The Diversity Myth

by David O Sacks

  As was well-reported at the time, this inchoate movement centered its complaints around the fact that most of the books studied in the Western Culture program had been written by “dead white males.”6 This charge was new and extraordinary because it attacked not the quality or historical significance of the great books, but rather the authors themselves—for being of the wrong race, gender, or class. To the protestors, the reading list was perceived as a cross-cultural celebration, and their groups had not been invited to the party. Their exclusion had to end, and so Bill King, president of the Black Student Union (BSU), told Time Magazine, “We want the idea of a canon eliminated.”7

  The protestors succeeded in exacting this demand, and in January 1988 Stanford's administration replaced the Western Culture program with a new requirement called “Cultures, Ideas, and Values” (CIV). As its name hinted, the new course was based on relativist notions of cultural parity, with a mandated emphasis on race, gender, and class.8 To ensure this emphasis, the CIV Committee, which was charged with overseeing the transition from Western Culture to CIV, immediately began recruiting minority faculty for the new course. One committee member, comparative literature professor Marjorie Perloff, resigned after finding that “the main role of the committee was to discuss issues of personnel rather than course content. It seemed to be taken as a given that literature dealing with minority issues must be taught by minority professors. This is a very problematic ghettoizing of knowledge.”9

  According to the new thinking, upper-class white males may have been born with silver spoons in their mouths, but the minorities they oppressed were born with teaching credentials. This thinking would have profound implications for the entire university. As the late philosopher Sidney Hook aptly observed, if only minority professors were qualified to teach books authored by minorities, similar reasoning would dictate that only women could teach gynecology, only fat people obesity, only hungry people the physiology of starvation—or, for that matter, only Nazis could teach about the Third Reich.10 Whereas the Western Culture canon had been based upon a belief in universalism—the belief that the insights contained within the West's great works were potentially available to everybody—the new curriculum embraced particularism: What one may know is determined by the circumstances of one's birth.

  This was the crux of the whole debate. The Western Culture protestors were attacking not just “dead white males,” but the idea of universalism itself. The idea they rejected was this: There exist truths that transcend the accidents of one's birth, and these objective truths are in principle available to everyone—whether young or old, rich or poor, male or female, white or black; individuals (and humanity as a whole) are not trapped within a closed cultural space that predetermines what they may know.

  Within this framework, the university served as a refuge, somewhat outside the confines of a given culture, where individuals could disregard parochial blinkers of ethnicity, age, gender, class, or race and search for these transcendent truths. In rejecting the West, the protestors repudiated this entire framework.11 In doing so, their fateful protest of January 1987 would pave the way for a very different kind of academy.

  The New Classics

  Founded upon the twin plinths of cultural relativism and cultural determinism, CIV sought to refit the reading list to a world devoid of universal truths. Having embraced race, gender, and class as proxies for some kind of special knowledge, or gnosis, the educators who taught CIV divided the reading list among cultural and racial constituencies, much the same way a city council might gerrymander districts.12 The “Common Elements” among the CIV tracks, according to the 1992–93 program syllabus, were not perennial questions like “What is justice?” or “What constitutes a good life?” but:

  Works by women, minorities and persons of color

  Works introducing issues of race, gender and class

  Works of non-European provenance13

  As Provost James Rosse wrote in a revealing letter, the new freshman requirement would “include the study of great works as well as works reflecting the role and contributions of minorities and women.”14 Provost Rosse unwittingly admitted the truth: The latter group of works often could be distinguished from the former. Included works did not necessarily have to be “great” if they fulfilled the function of “reflecting the role and contributions of minorities and women.” As we shall see, many CIV books would meet one criterion or the other, but few would meet both.

  During 1988–89, a compromise transition year, all the CIV tracks read the Bible, Plato, Augustine, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Marx. Thereafter, quite a bit more was left to the discretion of professors, as the “Common Readings” (a term preferred to “canon”) consisted of:

  Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible

  A Classical Greek philosopher

  An Early Christian thinker

  A Renaissance dramatist

  An Enlightenment thinker

  Marx15

  In short, Plato was replaced with the more general category of “classical Greek philosophers,” Augustine with “early Christian thinkers,” Machiavelli with “Renaissance dramatists,” and Rousseau with “Enlightenment thinkers.” With the important exception of Marx (who is never deconstructed), the altered list implied that individual writers are the delegates of certain constituencies—ancient Greeks, early Christians, etc.—from which they derived their right to serve on the reading list. In a reverse of direction from the old course, authors were chosen precisely because they typified some cultural group, rather than because their writings are immortal and have transcended such particulars.

