Odd. I could see the reasoning if this was just a standalone 100-level course designed to teach non-technical students the fundamentals of control structures and basic algorithms. You've got none of the overhead of a type system or real OO or having to go through a write-compile-debug cycle or setting up a build environment.
If it's anything more than that, as a course, then JS is entirely inappropriate, exactly because it lacks all of those things.
As an aside, frankly the Java ecosystem has never been stronger. It's the lingua franca of data engineering, and Spring Boot has given it the shot in the arm it needed for web dev. Modern Java is a very pleasant experience, not your slow and crufty Java of old.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
