Culture Wars The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter (z-lib.org)

214 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

culture war. In reality, then, the culture war, in higher education centers on what the boundatles of acadchli@ k ccdom siibutd be. lmphc1t ID this

is a battle to define the content of knowledge and truth.

All of this takes form ID a number ot ways, as we snail see, but the heart of the matter can be witnessed in the debate over curriculumparticularly, the manner in which the curriculum is determined. Those on both sides of the culturnl djyjde would agree that when the pr~

.of curriculum formation is oliticized, academic freedom is threatened. Predictably, each accuses the other of doing just t at.

Conservative Challenges

In the view of most progressives, the forces of traditionalism and moral orthodoxy present the chief threat to academic freedom in the curriculum. Accuracy in Academia (AIA), an organization founded in 1985 to document and oppose political bias in the classroomJ is considered to be one such group. As AIA's existence became publicized, rumors surfaced that it sent student "spies" armed with tape recorders into lecture halls to root out Marxists and feminists. The reaction in universities and other academic organizations was predictably hostile. The American' So-

.	o ·cal Association	for exam le assed a resolution					stating it was
"	rofoundly disturbed by organizations such as Accuracy ID Aca							emia,
whose o ~ecuves re resent a senous threat to academic ree							om	ng
			timate line o intellectual i				irJ. "58 In a
		a dozen student f cult , and unive~
assoc1at1ons, the feelin
		was similar: "The presence in the classroom o

mom o s or an outside organization will have a chilling effect on the academic freedom of both students and faculty members."59 For progressives, this is not the way universities work; the academic mission and ideas are clearly subverted by such activity. The response of AIA was to dismiss these accusations outright. "Academic freedom," a spokeswoman said, "permits professors to research whatever they please but it does not give them the license to give biased lectures in the classroom. Academic freedom does not extend to political indoctrination!"60

A controversy such as this is fairly infrequent, in part because organizations like AIA are few in number, tend to be small, and offer little ·more than a symbolic challenge to the academic establishment. One university chancellor called AIA a "useful irritant."61 Because a progressivist· vision tends to dominate the university, the most persistent accusations that academic freedom is being challenged (if not directly

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subverted) come from the other direction, from those who would challenge that domination. Here, the controversy surrounding AIA and its alleged threat to "academic freedom" becomes very instructive, for the accusations leveled by traditionalist and conservative voices in these cases echo those usually leveled by progressivists. The argument, however, is considerably more complicated, and requires some elaboration.

Multiculturalism as Credo and Program

The politicization of the curriculum by progressivists, their critics contend, takes form chiefly in the debate over the issue of the diversity of knowledge in the academy. In the current jargon, the debate is over the virtues of "multiculturalism." The argument goes something like this: 'the existing curriculum is politicized by virtue of the fact that its principal works have been composed almost entirely by dead white European males. White male literary critics canonize white male novelists; elite white male historians document elite white male history; white male psychologists test white male sophomores; and so on. Thus, progressivists argue, only a small part of human experience has really been studied- a part intrinsically contaminated with racism, sexism, heterosexism, and imperialism. Knowledge, in a word, is inherently biased. The solution today, therefore, is to be more inclusive of different experiences, perspectives, and truths, particularly those that have been ignored or silenced in the past-the voices of wo~en, the poor, minorities, and others disenfranchised from the prevailing power structures.

The two-year-long debate over the Western Culture program at Stanford University in the late 1980s is something of a parable of how the controversy over multiculturalism is articulated. At Stanford, a group of students called for the abolishment of the Western Culture program. In its place they proposed a course that would emphasize "the contributions of cultures disregarded and/or distorted by the present program." A task force was appointed by the administration to evaluate the existing program and the proposal to diversify. After much political debate and pressure, the committee finally came to .the conclusion that a new "Culture, Ideas and Values" course emphasizing "diversity" should replace the course on Western Culture. This conclusion evoked a strong political response from both sides, especially those who favored the idea. Rallies and demonstrations were held in support of the proposal ("Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture's got to go"); a faculty senate debate over the proposal was disrupted by students chanting, "Down with racism,

216 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

down with Western Culture, up with diversity"; and members of a student group called Rainbow Agenda staged a sit-in in the office of the president of the university, demanding, among other things, adoption of the task-force proposal. The proposal was adopted, and not long after, . still other new course requirements for undergraduates emphasizing racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender-based diversity were established.

