Leaked instructional materials from a required first-year education course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with extreme left-wing bias have raised concerns among students about ideological imbalance in how issues of immigration, race, and gender are presented in the classroom.
The materials, according to Fox News Digital, was obtained from a student whistleblower and consists of PowerPoint slides used in EDUC 201, a first-semester course titled “Identity and Difference in Education.”
The lesson opens with an image of a protest sign reading, “No human being is illegal.” Subsequent slides emphasize language policing, including a section titled “Language Matters,” which instructs students to avoid commonly used legal terms.
“Embrace using humanizing language when talking about immigrant communities that don’t have documentation – consider using the language of ‘undocumented,’” one slide reads.
The presentation argues that terms such as “illegal immigrants,” “illegal aliens,” or “illegals” are harmful, asserting that they are “dehumanizing and degrading,” reinforce negative stereotypes, associate immigration with criminality, deny immigrants perceived rights, and enable “scapegoating communities for larger systemic issues.”
Leaked instructional materials from a required first-year education course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with extreme left-wing bias have raised concerns among students about ideological imbalance in how issues of immigration, race, and gender are presented in the classroom.
The materials, according to Fox News Digital, was obtained from a student whistleblower and consists of PowerPoint slides used in EDUC 201, a first-semester course titled “Identity and Difference in Education.”
The class is taught by professor Gabriel Rodriguez in the university’s College of Education. One set of slides from week 15, comprising 25 pages, focuses on immigrant, migrant, and refugee students and promotes a promoting leftist framework.
The lesson opens with an image of a protest sign reading, “No human being is illegal.” Subsequent slides emphasize language policing, including a section titled “Language Matters,” which instructs students to avoid commonly used legal terms.
“Embrace using humanizing language when talking about immigrant communities that don’t have documentation – consider using the language of ‘undocumented,’” one slide reads.
The presentation argues that terms such as “illegal immigrants,” “illegal aliens,” or “illegals” are harmful, asserting that they are “dehumanizing and degrading,” reinforce negative stereotypes, associate immigration with criminality, deny immigrants perceived rights, and enable “scapegoating communities for larger systemic issues.”
While outlining differences between immigrants and refugees, the slides describe immigrants as those who “migrate to pursue better opportunities (e.g., work, education)” and refugees as people fleeing “persecution, conflict, or violence,” without distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration.
The presentation cites PBS News in stating that approximately 13.7 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States. One slide notes: “Between 2007-2019, number of undocumented immigrants held steady at around 11 million, but since then the numbers have increased by almost 3 million.”
That estimate contrasts with a 2018 Yale study, which concluded—using what it described as an “extremely conservative model”—that the undocumented population ranged between 16 million and 29 million, with an average of 22.1 million. Those figures predated the Biden administration.
Another portion of the lecture, titled “Shifting Support for Immigrant/Refugee Student Populations in Schools,” presents headlines highlighting negative academic outcomes allegedly linked to stricter immigration policies.
The slide claims such environments increase discrimination, absenteeism, and feelings of insecurity among students.
Slide 17 features research co-authored by Rodriguez titled “‘This is What I go Through:’ Latinx Youth Facultades in Suburban Schools in the Era of Trump.”
The study examines responses from 11 “Latinx youth” in predominantly white suburban schools. A screenshot references “White supremacy and xenophobia brought on by … Trump.”
That same slide includes a quote attributed to a subject identified as Jose, described as an undocumented immigrant concerned about deportation:
“I can’t think of any other time when my grades have mattered the most than after this election. If anything happens to me at least I have good grades, [to] build on my case.
“Maybe if I’m excellent they won’t kick me out. The fear is so real. Right now, we don’t know what’s going to happen.
“My parents tell me, ‘Do well in school.’ So really, I’m worth a grade right now. I want to excel in academics. Hopefully, I’m one of the good ones.”
Later slides instruct future educators on how to respond to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in school settings.
Fox News Digital claims a student enrolled in the course revealed, on condition of anonymity, that the messaging was framed as prescriptive rather than theoretical.
“So in the lectures, my professor would constantly say, ‘you as educators, you as future educators, you need to do this, you need to know this,’” the student said.
“That’s one thing that he says, just over and over, like ‘we as future educators,’ kind of reminding us like, oh, we need to use this when we go to teach later on.”
Additional slides from week 8 focus on classroom silence and suggest it can stem from racial or gender-based oppression. One concept introduced is “Internalized Oppression,” defined as “assumed racial inferiority on the part of people of color.”
“Let’s think about how students with minoritized identities (e.g., race, gender, sexuality) are silenced by peers and educators,” one slide states.
Another adds: “Let’s think about how students, particularly those with minoritized identities use their agency by turning to silence to resist contexts they perceive to be harmful to their identities and sense of community.”
Several slides rely on anecdotal narratives attributed to unnamed or loosely identified high school students. One example describes a student named Joaquín, who reportedly felt ignored during class discussions and believed race played a role.
“Joaquín’s decision is calculated, as he preferred to be quiet, rather than continue to subject himself to being ignored and dismissed,” the slide concludes.
Another scenario, titled “Group Work Gone Awry,” recounts a classroom interaction involving a student named Lissette during an AP English class discussion of The Great Gatsby.
According to the slide, Lissette was interrupted by white classmates, assigned tasks rather than leadership roles, and excluded from participation.
“This conversation highlights that even when Latine youth did want to verbally participate and take the lead, as in this small group conversation, white youth often did not let them,” the presentation asserts.
The whistleblower student remarked that their own classroom silence growing up stemmed from personality, not discrimination.
The lecture also addresses gender-based dynamics, including an anecdote from a student named Clarissa, who claims a male classmate received disproportionate credit for shared work.
“But it is definitely why there are less women in leadership because – I could only handle it for a few months, and then I was like, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore,’” Clarissa concludes.
Other sections define “microaggressions” as “everyday, verbal, nonverbal slights, snubs, or insults regardless of intent that sends a hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their minoritized group membership,” and “stereotype threat” as a “socially premised psychological threat” tied to group-based assumptions.
Reflecting on the course overall, the student said the class offered little in terms of practical teaching preparation.
“So it’s very much like, ‘these are the ideas you need to have,’” the student said. “And so far, I haven’t actually learned anything for education about, like, how to set up a classroom, what methods work best with kids for learning… just like basic curriculum that kids are going to be taught, like math and science.”
Fox News Digital says it has requested comment from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but the university did not respond.
THE THIRD FORCE
