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"Multiculturalism
and University Lore" E-mail:
rhorwitz@cox.net Copyright
© 2008 It is hard to miss the fact that academics and a much wider public in the U.S. have found reason to contest recent changes in American universities. Shrill accusations cascade down hallowed halls and cross ivied walls almost reaching Main Street itself. At issue is the sanctity or profanity of "multiculturalism" and all that it represents. My aim here is to help people who might be distant from American universities to understand what all the hoopla is about. I will focus on reasons the debate between opponents and proponents of academic multiculturalism should and should not be considered extraordinary. Key considerations include the range of phenomena under discussion and the emotionally charged circumstances, ideologies, and lore to which they allude. I will close with some comments intended to temper the discussion. Even for an American,
the controversy is hard to understand for at least two reasons. One
is the extraordinary attention this particular controversy has received.
Academic culture in the U.S. has long been so infamously contentious
that non-academics rarely consider any controversy worth serious attention:
"What are they squabbling about now?!" Professors, especially
in the humanities and social sciences, normally discuss their
work as if the fate of life-as-we-know-it were at stake. Disciplinary
celebrities are often best known for the elegance with which they bash
their foes. For example, conference sessions and scholarly reviews often
take the form of jeremiads, directing listeners to salvation -- truth,
beauty, and justice -- implied in the speaker's interpretation of an
obscure subject and warning them against the temptations -- superficiality,
amorality, or traditionalism -- that rivals supposedly embrace. Graduate
students who fail to master this form of argumentation are unlikely
to earn a degree and even less so to gain a university appointment.
The form is endemic to both professional certification and product differentiation.
In the U.S. in general this contentiousness is as well known outside
as inside the academy. It is part of the ho-hum stereotype of university
life and among the reasons that many non-academics and undergraduate
students consider scholarly dispute little more than a high-serious
parlor game best observed from afar. Hence, it is surprising,
not that academics are at each others' throats, but that the controversy
over multiculturalism has attracted such passionate, sustained attention
even in popular media. A rash of articles in newspapers and magazines
and best-selling books suggest that this controversy is unlike the thousands
of others that preceded it. Although, for example, debates about the
Frankfurt School or sociobiology spilled over into mass media, this
one seems to have incited a frenzy that will not go away. A second reason
this controversy is hard to understand is the diversity of its ingredients.
The term "multiculturalism" (like most "-isms")
is supposed to stand for a single disposition, but commentators find
it manifest in what seem very disparate forms. Natives no less than
foreigners might conclude that the range of particular occasions that
figure in the debate defies the simple categories its participants claim.
Nevertheless, a vast array of forms of discourse, institutional arrangements,
and activities are routinely taken to derive from "multiculturalism,"
as if it were a single animus of uniquely recent vintage. Among the most frequently
noted signs of multiculturalism is as a way of writing and speaking.
To do so correctly means, for example, increasing the proportion of
celebratory references to diversity, the oppressed, the Third World,
peoples of color, revolution, and expanding the curriculum. Swipes at
hegemony, exclusionary practices, standardized tests or objectivity
in general, patriarchy, pluralism, super powers, liberalism, the melting
pot, the canon, the American mainstream, and Great Books are also nearly
obligatory. Although every academic movement has had its totems and
taboos, few have had the self-confidence and good humor to mock their
own symbols, as 1970s lefties did in dubbing such talk, their own, "politically
correct" or "PC." These are the very terms that their
foes on the cultural right chose to raise a civil libertarian counter-attack
in the late 1980s, charging that the discourse of multiculturalism amounts
to thought control. They are not amused. Practically speaking,
these discursive norms mean that in various fora people will take your
use or neglect of such references as a reliable indicator of your more
general stance, for or against multiculturalism. In citing, say, Maya
Angelou, in a literary discussion, you signal, "I may be pro;"
if Melville (or, even worse, Mailer), almost assuredly con. For a novice,
then, academic discourse resembles a mine field. "People of color"
is for the moment safe, but "colored people" will trigger
an explosion. For many people all of the hoopla over multiculturalism
amounts to little more than finding an inoffensive way to converse. But the term also
refers to an array of more substantive institutional developments. The
most controversial of them is affirmative action. Devices such as quotas
or differentially weighted evaluation criteria have been introduced
to increase admissions of students and employment and advancement of
faculty from "under-represented" or "targeted" groups,
namely (though not uniformly) people who are of Native American, African-American,
and Hispanic descent, homosexual, "handicapped," and/or women.
