Sinister? Not at All

Education Secretary William J. Bennett, ever on the lookout for targets, has drawn a bead on Stanford University. He says that it is planning to “drop the West” from a sequence of required courses whose goal is to give all undergraduates a shared understanding of their civilization.

Bennett’s absurd accusation is worth noting only because what is happening at Stanford is happening at other campuses and there is some chance that he might be taken seriously. What Stanford is doing is assembling a common intellectual core of knowledge that reflects America’s diversity without giving in to academic fads or pressure from students.

Since 1980 Stanford has required all undergraduates to take a one-year sequence of courses that offer readings and historical perspectives on Western culture. Various departments--like English, philosophy and history--offer the courses, which most students take as freshmen. A faculty committee agreed on a list of books for required reading and a companion list of titles that are “strongly recommended.”

Among the required works are Plato’s “Republic,” at least one Greek tragedy, Dante’s “Inferno,” Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and Freud’s “Outline of Psychoanalysis.” Strongly recommended are Virgil’s “Aeneid,” a Shakespearean tragedy and works by Rousseau, Goethe and Nietzsche. There are no works by women, blacks, Asians or Latinos on the core list, but it is no more than a core list, and other works can be used.

What Bennett has stumbled into is an effort to repair damage that resulted from the core list of books becoming the issue rather than the educational goal of the program itself. The core list may be abandoned, but that would not necessarily mean a change in the titles that would be assigned.

Stanford’s faculty senate is now discussing a proposal for a required new course on cultures, issues and values starting next year. A committee making the proposal wants the course to involve learning from “a common quest to understand the origins and development of American culture rather than from a common list of books to be read.” Some faculty members would prefer to retain the current core list and add works by women and writers of non-European descent. Examples can be found in an experimental course offered last year: Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man” and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Paul Robinson, who teaches European intellectual history at Stanford and directs the present Western culture program, explains that as a practical matter the courses will not change much if the proposal to drop the core list is approved. About 30 or 40 faculty members have invested considerable energy in preparing the existing courses. They understand that students need a common body of knowledge. Their departments must approve the basic plan for the course that they will teach. Thus there is nothing so sinister afoot as dropping the West. What is happening is that the West is being enriched in study by the contributions to culture and values of a vast array of people as it is in the real world.