Students in Denver college professor Charles Angeletti's American civilization class are expected to follow what some say is a controversial protocol: reciting an "anti-Pledge of Allegiance," Fox News reported on Monday.
Angeletti teaches at the Metropolitan State University of Denver and has students learn his spin-off of the Pledge of Allegiance, which he uses to shine light on what he feels are inequalities in the United States. Some current and former students say he's denouncing the U.S. as a Republican-led beacon of injustice while espousing his own liberal politics.
"I pledge allegiance to and wrap myself in the flag of the United States Against Anything Un-American," reads Angeletti's version. "And to the Republicans for which it stands, two nations, under Jesus, rich against poor, with curtailed liberty and justice for all except blacks, homosexuals, women who want abortions, Communists, welfare queens, treehuggers, feminazis, illegal immigrants, children of illegal immigrants, and you, if you don't watch your step."
The new pledge was supposed to be a joke, getting students to look critically at the country's leadership and current events, Angeletti said. He said that he's a self-proclaimed socialist and atheist and has been using the pledge in his lessons for the last two decades.
"We're very racist, we're very repressive, we're very Christian-oriented, we don't tolerate other kinds of thinking in this country," Angeletti told Campus Reform. "I could go on and on - and do, in my classes, for hours about things that we need to do to make this a better country."
Steven Farr, a freshman majoring in meteorology, said Angeletti didn't cover a broad perspective of political ideals and repressed discussion between classmates. Farr added that some students thought the professor had a second agenda.
"This was an attempt to propagandize an entire classroom of young adults," Farr said.
Angeletti didn't refute that he is perhaps biased, but said the pledge is expected to get students to think about what goes on inside the United States. The American people are afraid of anything that doesn't look "American," he said.
But the professor said he loves the country, but dislikes "family values people," and allows his students to say and do anything.
