CAMPUS CORRESPONDENCE : The Overlooked Problem of Multiculturalism

Perhaps no campus debate in recent years has received as much attention, and inflamed as many passions, as the one over multiculturalism. At Yale, the college newspaper has been inundated with articles on the subject. All this has served to obscure the original--and flawed--idea of multiculturalism.

According to its minority advocates, multiculturalism rejects assimilation. By learning about their cultural heritage, students, especially minorities, can take pride in their origins and, thereby, strengthen their identities.

But this notion has somehow gotten confused with the idea that universities should offer a wide variety of courses, and should employ faculty with widely varying expertise, in both Western and non-Western disciplines. That, of course, is what most universities do. At Yale, many non-Western programs were offered long before their Western counterparts. Chinese studies have been a part of the curriculum at Yale since 1887, Japanese studies since 1907. The German studies major, by contrast, was first offered at Yale two years ago.

The multiculturalism debate has also become entangled with the issue of what should be required courses at universities, a debate there has never produced a consensus. Even at Yale, where is there is no required core curriculum, its former dean got into trouble with the multiculturalists when he argued for greater emphasis on Western Civilization studies. He never followed through on his recommendations.

As long as multiculturalism’s true goals are obscured by these other issues, they will be difficult to judge. Chief among them is that multiculturalism can instill ethnic pride and, ultimately, give new meaning to Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that “All men are created equal.”

But history, or any other subject, should not be used to teach and instill cultural pride. An academic discipline is credible and legitimate to the extent that its methods are rational and self-critical and its goal the natural outgrowth of its subject matter. Social desirability should not be a factor.

Such misuse of history undermines its proper goal: to understand and acknowledge the past, not to take pride in it. Because whites can hardly take pride in 350 years of racism in America, should they not study history?

The problems the campus multiculturalists seek to address are undeniably real. The need to alleviate the inequities that linger in this country remains urgent. Education must play a role in solving some of these problems.

What is needed is not a multiculturalism in service to ethnic pride, but a multiculturalism that enriches university life by broadening the world of learning. Toward that end, universities must continue to bring to light the legacies of all cultures. They must continue to evaluate and teach those cultures according to rigorous and scholarly criteria, and not shrink from discovering and teaching facts that one or another group--whether majority or minority--might find inconvenient or uncomfortable. But the power of education should not be used to achieve a goal that cannot be accomplished without distorting education itself.