Dr. Schindler
Multiculturalism: "Hot" Issue
The idea of multiculturalism has to be defined against the traditional, classic body of knowledge and its models that have dominated the universities for the past one hundred years. Our university system is based on the German example. Basically, there are the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Science explains nature. Period. However, the social sciences and the humanities are value laden insofar as how you frame a question will determine the answer.
The question today is are there many paradigms to explain and understand the human condition. The multiculturalists say yes. They understand and explain via the mechanisms of race, class, sexual orientation, ideology, culture, gender, religion, physical handicap, status as a Viet Nam veteran, and so forth. Each group argues that its point of view of the world is equal to the next. The classicists and traditionalists argue that there can be only one truth in the final analysis fixed for all time and natural, though they do leave allowance for a slow, organic development in which they assimilate the best from each new generation. It is really a battle of the radicals and revolutionaries versus the conservatives and reactionaries.
They are fighting the battle to the finish at the universities because they are the
ultimate guardians of the values of capitalist society and producers of the elite for the
next generation of leaders. In the end, we are talking about who will rule the
nation will be anticipated in how knowledge is disseminated to the general society through
the socialization process at the universities.
The general consensus is that the traditional and core body of knowledge and its
teaching have broken down at the universities into constituent interest groups organized
around departments, such as Jewish Studies, Women's Studies, African-American Studies, and
so forth, representing new pressures from inside and outside the university who want
radical change. So, knowledge and its models are being put into the attending to
ethnic and gender pride and the self esteem of members of former pariah groups, such as
sexual minorities and Vietnam veterans. Too, special treatment is given to children
of wealthy alumnae and athletes, although that has always been the case. However,
once you begin the path of appeasement, there is no end. Because, in the final
analysis, who does not think that their particular circumstances are exceptional?
Thus, a relativism is the philosophy of the day in which he/she who has the power
defines what is to be studied and with what grants. We hold this trend to be most
applicable to the humanities and the social sciences because their disciplines are not
strictly empirical but rather have a strong subjective, emotive, and value-ridden
component. The university curricula have been rearranged along the following lines:
1. Political agitation is now an integral part of devising new areas of study for
students. Affirmative action and quotas are used to achieve a representational
sampling of the whole population. Open admissions, where uniform academic standards
are set aside, aim for a political goal of equality. Equality through preferential
treatment of historically mistreated groups is opposed to freedom to compete openly
irrespective of your history. The traditionalists argue that this double standard is
upsetting old, established guidelines of excellence and virtue in individuals to develop a
moral/cultural elite best suited for the nation above particular interests. For
instance, there is now a cap on Asian-American students in the California university
system. They are being punished for doing too well. This group is an unrivaled
success story in terms of immediate adaptation to the system. So, there is a reverse
racism at work. In the end, you must balance achievement with ethical and
humanitarian considerations to arrive at social equity.
2. A market mentality now prevails in which students shop for courses that make them feel
better about themselves and those courses that will enrich themselves by taking as many
business credits as allowable. This commercialism reflects the original business
foundations of our country.
3. "Political correctness" is the doctrine that certain topics, issues and
questions are taboo to ask, for instance, why have so few women achieved eminence in the
sciences; what is the real relationship of race and intelligence; what are the relative
merits of cultures--every culture is now human, hence equal, so knowledge must be put into
the service of empowering minority groups; what is the authority now of the teacher in
class if his tenure is put to a popular vote, so educators must be entertainers and
politicians as well as scholars who publish; talk of abortion, eugenics, and euthanasia
are suppressed so as not to offend anybody. But excellent teaching is offending
prejudices by inciting re-thinking to adapt to a changing world.
Charles Murray's The Bell Curve, Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, and
Robert Hugh's Culture of Complaint to name a few notorious examples, are slighted
at universities because of their ultra-conservative, if not reactionary viewpoints.
Their theses are that the universities are producing professional politicians and
bureaucrats who exploit being victims to a degree wherein they are undermining their own
limited, legitimate concerns. They are saying let the status quo make a case on even
terms where there is an open competition of ideas. In effect, they feel the best of
our Western heritage is being censured and politically edited to the extent where
standards no longer have meaning in the academy. These two sides are extreme
presentations. There is a large middle stratum who is saying "cool it" and
"let's get to work and talk through these differences."