Administrators tend to refer to them as "women and [sic]
minorities." Of course, under-representation
is not a universal problem. Particular institutions (e.g., "historically
Black" institutions such as Howard University) and departments
(e.g., Lesbian or Chicano studies, Home Economics, Nursing) have long
attracted and well-supported some targeted groups. But more and more
programs are begun and subject to evaluation in terms of their ability
to shift the university demographically closer to representing the proportions
of various genders, races, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and physical
and psychological characteristics of the United States as a whole. University facilities
have also been enhanced explicitly to support members of these targeted
groups. These include sundry "cultural centers," special tutors,
counselors, library holdings, scholarships, research assistantships
and funds in varying degrees reserved for "women and minorities."
A number of routine operating procedures (e.g., "clocks" for
developmental leaves or tenure evaluation, course scheduling, definitions
of university or professional "service," day care or campus
security priorities) have been changed to compensate for off-campus
inequities that particular categories of people, especially mothers,
are likely to suffer. Academic programs have been introduced (e.g.,
African-American Studies, required courses in "minority" cultures,
or lectures on date rape) to increase, among other things, the sensitivity
of the university and its audience to the contributions and vulnerability
of those "under-represented" groups. Such programs may or
may not be accompanied by policies to punish students or faculty who
physically or even verbally harass people by virtue of their membership
in some or any demographic group. Outside of particular
universities, there has been a dramatic increase in the number and quality
of conferences, foundation grants, journals, and publication series
on scholarship by and about targeted groups. In some disciplines, it
is the growth industry. For example, the bidding for prominent
specialists in African-American subjects is now almost a third as high
as that for a decent relief pitcher in major league baseball, a fact
that deeply concerns administrators, not to mention colleagues with
different specialties confined to the minor leagues. In fact, despite
its relatively modest cost for the university as a whole, the visibility
of resources for affirmative action (i.e., to benefit a group that is
not at the moment a large on-campus constituency) invites an interpretation
of the controversy that foregrounds political economy. Lurking just
below the surface of discussions of proper speech and institutional
priorities are concrete, personal anxieties: Who will land that grant
or book contract? Whose kid will get into the prestige college? Will
they or I get the goods? Affirmative action incites passions that can
well be compared to those of suburbanites when a public housing project
is under construction next door. There are, of course,
a host of complicating circumstances, but I hope that the foregoing
has already demonstrated that "multiculturalism" is a very
flabby term. It covers an array of discursive practices, policies, and
events that ought to be evaluated separately. They vary widely in locale,
cost, flexibility, and impact on personnel. Some have obvious implications
for curricula and freedom of expression; others do not. Some address
the way we think or at least talk; others the distribution of resources
or bodily safety. Some imply leveling a playing field that, almost every
admits, has its slopes, while others suggest changing the game. It is
hard to see how endorsing any one of them, much less the whole agenda,
requires any particular motives or moral consensus. And vice versa. Moreover, hardly
all of these policies, arrangements, and events emerged under comparable
circumstances. For example, Euro-American administrators accepted many
"Afro houses" in the early 1970s, long before the current
bally-hoo and less to advance multiculturalism of the university as
a whole than to pacify Black nationalists who demanded a separate place
of their own. The same institutions are now cited as evidence of an
entirely different disposition. Or, to cite another
example, admissions quotas were introduced in the 1920s, not the 1980s,
and they were used, not to increase the diversity of the university,
but to restrain it, particularly by holding down the number of Jews
in higher education. Foes of quotas can use this precedent to suggest
their evil nature, but proponents can just as easily cite it to show
the promise of the device. The fact that in universities quotas were
(for a while) effectively, even if wrongly, applied in the past is all
the more reason they might be better applied in the future. You do not
necessarily make a better cake by throwing away the old measuring cup,
especially if the pantry only grants ingredients to those who can document
measured needs. That is precisely the difficulty for people who seek
legal redress for institutional discrimination. While secret quotas
were once used to exclude and deny due process, public ones could now
be used to include and enhance due process, as they have, for example,
in federal contracts since affirmative-action quotas were introduced,
ironically enough, under the Nixon administration. Of course, such
judgements reveal my own bias and are contestable, but the point is
that each of the developments now gathered under the name of multiculturalism
has its distinctive history. Treating all of them as if they represented
a uniform, recent revolution simply distorts the diverse interests and
actions of people who initiated these changes in the past. They did
not and need not now imply any singular mentality. Frankly, I do not
see how treating multiculturalism as unitary is likely to do much more
than counsel cliched polarities. Of course, demographically
speaking, multiculturalism ought to be considered a reality of American
life. This is to say that the population of the United States includes
people who can be considered more or less culturally distinct by virtue
of differences in ethnicity, class, gender, sexual-orientation, region,
age, anatomy, mother-tongue, religion, and/or ideological conviction.
