(The End of Liberalism?, continued from p. 22)
A Reminder of Wars Past
These arguments, events, and facts serve to remind a person of what occurred during the
multicultural debates taking place in America during the 1980s and 1990s, which built on
actions that took place during the 1960s. If a person were to listen to the arguments being presented during those times, then he or she would have assumed the debate was a substantive one.
On the one side of the debating platform stood the traditionalists, who argued for the inherent moral validity of western civilization and the canon of texts that served as the literary and aesthetic foundation for such a way of life. On the other side stood the multiculturalists, who argued western civilization and its canon possessed no inherent moral validity but instead promulgated patriarchal and racist tendencies detrimental to enlightened thinking and social interaction. It was a debate that, in its involvement of the best and brightest credentialed minds in the country, discussing the substantive foundations of and directions for the country, appeared to represent what America is all about – namely, the sense of moral purpose that becomes expressed when honest people act with integrity.
A Behind-the-Scenes Story
Yet, there was a “behind-the-scenes” story to this debate that proves quite revealing. It is the story of political acceptance and ascendancy,
political manipulation and gain, and the power and influence of ideas. In the telling of the story, where the high moral validity of the debate is counter-posed with individual interest and political gain, one wonders whether the debate concerning multiculturalism was nothing more
than sound and fury signifying nothing –
nothing that is, except politics. And if it was about politics, then it would be most appropriate to discover the circumstances surrounding the acceptance and ascendancy of the multiculturalist camp, because within those power struggles it might be revealed whether the claims to legitimacy made by the traditionalist camp were valid or not.
Traditionalists argued, for example, social and demographic forces at play during the 1960s contributed to the acceptance and ascendancy of the multiculturalists. There, it was claimed, an exploding population of young people entering college (and escaping war) contributed to an explosion of demands placed on higher education, both for educational opportunity and for educational offerings (new undergraduate and graduate courses, more faculty and teaching assistantships, and the like). As these demands became translated into service offerings, the university itself changed. Brigitte Berger’s account of change represents what many traditionalists believed was the basis of the problem:
The transformation of the faculty was greatly
facilitated by the shortage of qualified scholars
in the wake of the phenomenal expansion of American higher education. The reservoir of committed academics, already small to begin
The multiculturalists were no longer content to abide in the compromise structured around the myth of the ivory tower, a myth designed to ease the threat philosophers pose to politicians when they enter the political realm and the threat politicians pose to philosophers when political power challenges ideas.
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