Stanford Expected to End Divisive Fight Over Culture Studies

Stanford University is expected to reach a compromise this week on the most divisive intellectual issue on the campus in two decades: how to reflect the concerns of minorities and women in the Western Culture course required of all freshmen and whether to retain the course’s mandatory reading list of classics.

The compromise would drop the reading list of 15 masterworks in religion, philosophy, political thought, science and literature that were called “the common intellectual glue” of a Stanford education. However, many of the same books are likely to be required under a new procedure in which teachers each year are supposed to come up with a list of texts, authors or topics to be studied.

In addition, the course, which would be renamed “Cultures, Ideas and Values,” would have to tackle issues of race, gender and class in each quarter. And the courses would study the ancient, medieval and modern periods of history, according to the compromise plan, which is scheduled to be voted on by the Faculty Senate on Thursday.

Most participants said Senate approval is likely, if for no other reason than weariness over an argument that has dragged on throughout the academic year. The debate attracted national attention, especially after U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett ridiculed any dropping of the reading list as an attack on Western values and the integrity of higher education. A spokesman for Bennett said Tuesday that the secretary had no immediate comment on the latest plan.

At Stanford, the compromise appeared to be met with relief. “I think it’s necessary for everybody to come together,” said biology professor Craig Heller, chairman of the faculty committee that oversees undergraduate studies.

On one side, some teachers and students complained that the reading list ignored the contributions of minorities and women and was an academic straitjacket for teachers. Instituted eight years ago, it included such works as “Genesis” from the Bible, Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents.”

The other side argued that the core list provided the only studies which all Stanford students had in common. Freshmen take the yearlong Western Culture courses but can choose among various topical tracks for the year, such as “Literature and Arts” and “Values, Technology, Science and Society.” Many of the list’s proponents, however, were willing to expand it to include books by women and blacks. That, in turn, was viewed as tokenism by minorities.

Clayborne Carson, an associate history professor who advocated eliminating the reading list, said the compromise “is not going to satisfy all the concerns that led to the controversy, but it is a step in the right direction. Both sides recognize that you can’t force people to teach in a particular way.”

‘Significant Commonality’

According to Marshall McCall, a classics professor who originally wanted the list retained, the new plan “clearly is meant to signal that, symbolic or otherwise, for good or bad, there will not again be a rigid reading list or a fixed canon but that there will be a commitment to significant commonality.”

Under the new plan, the common elements among the tracks could change very much from year to year and do not necessarily have to be particular books. As a result, some teachers worry about fierce disputes annually.

However, those decisions will be made by the teachers of the culture courses and not by the full Faculty Senate. And as a calming sign of what to expect in the future, the Western culture faculty came up with six uncontroversial authors or works to be studied next year: Plato, the Bible, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Marx. Otherwise, the texts were left unspecified as were the ways to study racial and women’s issues.

Carson said the debate showed that American universities must adapt to a multi-ethnic society. “When this goes through, Stanford will still have one of the strongest programs for the teaching of Western civilization in the nation and it will be enriched by new approaches,” he said.