SANTORUM CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS BECAUSE...

Baggers, rubes, hicks and freakshows won't bother to verify this absurd claim:

SANTORUM: I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities – I think it’s seven or eight of the California system of universities don’t even teach an American history course. It’s not even available to be taught.

Santorum was apparently referring to this op-ed in the WSJ by Peter Berkowitz:

None of the nine general campuses in the UC system requires students to study the history and institutions of the United States. None requires students to study Western civilization, and on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered.

I went to Berkeley's site because I think that's the campus the conservatives most hate and the history department offers a senior thesis course (101 Seminars) in several topics, one of which is:

101.02: American History and Institutions

American institutions have profoundly shaped the nation: prisons, churches, schools, government, military, NGOs, asylums, hospitals, economic and international institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank and the IMF, labor unions, the media, and many others have lent shape to American culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This course offers students an opportunity to delve into the life of American institutions and the people who shape and are shaped by them as well as the many ways in which American identity takes shape around these important and encompassing fixtures of national life. Students enrolled in my Carceral Studies course are particularly invited to apply to this course as an opportunity to conduct primary source research on the carceral system, its inmates, guards, limitations and reforms.

Undergraduate history majors are generally required to take a course in American history:

Lower Division Requirements
Four courses, to include:

• one survey course in the history of the United States;
• one survey course in the history of Europe;
• one survey course in the history of another world area;
• one elective (of any additional offering, including History R1 and 39)

Students may substitute one upper-division course for any one of the first three requirements.

Berkowitz is correct about Berkeley not have a single survey course on Western civilization but that's because it has at least 3 survey courses:

4A: Origins of Western Civilization: The Ancient Mediterranean World
This course offers an introductory survey of the history of the ancient Mediterranean world, from the rise of city states in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC to the emergence of the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century AD.

4B: Medieval Europe
Rather than present a superficial chronological survey of a 1000-year period, we will examine in considerable depth two quite different periods of middle ages. The first is the age of the Carolingians and Anglo-Saxons, which saw not only the conversion of Europe to Christianity but also the creation of a distinctive European ethic of political leadership. The second is the later middle ages (primarily the 13th and 14th centuries), when monarchies reached out to public opinion and when the collapse of papal authority was counterbalanced by the integration of Christian values into the ordinary lives of (more or less) ordinary men and women.

5: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present
This course introduces students to European history from around 1500 to the present. During this time, a small, poor, and fragmented Europe became a world civilization, whose political, cultural, and economic power now touch the four corners of the globe.

There's even a course for the Fundies:

185A: The History of Christianity to Charlemagne
The course deals with the origins of Christianity and the first eleven centuries of its expansion into a major institutional, social, and intellectual force shaping Western Europe. The central themes are the mechanisms and conditions shaping this expansion rather than a chronological account to present this process as a model of "institutionalization" (or not!) of religious movements. The emphasis will be on patterns of crisis and reform, i.e., on conflicts arising within the church itself and as a result of its dealings with the "outside" world, and how these crises were resolved. The course is based on the study of primary sources and will include problems of historical method. Requirements, beyond a basic familiarity with Roman and early Medieval history, are one midterm, one final, and a book review. The syllabus refers to books ordered, but also mentions recommended readings in brackets (on reserve only); please note also resources on bspace. You may use any BIBLE, and please bring yours with you for the first weeks.