doesn’t teach a single class about Israel—its history, its language, its people, its culture or the Jewish people’s claim to their ancestral homeland. The only democracy in the Middle East, with a GDP per capita that exceeds the European Union’s, is not worthy of study? There is also no teaching of the United Nations’ recognition of two people’s need for a homeland; the international community’s endorsement of that need by crafting a partition compromise through U.N. resolution; nor of Arab nations’ rejection of that solution, resulting in decades of intermittent warfare. Why isn’t Israel or its history taught? Because to leave an imprint on as many student minds as possible, one should tell a simple story repetitively, not introducing complexity.

If one teaches about Israel, complexity is introduced. In fact, you do what Bowdoin exists to do, which is to grapple with hard topics. However, if conflicting perspectives are taught, students might see through the smokescreen their professors have meticulously erected and come to their own conclusions, rather than the one conclusion desired.

But it gets more insidious. Step one is to avoid teaching complexity. Step two is to reinforce a militant worldview everywhere outside the classroom. The Orient, public lectures, social media, hallway posters—even through the trickle-down impact of the faculty committees that oversee every aspect of Bowdoin’s academic program. For the practiced polemicist, it’s easy enough to tell a narrative that glides over opposing views, ignores respected scholars and employs written sleights of hand. Since students have never been taught the full story (nor have many faculty colleagues, with whom one coordinates behind shared Instagram handles), few students have any idea that the narrative being peddled is an incomplete fragment and a perversion of history.

It’s a shame that Bowdoin allows and promotes this. The liberal arts and Bowdoin students deserve more. Their professors are leading them down a narrow path, expertly cultivated with clean edges and perfectly placed vistas. If only the world were so simple. If only Bowdoin faculty were actually interested in preparing students for the complexity of the world. Luckily, it’s not a one-way path. Students can choose to walk the other way, out of the fabricated, politicized simplicity their professors have carefully, self-interestedly constructed. Let’s see the choice Bowdoin students make: if they fall for their professors’ propaganda or demand the liberal arts education they were promised.

Dr. Saul Greenfield ’73 is a former Editor-in-Chief of the Bowdoin Orient.