"Fat studies" is poised to break into the troika of race, gender, and class studies that are thriving at campuses across the country. Say goodbye to the last vestiges of a liberal education, of rigorous academic inquiry, and of the millennia of human achievement that academics now scorn. Fat studies is not wreaking such havoc on its own, of course, but the broader movement of which it is part is very certainly eroding college as most of us would conceive it. Click through to read why.

What is Fat Studies? Quoth the news article, "fat studies is an emerging academic field that explores the social and political consequences of being overweight." Its concerns include the negative portrayal of fat people in literature and popular culture; the discrimination against fat people, which "can mask many other forms of prejudice that we already consider to be undesirable"; and their contention that scientific research "does not bear out" the health risks (i.e. Type II diabetes or hypertension) associated with obesity.

Fat Studies is appropriately trendy, and linked closely to the concerns of other identity studies within the academy. From a New York Times article on the subject:

For most scholars of fat, though, it is not an objective pursuit. Proponents of fat studies see it as the sister subject -- and it is most often women promoting the study, many of whom are lesbian activists -- to women's studies, queer studies, disability studies and ethnic studies. In many of its permutations, then, it is the study of a people its supporters believe are victims of prejudice, stereotypes and oppression by mainstream society.

''It's about a dominant culture's ideals of what a real person should be,'' said Stefanie Snider, 29, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, whose dissertation will be on the intersection of queer and fat identities in the United States in the 20th century. ''And whether that has to do with skin color or heritage or sexual orientation or ability, it ends up being similar in a lot of ways.''

Why do I criticize Fat Studies? Because I am a sizeist -- or anti-fattist or whatever term Fat Studies professors will soon coin and use to attack dissenters. Just kidding.

I criticize Fat Studies because it is part of a dangerous dumbing down of liberal education in which the pursuit of knowledge is replaced by frantic social programming and promotion of state programs. No more. No less. Replace Fat Studies with any type of identity studies, and you'll get the same result.

1. Fat Studies does not produce a body of knowledge. Instead, it represents a point of view (or, in trendy academese, a "lense" or "prism") that its scholars use to examine a body of knowledge, e.g. history, literature, or science.

Other academic disciplines naturally foster debate because there is subject material to interpet and to agree or disagree about. Scientists critique methodologies and experiment results. English professors argue for differing interpretations of themes, motifs, and even individual words. History professors argue the causes and effects of events, and the motivations of historical actors.

Academics in these subjects approach their disciplines with differing viewpoints, and from those differing viewpoints come differing intepretations, and from these differing interpretations we get the beautiful intellectual debates we imagine higher education offers, and from these intellectual exercises we move closer to our goal of finding truth and reason in the world.

But Fat Studies, like all identity studies, begins with the end in mind. The conclusions have already been determined: fat people are oppressed and down-trodden, victims of an insert-terrible-adjective-here system and insert-another-terrible-adjective-here society.

In a closed system like this, there can be no debate or disagreement. There are believers and there are heretics, and any who dare question the merit of Fat Studies and its resulting studies are decidedly in the latter camp. Even worse, with Fat Studies wrapped up in terms of power and justice and oppression, these heretics are castigated as "speaking from privilege" or supporters of the inherently unjust system which perpetuates such grievous biases against fat people.

How conducive to open debate.

But how clever a way to construct an academic discipline.

The premise of Fat Studies is that there is widespread discrimination against fat people throughout the country, and that if you are an average Joe Schmoe, you have been unconsciously conditioned to be discriminatory. Therefore, if you disagree with the content or scholarship of Fat Studies professors, you are simply blinded by your discrimination. You're not just ignorant. You're also a brute.

2. Fat Studies generates calls to action for government programs and growing government intervention into private lives. Fat Studies is based on the premise that fat people are a special class worthy of special study and protection. They are a minority group, a minority group united by the discrimination and oppression from the "majority society" as a Fat Studies student so eloquently said.

If fat people are a class suffering and discriminated against -- as Fat Studies scholars would like us to believe -- then in our litigous country, they are deserving of special legal protections. Fat Studies scholars and bloggers are happy to champion issues from workers claiming firings or lack of hirings due to weight discrimination (have fun defending against that!) to airplanes charging heavier passengers for an extra seat when they cannot fit in the ones they already purchased.

Of course, it doesn't need to end there. The government programs can extend as far as an activist's daydream. Add "fat acceptance" to mandatory curricula and training sessions. Include special segments on the contributions of fat Americans to our nation's history. Designate a special Fat American History Month or Fat American Awareness Week. Since non-fat Americans possess a deep-seated bias against our heavier countrymen, we could use some government-sponsored de-programming.

But remember that you dare not raise a criticism or you will be castigated as a "fattist" bigot.

Analysis of the ways in which fat people are portrayed in the media or represented in history, literature, and the arts is a fine intellectual pursuit if that's what interests you. I do not intend to suggest I'm wise enough to decree what should and should not be discussed and debated in college classrooms. In the best world, anything would be fair game.

But open inquiry and higher education are destroyed when pursuits like Fat Studies are enshrined. They are political movements operating under the guise of intellectual departments.

Good for them. They can push their initiatives in a safe coccoon and preempt all dissenters with charge of discrimination. But how bad for colleges and education.

How very bad for the rest of us.