Is this the course that used to be taught in scheme?

That course was called 6.001, and it used SICP as the text. This course plus 6.01 (approximately) replace it.

Damn shame that politics forced the department to abandon Scheme. Now half the classes are taught in Python and the other half in Java.

From http://ai6034.mit.edu/fall09/index.php : "The official language of 6.034 is Python for a variety of reasons having little to do with the strengths and weaknesses of the language." Politics. Yech.

Of course, the politics isn't entirely one-sided. The foaming at the mouth that came from certain communities when it was suggested that perhaps Scheme and SICP aren't the one single universally true compendium of all useful CS knowledge now and forever was, well, off-putting.

" ... was, well, off-putting."

Perhaps. But that doesn't make them wrong. :)

I was under the impression that it was simply what the robots were programmed in.

From what Sussman has said about the subject, it is pretty clear that politics had nothing to do with it.