Of course, too, they could always have been so considered. What is new
is the dramatic increase since the 1960s in the number and prominence
of groups that claim cultural distinctiveness, people who are, for example,
Spanish-speaking, of East-Asian origin, or Islamic. Feminists of widely
divergent orientations and professors schooled during the student movements
of the 1960s now are among those occupying secure positions in the university
establishment. They have been very influential in setting the tone of
the debate. Clearly, it has
as much to do with ideology and character assassination as admissions
or curriculum. Ideologically speaking, invoking U.S. "multiculturalism"
(entirely unlike "pluralism") is a way to recognize that America
should not be considered the bastion of English-speaking, elite, "normal"-bodied
or -minded, heterosexual men. It is a shorthand denial of what used
to pass for the "mainstream" and its implicit subordination
of "others" as mere "tributaries" to it. Of course, the demographic
changes in themselves need not require this judgement. For example,
nineteenth-century feminism, the Second Immigration at the turn of the
century, and the northern migration of African-Americans after World
War I inspired some of the fiercest assertions of misogyny, anti-Catholicism,
anti-Semitism, old-stock nativism, and white supremacy in U.S. history.
Along with recent outbreaks of bigotry on college campuses, these are
among the precedents that advocates of multiculturalism cite in positing
a supposedly new, more aggressive response to social inequity. Just as important,
this ideological dimension of multiculturalism, with its implied rejection
of the mainstream and past intolerance, is among its most attractive
features to members of groups -- particularly feminists and/or people
of color -- who are estranged from academic life which they still find
oppressively "mainstream." They are no longer content to be
"tributaries" and are in a position to direct the dredging.
At the same time, in connection with the decline of the Democratic "liberal"
coalition and the rise of the Republican and religious right, an opposition
that is largely, though far from entirely, Euro-American and male feels
both personally threatened and politically charged to reassert what
they take to be "traditional" if not "universal"
standards. The term "multiculturalism,"
then, tends to be associated with bodies of lore that are presumed to
signal positions ranging quite radically from left to right. In fact,
academics tend to read one's use of the term, its totems and taboos,
as a test of your politics. You are supposed to stand cleanly on one
side or the other of an ideological chasm. People listen to your use
of the word "multiculturalism," the ease with which it falls
from your lips, not only to follow your argument but also to judge which
side your are on. When viewed from
outside of the U.S., all of this may seem like much ado about nothing,
at least nothing new, small variations on familiar themes. I am inclined
to agree. But participants claim that this dispute is about a "revolution,"
changes uniquely tied to present circumstance and a current ideological
divide. For example, challenging multiculturalism is likely to imply
standing for great (i.e., currently canonized) books, Enlightenment
reasoning, individualism, meritocracy (vs., say, quotas), freedom of
speech, tolerance, dispassion, objectivity, restraint, tradition, and
Western Civilization. Advocating multiculturalism, on the other hand,
is likely to entail or imply standing up for books by and about the
oppressed, cultural relativism, affirmative action, "inclusive"
speech, collectivism, passion, personal engagement, political activism,
"non-traditional" values, and "oppositional," non-Western
cultures. A lot could be said
about this ideological divide. Most of it has the familiar ring of bourgeois
individualists sparring with progressive social constructionists, as
they have in the West since the Reformation. Similar themes appeared
in the U.S. in particular in the debate over British- vs. Continental-style
universities in the 18th Century, over common schools and female education
in the 19th Century, over educational reform in the 1930s, and over
"relevance" in the 1960s. These are among the reasons I resist
seeing anything terribly revolutionary about the present moment. Moreover, except
in isolated cases, both sides tend to claim a common enemy that is real
enough: social inequality, particularly Euro-American, masculine supremacy.
