Clarence Thomas is one of the least likely people you’d expect to teach civil rights.

For decades, he has used his Supreme Court weight to oppose affirmative action, challenge federal voting rights protections and reject certain legal resolutions designed to address racial discrimination.

Yet the University of Texas School of Civic Leadership has tapped the U.S. Supreme Court justice to help teach a course on civil rights and the meaning of equality next spring. The university’s recent announcement raises the obvious question: Just what civil rights story will the students be getting?

Thomas will teach a seminar called “Equality and the New Birth of Freedom.” It will focus on the work of civil rights activists including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He will be on campus for two hours every morning for one week in February.