The situation at Stanford is just the most publicized case of a debate that has been repeated ih different ways at most colleges and universities across the country-Columbia, Chicago, Brown, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Indiana, among others. At the University of Wis-

consin, student	re re	uir to take ethnic studies courses but are not
re uired to study Western civilization or even American histor				r·
mea		ut	Mount Hol oke, and the
University of California at Berkeley.62
The debate	over	multicultura'fiSrn takes	even more controversial

form in curricular and extracurricular programs, some mandatory, that are designed to "increase sensitivity" to racial and cultural diversity in the university community.63 Here, too, opponents of multiculturalism claim that academic life has been politicized. Dozens of universities, for example, have introduced regulations against what the National Education Association has called "ethnoviolence," including "acts of insensitivity."64 The University of Michigan, for example, adopted a six-page "anti-bias" code (later found to be unconstitutional) that allowed for tfle punishment of students whose behavior "stigmatizes or victimizesan individual on the basis of race, ethnicit , reli ion, sex, sexual orientation'; cree , na 1ona ongm, ancestry, age. marital status. handicaRz..or Vietnam-era veteran status." Likewise, the University of Wisconsin made subject to disciplinary sanctions those students who engage in "certain types of expressive behavior directed at individuals and intended to demean and to create a hostile environment for education or other

.university-authorized activities...." Students Toward a New Diversity at the University of Virginia introduced a proposal to the Board of· Visitors stating among other things that the university should "discipline a student, faculty or staff member when that individual intentionally uses racist or discriminatory comments, slurs, ethnocentric or sexual invectives, epithets or utterances to directly attack an individual or an identifiable group of individuals rather than to express an idea or opinion." The number of these sorts of cases is considerable and, in many cases, the rules have been enforced. A student at the University of Connecticut was ordered to move off-campus and was forbidden to return

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to university dormitories and cafeterias after putting up a jesting sign on the door of her dorm room saying that preppies, bimbos, men without chest hair, and "homos" should be shot on sight. A student from Brown University was expelled for shouting insults while in a drunken stupor against blacks, homosexuals, and Jews. And students were required to take down flags displayed in their dorm windows during the Persian Gulf War. The university's rationale, according to one university spokeswoman, was that "we have a big population to be sensitive to.... This is a very diverse community, and what may be innocent to one person may be insulting to another."65 The purpose of such rules in student conduct codes, according to their proponents, is to ensure that the university becomes an institution that serves and respects all people. "Racial epithets and sexually haranguing speech," as one Stanford law professor put it, "silences rather than furthers discussion."66

One of the most far-reaching ways the curriculum has accommodated the pressure to diversify is seen in the range of new disciplinary programs that emerged since the 1970s: women's studies, black studies, Hispanic studies, gay studies, and. so on. These correspond to an aggressive campaign of affirmative action. Proponents feel that in order to ensure that new perspectives are presented fairly, it is essential that university recruitment be extended to those who can best identify with those perspectives-faculty recruited from the ranks of women and people of color. Here, too, advocates promise that the ultimate outcome of these "re-visions" will be a fuller and better liberal arts curriculum-"a more inclusive version of human knowledge."67

Affirmative action as a means to promote this kind of diversity extends to student admissions.68 Admissions committees at nearly all

American colleges and universities have changed their policies in order to encourage a greater repre~entation of blacks, Hispanics~ and Native

