EXCLUSIVE: Newly leaked slides from a freshman course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reveal how progressive themes are woven into the curriculum.

Fox News Digital acquired these materials from a concerned student enrolled in EDUC 201, “Identity and Difference in Education.” This course, part of the university’s education department, is designed for aspiring educators.

The week nine lecture is entitled “Cultivating Belonging.”

“Recent statistics show nearly 40% of U.S. high school students feel disconnected from their schools. This feeling of alienation is especially prevalent among students experiencing racism, those who identify as LGBTQ+, and students with disabilities. Research suggests that educational content and school structures that fail to engage these students are significant factors in their rejection of a system that marginalizes them, rather than a rejection of education itself,” states an early slide in the presentation, citing a study from the Aspen Institute.

A slide from a first-semester 2025 lecture in a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign education course discusses “cultivating belonging.” (Sourced by Fox News Digital)

The presentation emphasizes that understanding intersectionality is crucial in teaching about belonging.

“When talking about belonging it’s important to consider if we’re asking students to conform to norms that don’t reflect their bodies of knowledge (e.g., assimilation, erasure) or are we thinking about belonging in culturally relevant and intersectional ways?” asks a slide that is part of the lecture.

Another slide is called “Erasure of Racially Minoritized Students.” The entire slide is simply a quote from a person named Xóchitl, identified as a ninth grader at Shields High School.

“When you’re with your Mexican friends some white people don’t acknowledge you when you’re in the hallways, and you see someone that you know and it’s like they’re with their white friends, they don’t see you, but when you’re playing sports, they know you’re there,” Xóchitl’s quote says. “They start talking to you differently than when they talk to you outside of sports.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the course’s professor, Gabriel Rodriguez, for clarification on the origin of the quote. He did not return a request for comment.

Slide 14 of the lecture features a three-minute video from Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., published by The Root, a news outlet whose tagline is, “Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude.”

A slide from an October 2025 education course lecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign features a video of author Beverly Daniel Tatum. (Obtained by Fox News Digital)

Tatum is the author of “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” The book is a national bestseller. Tatum’s video is titled, “Why the Black Kids Still Sit Together.”

“We’re all influenced by race and racism in our society,” said Tatum in the video. Tatum is also the president emerita of Spelman College, a historically Black college in Atlanta.

“If you’re growing up as a young person of color in the society, part of that experience is to get messages from the wider world about who you are racially, and how people are responding to that,” she said.

Tatum later brings up segregation.

“Residential segregation and school segregation go together across,” she said. “And to the extent that the schools and the neighborhoods are segregated, it means that the social networks that help you find employment, that help you access higher education, that help you move up the economic ladder, are more limited — and that’s a problem.”

A University of Illinois entry sign in Champaign, Illinois. The University of Illinois is a state university in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. It offers teaching and research programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels to over 56,000 students.  (Don and Melinda Crawford/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

“We are still dealing with racial hierarchies,” Tatum continued. “We’re still dealing with white supremacy. We’re still dealing with the kind of systematic racism that impacts communities of color.”

Toward the end of the lecture, a slide instructs the future educators on how to cultivate belonging.

“Affirming and accepting students for all their complexities – particularly for students with minoritized identities,” says one point.

“Embracing and implementing culturally relevant teaching practices that reflect students’ identities,” is another.

Week six’s lecture is called “Understanding the role of class in educational inequality,” and begins with a list of the top high schools in Illinois. 

It then discusses stereotypes of rural, suburban and urban schools, noting that rural schools are often thought of as “poor” and white, suburban schools are often thought of as “resource rich” and white, and that urban schools are often thought of as “dysfunctional” and “composed by students of color.”

A slide from a lecture from September 2025 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign focuses on stereotypes about schools. (Obtained by Fox News Digital)

“Class inequality is increasing and part of everyday life in these contexts,” says the next slide, followed by another slide quoting the author of a book called “Radical Possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new social movement,” which says the federal government plays a “proactive” role in maintaining the poverty of families and neighborhoods where schools are “poorly funded, staffed, and resourced…”

A concept called “Opportunity Hoarding,” defined as “the process through which dominant groups who have control over some good (e.g., education) regulate its circulation, thus preventing out-groups from having full access to it,” is a major focus of the lesson.

According to the slides, that definition is derived from a 2015 book by Amanda Lewis and John Diamond, called “Despite the best intentions: How racial inequality thrives in good schools.”

“Opportunity hoarding, such as fundraising efforts of middle- and upper-middle class parents to support school programming exacerbate existing resource gaps between schools,” one lecture slide says.

A slide from a September 2025 lecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign focuses on “opportunity hoarding.”  (Obtained by Fox News Digital)

“Opportunity hoarding, such as resistance from middle- and upper-middle class parents to de-track or to create open access to honors/AP courses lessens educational opportunities for low-income students,” says another.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign did not return a request for comment.

Lectures focus on racism, white supremacy and cultivating belonging for ‘minoritized’ students