I really don't understand all of the love for this professor. He seemed more interested in bragging about what a morally upstanding person he is than actually teaching us. He just came off so high and mighty and I found his arrogance really off putting, even though I almost always agreed with what he said. I found his many of lectures to be pretty useless, and it was often hard to focus because he would lecture for the entire 2 hours and 50 minutes other than a short break. He loved to repeat the same line over and over: "I hate racism! I hate sexism! I hate homophobia!" which I thought was cool of him at first but weird after he did it so many times, like he thought it was a hot take somehow.

As for the class itself, you have to watch a movie every week, and there are 2 6-7 page papers and a short final. The final is super easy, I didn't study for it at all. I found a lot of the films he chose to be pretty boring or just odd choices in general with all the options available to him. We also had to use Packpack every week which was really tedious and the grading criteria was not clear at all. I also found section to be unhelpful since the class was already discussion-based, but attendance was required. My TA Micah would assign additional films for us to watch which was kind of unfair because the other TA never did for his students. Overall, this class was a pretty easy A but I really did not enjoy it, and I would not recommend Von Blum at all.

Professor Von Blum has quite a lot of accomplishments as a lifelong activist and academic. You don't have to wait long for him to tell you all of them! He is an incredibly vain and self-centered man. The entire course was possibly the easiest, most uncontroversial educational experience I've ever had. The information expressed regarding racism and other forms of bigotry in world history was stuff you might learn in 2 weeks in high school. Very disappointed in the academic rigor from such a prestigious university.

Aside from the hollowness of the course content and the highschool level assignments, we also have to deal with the many quirks of the Professor and his groupies (communications or history majors who hang on his every word, following him from class to class). The political statements he made in class were tired and lazy. He spoke often of his belief in academic freedom (which I appreciate) but discouraged many students who differed in opinion than him by his aggressive demeanor. But, being within a political minority on campus, I am used to challenging the quasi-fascistic shouting down of competing beliefs. I was one of the few who would challenge his idealogy, and his foul-tempered troglodytes wasted no time in being triggered by dissenting opinion.

Take Von Blum's classes if you wish to be inundated further into the matrix by the political machine that is UCLA. The violent and disgusting neo-marxism expressed by him and his loyal followers is what is wrong with the education system at large. There is no room for a dissenting opinion when those who are brave enough to criticize the majority view are demonized.