Americans. The changes require. a double standard when it comes to demonstrated academic ability. In the Ivy League schools, white students must have a grade-point average of close to 4.0 and SAT scores Of at least 1,250 to get in. Many of these schools. howe;;'r, will admit minorities =with a grade-qointaverage below 3.0 and SAT scores under 11000. The same is true at elite state schools like the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Virginia. At the former, a student with a GPA of 3.5 and SATs of 1,200 will most definitely be admitted if he or she is black and will be most unlikely to be admitted if white. At the latter, black freshman enrollment doubled in five years in the 1980s in response to an order of the court. According to one report, the university

218 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

. complied by accepting more than half of all black applicants compared to about one-fourth of all white applicants, even though the white students often had better academic credentials. In 1988, for example, the average SAT score of white freshmen was 246 points higher than that of the average black student. The word "qualifications," one professor put it, is a code word.for whites.69

The institutionalization of the ideals of multiculturalism in academia is carried out by still other means as well. Not all but many professional

..organizations in academia, for example, go beyond ser\ring the profes-

sional· needs of their members to		actin as	bncal lobbies. Of the
un re	v	e American Psychological Associ-
ation since the early 1950s	for exam le, over a		uarte	e t ·n

one way or ano er with issues relating to the culture war; most of these -Have been passed smce the m1d-1960s and most favor the ro essivist p s1 on. or examp e, t e association as passed resolutions endorsing

-a legal nght to an abortion; opposing apartheid in South Africa; calling for an immediate halt to the nuclear arms race; favoring handgun control; opposing discrimination agai11:st homosexuals, women, and racial and ethnic minorities; and supporting the passage of the Equal Rights Amendmeiit.70 Much the same can be said for the American Sociological Association, wliich has passed resolutions opposing the intent of the "sotiilled Family Protection Act," encouraging the end of U.S. aid to El Sal:vador, opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, opposing discrimination against homosexuals, favoring total divestment from South Africa, favoring the boycott of Gallo wine, and on and on. Moreover, the public image and identity of many of these professional organizations as political organizations is made even dearer by their policies not to hold their national or regional conventions in states that have refused to ratify the ERA or that still maintain antisodomy laws.

The Critique of Multiculturalism

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studies." '!:he classes taught in thes.e programs, critics claim, have more .. to do with "raising consdousness" than expanding stuc;len~· knowledge.

' T!t~ whole idea behind rpulticulturalism is ·.~to give an academic ·gloss t.o an implied. power struggle ,and to organize the academy on a political basis without seeming to do so." "When the children of the sixties received their professorships and deanships," another observer concluded, "they did not abandon the dream of radical cultural transformations; they set out to implement it. Now instead of disrupting classes, they are teaching them; instead of attempting to destroy our educational institutions physically, they are subverting them from within."71

Even those who.are willing to accept the challenge to open up university education to a broader range of cultural experiences complain bitterly about the methods used to bring this goal about; Consider the remarks of William J. Bennett, at the time Secretary of Education, about the Stanford affair: "Stanford's decision ... to alter its Western Culture program was not a product of enlightened debate, but rather an unfortunate capitulation to a campaign of pressure politics and intimidation.... In the name of 'opening minds' and 'promoting diversity,' we have seen in this instance the closing of the Stanford mind.... The methods that succeeded in pushing CIV through the faculty senate have shown that intimidation works-that intimidation can take the place of reason. The loudest voices have won, not through force of argument, but through bullying, threatening and name-calling. That's not the way a university should work."72 Another embattled dean complained that while the problems of injustice based on gender, race, and class are profound, pervasive, and indefensible, to institutionalize them in university life through "a Puritan style of reform" is simply incompatible with the life of the mind.73 The net effect of such programs and policies, still' another argued, is not the encouragement of open inquiry on campus but attitude adjustment, if not ideolQgical indoctrination.