4. Nihilism presents itself in the universities. Anything goes.
5. When you arbitrarily discriminate for an individual, you correspondingly deny a place
to another deserving individual, particularly in the disbursement of scholarship monies
and grants. Universities are blatantly engaged in social engineering, compromising
their disinterested roles as critics of the society's weaknesses and strengths, and
becoming a participant in the political process both as an agent and subject. Is
this lobbying of interests and causes in their original purpose? If they become too
political, do they become part of the problem in the intense partisanship characteristic
of our new "attack" politics? Too, should they be the vanguard of the
ruling political class as in the elite schools? Why are Marxist analyses tabooed in
the more conservative institutions? Also, is it proper for the Christian Coalition
to educate warriors for Christ based on faith alone and then to place them into the public
schools? Since Jews/Mulims and Hindus have no souls, they are not really
welcome. Consider Falwell's Liberty University.
6. There is no longer objectivity about the "great works" --now subject to
mediation and negotiation by people who are not even qualified. Often trivial or marginal
texts are introduced to appease an audience who can no longer read critically. Most
readers do not have the educated taste to tell a good piece of work from a bad one.
The normative drive toward consensus within a university that disinterestedly pursues
truth is gone, perhaps forever. Ideological factors displace due process. The
civil discourse of mutual respect and recognition where the unforced force of the best
argument prevails no longer holds true.
7. Interest group politics prevails in which each group holds a veto power so that no one
articulates a general interest above all groups. What we have in the end are
mutually exclusive departments antagonistic to each other; there is no longer a healthy
competition of ideas based on intrinsic merit. There are now deeper divisions
between classes and races than at any time since the second world war.
Will the democratization of education render an undergraduate degree without
value? Do you really create equality with open admissions with no standards with the
rationalization that everyone must be given a chance, however slim to succeed? If
they are then passed along the system, what does that do to the degree? It becomes
worthless because of an inflationary effect. There must be the freedom to allow
conservative and radical points of view a full airing if we are to have integrity.
The truth will set us free.
8. If religion is introduced by the right into the schools through a constitutional
amendment, then the result will be the end of the separation of church and state and we
will become a confessional state. All our freedoms, then, would be placed in
jeopardy. These private interest groups based on religion will subvert universal and
general education for all and make education a field for debates over moral conduct
instead of teaching students the basic tools needed to survive in a highly competitive
capitalist society. The belief in God or not-God will not help you hold down a job
or build the achievement-oriented character necessary for the work ethic. The end
result can only be interminable litigation in a court system that already is overloaded
with crank cases.
9. Is there a master model of how to approach multiculturalism? Yes. The
destruction of European Jewry by the paganized bourgeois Christian world demonstrated the
dangers of when a political/cultural/educational elite puts itself into the service of a
totalitarian society: nationalism plus racism plus imperialism equals genocide in an era
where it is now technologically feasible. The Jews' fate is our fate because we all
have lost a way of life, leading thinkers, artists and scientists, and a population.
World War II was ground zero for our collective morality.
The murderers were abetted by those who knew and stood by, including the top officials
in the governments of the United States and Great Britain. The destruction of the
Jews was not in the interest of the species, humanity, or the forces of life, Eros.
The death instinct or unbridled aggression triumphed in the second world war since Hitler
did achieve his main biopolitical objective and Stalin conquered Eastern Europe.
Hence, Realpolitik superseded common sense and human decency. We know there were
Righteous Gentiles; hence, we have a starting point from ground zero to build for a better
humanity.
Marginalized groups, the outcasts, need a weapon. That is to be found in higher
education. If the truth is not politically manipulated, then it will be the antidote
to the big lies that make totalitarian movements so attractive to mob actions. The
ultimate payoff is a victory for Eros, which binds peoples together in cooperation, and
mutual respect and recognition. Then, you are a citizen of the world where all are
at home and welcome. Universities can be a focal point for such praxis since their
diversity represents the world. But that diversity must be able to produce and
perform to objective criteria of the real world, and go into society civilized and ready
to work and love without being part of Freud's civilization and its discontents'
mentality, that is, neurosis-ridden and dysfunctional like Joseph K. of Kafka's The
Trial.