People on the cultural right aim to address it by upholding and sharing
a legacy that has been necessary for admission to social privilege;
people on the cultural left by changing the legacy to allow for new
admission criteria.
I suspect that the
foregoing only begins to detail the gnarl of circumstances and legacies
to which the debate over multiculturalism alludes. I aim only for a
serviceable introduction to the folklore that passions inscribe and
that foreigners might easily miss. But I also think I owe readers candor
about my own position. First, in case it
is not already obvious, I must announce that in general I ally with
the proponents of multiculturalism. The university has for too long
acted as if its standards were eternal, self-evident truths. I particularly
part company with those who decry multiculturalism as an assault on
standards. Those standards have, fortunately, themselves long been volatile,
contested and changed. I do not see how changes in response to the real
or anticipated demands of now "targeted groups" are necessarily
more dangerous or irrevocable than those that preceded them. In fact,
I detect it is bigotry that allows critics on both sides to lump so
many disparate developments together simply because they are justified,
even if wrongly, in terms of advancing "women and minorities."
I would hope that we could all begin with a commitment to social justice,
even as we disagree about its importance relative to other imperatives
or the most desirable means to that end. I also insist that
particular acts on behalf of multiculturalism are different enough to
demand more focused, case-by-case trials and evaluation. As with "romanticism"
(or other "-isms," including those I list above), we need
not assume that "multiculturalism" implies a single frame
of mind or that actions taken in its name are necessarily effective.
Generally, I advocate a more pragmatic approach. We do not have to be
like-minded, for or against every variety of multiculturalism, to know
that the university should be open to contests, including passionate
ones, not only about substantive standards but also about how they can
be well applied and who will decide. But it seems to
me that realism cuts as well in the other direction. Every significant
change is painful, and this one is long overdue. The "playing field"
in as well as out of the academy has never been level. Euro-American
patriarches have run down hill and others up since colonization. It
is wrong as well as politically unrealistic to act as if we need only
trim the grass and rechalk the lines. We can gain the courage to persist
in leveling the field, even to face that clerk's son, if we remember
that change in a multicultural spirit is realistic and right. Finally, it seems
to me obvious that the university may not effect the sort of social
vision its faculty and bureaucrats imagine. For example, like many of
the proponents of multiculturalism, I was schooled during the 1950s
and early 1960s when monoculturalism was the subterranean lesson of
the day. I was taught to be a loyal advocate of the liberal, individualist,
Protestant, anti-communist consensus that "my country" supposedly
represented. Despite years of chanting the Pledge of Allegiance and
the Lord's Prayer, I now have serious doubts about that lesson, as I
suspect veterans of current lessons may in the future. In a way fortunately,
teachers cannot so control the imagination of students. Teachers are, though, obliged to treat their subjects and students with diverse sensitivities respectfully, to welcome them to campus and teach them from conviction. As much as I wince before the hyperbole in the debate over multiculturalism, then, it seems to me a decidedly healthy development. It is extraordinary, not because it is new or revolutionary, but urgent. Now is the time to raise voices, even risk cruel mistakes, for the chance to try to do what is necessary and right. * * * I want to express my gratitude to the Netherlands America Commission for Educational Exchange which underwrote my work on this essay during my year as John Adams Professor of American Studies at Katholieke Universiteit in Nijmegen. I am also grateful for the editorial assistance of Prof. John Calabro who, of course, has his own opinions on this subject. * * * SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY Even the most obscure examples of recent scholarship, especially in the humanities, in one way or another allude to the debate surrounding multiculturalism. The following books are simply among the most explicitly concerned with the controversy and frequently cited: Bennett, William
J. Our Children and Our Country: Improving America's Schools and
Affirming the Common Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. To get a feel for the place of these arguments in academic lore, I suggest reading reviews of these books and sketches of the authors that abound in scholarly and mass-market periodicals. Among the articles I have found most useful are: Bernstein, Richard.
"The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct," The New
York Times (October 28, 1990). |