Counter-Charges	,.---	~ /
	~ e.,voc..~

The progressivist response to this long series of accusations is that the curriculum in articular and academic life in eneral has alwa s been _politicize . e Western Civihzatmn course at Columbia University, for

example, which became a model for others in the country, is said to have ~volved out of the War Issues course offered during World' War I, which.

had the ideological mission of inoculating young people against Bolshevism and other subversive doctrines and making them "safe for democ-

220	THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

racy."74 Defining civilization at that time was very much a political act. On a more contemporary note, .one student critical of the Stanford Western Civilization course put it this way: this is "not just a racist ed-...

ucation, it is the education of racists."75 In the final analysis, say those holding to the progressivist vision, the public should not he misled. The critics of the multicultural innovations in the university are themselves motivated by political ideals-the same repressive assumptions that undergird the university system and American society as a whole. A bestselling work like. Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind was popular not because it treated the esoteric philosophy of Socrates, Heidegger, and Nietzsche with great refinement, but because it provided intellectual legitimation for a populist and conservative critique of progressive change in the university.76 So, too, E. D. Hirsch's book Cultural Literacy was wildly successful not because of his educational theory but because of his endorsement, cataloguing, and packaging of what were in effect "the eternal verities" of Western civilization. And then there are The Dartmouth Review and over sixty other similarly oriented college publications that very often derive their funding from outside the uni- versity-from Washingtonand New York-based conservative foundations.77 Who, progressivists would ask, can deny the politicizing effects on the university of these?

Freedom and Repression in Academia

The ideals of academic freedom and open-minded inquiry in the university have always been embedded in a social and historical context. However exalted these ideals have been in times past, there have always been certain unspoken limits on what topics could be studied and boundaries on the methods used in researching them. In our own time, the battles in the ivory tower center in many respects upon whether to retain an older agreement or to establish a new agreement about what is appropriate for the life of the mind. Clearly, representatives from each side (If-the fUltural qivide fervently believe that they properly uphold the principles of academic freedom-and that it is the other side that has .politicized and thus tainted the atmosphere of academic inquiry. Unfortunately, what is for one side the pursuit of serious scholarship is for the other a sign of academic repression. Once again, the culture war yields little or no middle ground. This debate too has an interminable character.

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The Battle Between Universities

There is another important element to this story. As with mass education at the primary and secondary levels, one way the traditionalists and the religiously and morally orthodox have responded to the threat posed by the growing domination of university education by their opponents has been to set up their own alternatives. Within the safety of their own colleges and universities, the minds of young men and women would be challenged and shaped but within the boundaries of their religious and moral traditions.

Most Evangelical colleges and universities were established in the mid-nineteenth century as a response to the secularization of still an earlier generation of Protestant universities. Institutions such as Wheaton College in Illinois (1860), Taylor University in Indiana (1846), . Houghton College in New York (1883), George Fox College in Oregon (1891), Gordon College in Massachusetts (1889), among others, were established to carry forth the beacon that was seen to have flickered out at Harvard, Yale, and dozens of other mainline denominational colleges·. Lutherans began establishing colleges and universities during the same period: 29 of the 34 Lutheran colleges and universities, 13 of the 19 Lutheran seminaries, and 9 of the 20 Lutheran junior colleges in America were founded before 1900. The initial spurt of Catholic institutions of higher learning were also founded. at this time. Of the nearly 200 Catholic colleges and universities, 73 were founded before 1900 and an additional 61 were founded in the next twenty-five years. And finally, 7 of the· IO major Jewish colleges were founded before 1925.

Over the twentieth century, this broad range of institutions has met with mixed success in maintaining its ideal of an alternative vision for higher education. The pressures to accommodate to the ethos of modern secular learning have always been subtle but they have steadily increased over the decades. Particularly since the 1970s, these institutions have been caught between a growing pressure to accommodate further, thereby losing their institutional distinctiveness, or to struggle even more vigorously to hold fast to their founding ideals. The seventy member institutions of the Christian College Coalition continue their efforts to be an a ternative to the secu ar 1 era arts, ut man ave capitulated to secularizing tendencies that they have ejtber jgpgred gr• been unable to recognize. By virtue of the subject matter, the large rfetwork of Bible colleges (whkh number well over one hundred) have

222 THE FIELDS OF CONFLICT

been far more successful than their liberal arts counterparts. Among the Lutheran and Catholic schools, the general tendency has been that the smaller colleges have been more successful at maintaining their educational and religious distinctiveness than the larger ones.