  Few questioned how studying cultural differences could possibly be of value if ethnic experiences were incomprehensibly foreign to others. On the contrary, history professor Paul Robinson remarked, “We are eager to replace a canonized and seemingly unalterable ‘core list’ with a process aimed to create ‘a common intellectual experience.”’16 Professor Robinson was referring to CIV's founding legislation, which mandates that the class “provide students with the common intellectual experience of broadening their understanding of ideas and values.”17 The goal of the freshman requirement had shifted subtly from providing students with a common background, defined objectively in the form of a great works reading list, to providing a common experience, subjectively defined by those doing the reading. What each author actually wrote (and whether any of it is true) was much less important than the effect on students. Hence, in 1992 the Philosophy track added Chief Seattle to the Course Reader.18 Because American Indian culture is as alien to most freshmen as ancient Greek culture, Chief Seattle presumably had instructional, or “broadening,” value roughly equivalent to that of Plato or Aristotle. In this way, although the different tracks shared few authors in common, they were still able to provide 1,500 freshmen with a “common intellectual experience”—not by transmitting common knowledge, but by transmitting a common sensation of “broadening understanding.” The course instructors, however, never explained in what direction students’ minds should be broadened, or why any particular direction was preferable to another.

  In practice, of course, a number of faculty members found it far from easy to create a new canon ex nihilo. Some professors chose to keep most of the old books, but changed the course focus. The Philosophy track, for instance, continued to require both Plato and Aristotle, but wedged readings about Australian aborigines between the two.19 Among aboriginal “philosophical” insights are the concept of “dream-time”—a circular and antirational way of viewing cause and effect—and the belief that women become pregnant by crossing spiritually enchanted patches of ground. The class paid little attention to whether the aboriginal claims are actually true. Rather, discussions contrasted the readings with the “logocentric” approach of Western philosophers like Aristotle or Descartes. The upshot was that logic and illogic were put on the same plane and that truth and consistency were considered just two values among many. The course instructors ignored the fact that the rais
on d'etre of philosophy is the discovery of transcultural truth, and that ipso facto the discipline is predominantly a Western pursuit. The anti-Western focus required glossing over another embarrassing detail: The aboriginal readings were actually written by Western anthropologists because the aborigines lacked a written language—not to mention anthropology itself.

  For instructors in other tracks, the CIV program provided the desired vehicle for a comprehensive revolution. Perhaps most extreme is “Europe and the Americas,” a CIV track developed by anthropology professor Renato Rosaldo, one of the foremost advocates of curricular change. The new track focuses on issues of race, class, and gender—to the exclusion of almost everything else.20 Marx's historic treatise on class warfare, the Communist Manifesto, is still required, and from there the 17- and 18-year-old freshmen's educational experience deteriorates rather rapidly. They study Guatemalan revolutionary Rigoberta Menchu, whose book I…Rigoberta Menchu relates “the effects on her of feminist and socialist ideologies.” The story tracks Menchu's journey from poverty and despair to the center of the Central American revolutionary movement. Next, Zora Neale Hurston's book Their Eyes Were Watching God presents a semiautobiographical critique of male domination in American society. The hero of With His Pistol in His Hand, by America Parades, is a Mexican who shoots a local sheriff in Texas and runs away from the law, as he realizes that “there is one law for Anglo-Texans, another for Texas-Mexicans.” “Impotence and despair reign” in Juan Rulfo's The Burning Plain, as Mexican Indians struggle to eke out a living in the howling desert. Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street emphasizes the stultification and drudgery of the life of a little girl in a downtown slum.21 The last week of Fall quarter, lectures are devoted to the topic of “Forging Revolutionary Selves.”

  In the Spring quarter, students are required to complete a project or lengthy paper as a significant portion (one-third) of the final grade. The Spring 1992 course syllabus explained that “projects in the past have included:”

  A skit on the debates around culture curricula

  A photoessay on San Francisco, organized around a theme

  A report on a field work project on a migrant workers camp

  A violin duet designed to create an intercultural esthetic

  An Aztec newspaper from the year 1524

  A board game called “First Contact”

  A video on the course

  A dance articulating themes of identity

  A history of women's athletics in the US22

  According to one student in the class, that year's projects even included a documentary on a Grateful Dead rock concert. Of course, what migrant workers, violin and dance performances, women's athletics, or Jerry Garcia have to do with great literature, Europe, the Americas, or any serious study of non-Western culture is a complete mystery.

  CIV's amorphous mission—to “broaden” the experience of students—should not, however, be confused with “anything goes.” Rather, the new canon is vague precisely so that teachers can canonize their personal beliefs. Professor Rosaldo's fundamental assumptions regarding the unique evils of the West, which formed the basis of his complaints against the Western Culture program, have become enshrined in the “Europe and the Americas” reading list, as even the handful of more traditional Western works are “deconstructed” to show hidden “Eurocentric” biases. Augustine's Confessions, rather than a discourse on religious faith, becomes a study in “the body and the deep interior self,” followed by a discussion of “multicultural selves in Navajo country” (a topic no Navajo likely discussed outside contemporary American universities).23 The Book of Genesis accompanies a lecture on “labor, gender, and self in the Philippine uplands,” and Plato's Republic helps illustrate “anti-assimilationist movements.”24 In the Winter quarter, the course compares the U.S. Bill of Rights with Lee Iacocca's “Car Buyer Bill of Rights.”25 In pairing the sublime with the trivial, the exercise intends to prove the assumption upon which it is based—that a founding document of our country is not incommensurably superior to any other document written by Western males.

  Courses like “Europe and the Americas” promote a certain type of diversity, to be sure. Marx's demands for a class-based revolution contrast with Menchu's utopian feminism which in turn differs from other writers’ stress on the deprivations of American Indians, inner-city slums, and everyday life. But the new CIV tracks do not accomplish the one educationally justifiable thing they promised to, namely, an examination of non-Western cultures, like Confucian China or medieval Islam. This, it must be remembered, had been a major rationale for the change from Western Culture to CIV. Instead, Professor Rosaldo and his colleagues remained solidly focused on the West in an effort to expose racism, sexism, and classism. In its practical application, then, CIV actually narrowed diversity significantly. For instead of surveying the ideas of a range of thinkers over the last 25 centuries (who cannot collectively be placed in any ideological categories), many of the new tracks focus largely on issues relevant to late-20th-century political activists like Professor Rosaldo.

  A Tempest Over The Tempest

  An honest study of other cultures might entail a drastic reassessment of the role and nature of the West, but hardly in the direction Stanford's activists probably imagine. While many cultures have practiced slavery, only in the West did the doctrine of individual rights develop, that shattered the cultural basis for slavery. More generally, the various forms of oppression with which activists charge the West—racism, sexism, elitism—pale in comparison to those found in non-liberal societies such as the ethnocentrism of China, the subordination of women in Islamic states, and the oppression of the untouchables in India. The belief in the dignity and freedom of the individual was not affirmed by societies that bound women's feet, sold their own people into slavery, routinely performed clitorectomies, or enforced rigid caste systems.

  If there is a consistent intellectual mistake made by the West's critics, it appears to be this: Because the West has recognized its episodes of historical injustice, it is judged more harshly than cultures that present a rosier, but less accurate, accounting of themselves. In the process, the West appears uniquely baneful, when the reverse is the case: Without Western classical liberal ideas and rhetoric (regarding the unquestionable evils of racism, sexism, etc.) the CIV debate could never have gotten off the ground. Instead of recognizing their debt to the West, the CIV advocates carried their critique too far, mistaking the ability to diagnose a disease for the disease itself.

  This complex and paradoxical relationship between the West and its denouncers is well illustrated by another example drawn from the new curriculum. “Europe and the Americas” required two readings that exemplify both the new way in which classics are taught and the true nature of works added for the sake of “diversity.” The classic is The Tempest; the new work, read alongside it, is a revised version of Shakespeare's play, called A Tempest, written in 1969 by Aime Cesaire. Cesaire, a black French intellectual, devoted his spare time to radical politics, as a representative in the French Assembly and as mayor of Fort-de-France (two positions not usually occupied by the disempowered).

  Shakespeare's play is the story of the magician Prospero, a former Duke of Milan stranded on an island after his brother, Antonio, usurped his dukedom with the connivance of Alonso, King of Naples. Rather than seeking revenge when a storm delivers Alonso and Antonio to the island, Prospero accepts Alonso's atonement. The theme of repentance and forgiveness is central to the play, symbolized in the final marriage of Prospero's daughter, Miranda, to Alonso's son, Ferdinand. Prospero is aided by Ariel, an airy spirit who helps thwart the rebellion of Prospero's servant, Caliban, a savage and deformed monster who had once attempted to rape Miranda. Prospero's mastery of Caliban—who would be harmful to others were he free—is a subtheme of the play. At the end, Prospero disavows sorcery, and since the play is the last of Shakespeare's greats, the act is widely interpreted as symbolic of the Bard's sentimental decision to put aside t
he writing arts.

  Hardly the multifaceted original, A Tempest is a transparent morality play about colonial imperialism. Cesaire's characters are “as in Shakespeare” with two alterations—Ariel is “a mulatto slave,” Caliban “a black slave”—and an addition—Eshu, “a black devil-god.” Prospero is depicted as a megalomaniac (“I am Power,” he rants) as well as a heartless master, sniping at Ariel, “As for your freedom, you'll have it when I'm good and ready,” and remarking of the restless Caliban, “He's getting a little too emancipated.” For good measure Prospero is also an environmental nemesis who pollutes the isle; “Prospero is Anti-Nature!” exclaims Caliban. To complete the black-and-white scenario, Caliban is transformed into a revolutionary hero, who demands to be called “X” (for Prospero has stripped him of his “identity”) and whose leitmotif is “Uhuru!” (a Swahili yell announcing his entrance on stage). Caliban chastises the more reserved slave, Ariel, for his “Uncle Tom patience” and for “sucking up to [Prospero]” before embarking on his rebellion. Whereas Prospero represents Shakespeare in the Bard's play, Caliban is Cesaire's voice in the new construction, which ends in a final indignant tirade indicative of Aime Cesaire's own revolutionary politics:

  Understand what I say, Prospero:

  For years I bowed my head,

  for years I took it, all of it—

  your insults, your ingratitude…

  and worst of all, more degrading than all the rest,

  your condescension,