The tensions within the Catholic community have been particularly sharp. Orthodox Catholic publications continually rail against the liberalizing trends within various Catholic universities. Theology professors abandoning God and undermining the faith of their students, the adoption of a radical menu of curricular offerings, secular sex education in the dormitories, softening faculty and administration views on abortion and homosexuality-such developments have led orthodox Catholics to wonder whether Notre Dame, St. Louis University, Catholic University, Fordham, and many other Catholic colleges and universities are still Catholic.78 ·

Orthodox communities have been led to two kinds of institutional responses. One has been. to defend the traditions by cutting losses with the larger universities and starting anew. As Evangelical colleges and Bible schools were founded in response to secularism in the older denominational colleges in the nineteenth century, so too a new cycle of orthodox and traditionalist colleges and universities have now been founded because of the perceived vacuum of colleges to carry the true traditions on to the next generation. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, is a case in point. It was founded as a Catholic "great books" liberal arts· alternative in 1971 because of, as its founding statement claimed, "the growing tendency of Catholic colleges to secularize themselves-that is, to loosen their connection with the teaching Church a~d to diminish deliberately their Catholic character."79 Though not oriented toward the "great books," the identical sentiment gave birth to a decidedly orthodox Catholic alternative, Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, in 1977. On the conservative Protestant side as well, several colleges emerged as a direct or indirect response to the contemporary culture war: Liberty University (1971) associated with the Reverend jerry Falwell's ministry, Regent University (1977) formerly Christian Broadcasting Network University associated with the Reverend

Pat Robertson's ministry, and Oral Roberts University (1965).					. us cOl-
.The other response to the threat of secularism within reli
le es and semmanes	as been to "	urif " existin	colle	es an	minaries
by purging t ose pro essors w o		ave failed to prove their allegiance to
the traditions. This is	recisely what ha en d i		th	·	Con-

~ia Seminary of the Lut eran Church-;~fasouri Synod, and inl!!e

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early s. n

eventually won.

In the effort to create or maintain a distinct alternative to secular higher learning, the state has not played a neutral role but has exerted pressure to accommodate to secular and often progressivist public policy. In the case of the Fundamentalist ,!}ob Jones University, the federal government (through the Internal Revenue Service and then the Supreme Court) threatened and eventually took away the school's raxexem t status as an educational institution because the university prohibited, on t e as1s o 1 1ca mjunctions, interracial dating and marriage. An attorney for the university argued in 1983 that the government's position would mean that "religious bodies, if they are to enjoy tax exemption, must lock-step themselves to public policy even if it violates their conscience and doctrine."80 The same kind of pressure was exerted in the 1980s in the case of College, a small Presbytenan Ii eral arts college in western Pennsylvania. Though it had never been accused of discriminatin on the basis of ender and thougti" it never 1rect receive e eral fundin , when the administration re use to fill out a federal form (Assurance of Com liance with Title IX), t e government t reatened and (through the Civil Rights Restoration ct), eve all cut off federal funds to students attendin the colle e. Another example of the power o the state over schools attempting to maintain a religious distinctiveness occurred at Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic university in the nation. The contest involved two gay student organizations that sued the university for denying them the right to receive funds for campus activities. After eight years of pitched legal battles, a Washington, D.C., Superior Court and Court of Appeals ruled that Georgetown University had violated the city's Human Rights Act by discriminating against people for reasons of sexual orientation,

.despite the Catholic Church's strong theological opposition to homosexuality.

In the final analysis, the effort to establish a network of alternatives to secular higher learning continues to renew itself. On their own terms, such institutions would not seem to provide much of a challenge to the secular and ro ressivist esta lishment umversllles. ly small and low in prestjge-mere Davids in the shadow of a Goliath. Yet

in fact, a huge number of leaders within the orthodox alliance-who -~ . -«fork for all aspects ot the culture war, notJUSt education are educated "/l. through this network. Like the boy David, neither these individuals nor