2002-09-05 Case Studies Of Intollerance On Campus.

Illiberal Education by Dinesh D'Souza presents an interesting collection of case studies of the politics of Race and Sex on Campus. The main theme of the work is that the Western tradition of liberal education is being undermined by efforts to meet the demands for group representation in curriculum, student bodies and faculty appointments. He points out that, whereas the traditional notion of the university saw it as a forum for an open exchange of ideas, the current reality is a venue in which the ultimate goal is not truth arrived at through study and exchange, but dictated by faculty radicals in accord with their own political beliefs.

To support his thesis, D'Souza provides a series of cases studies of incidents at leading universities across the U.S. He begins with an report of the admissions policy at Berkeley which, at the time of his writing, admitted students competitively within racial groups, each of which is entitled to a percentage of the student body. The result of this is different standards for admission by members of various ethnic groups. He then proceeds to review the demands for multiculturalism, which leads to the abandonment of traditional classics to make room for works of women and contributions from non-western traditions. In doing this works whose value have been tested over decades or centuries are supplanted by clearly inferior works only because they represent contributions by members of underrepresented groups.. In faculty selection, standards have been established to ensure that certain groups are represented in various numbers in the academic departments. This creates both intellectual and practical problems. Whereas liberal education teaches students to search for universal standards of judgment which transcend particularities of race, gender and culture, illiberal education teaches a provincialism in which every group is encouraged to have its own provincial world view, which restricts the ability find commonality among all mankind. The practical problem is that the quotas often call for numbers of minority professors exceeding the pool of qualified contenders.

D'Souza concludes this book with three modest proposals. He proposes a program of Non-Racial Affirmative Action, which would permit the admission students who appear to possess academic potential not reflected in their academic records, rather than basing standards on group membership. The second suggestion is for Choice Without Separatism. Under this proposal, organizations open only to members of ethnic groups not would encouraged, but those promoting ideas, which may be predominately of interest to members of particular ethnic groups would be encourage, but on a non-exclusive basis. The third proposal is for a curriculum searching for Equality and Classics. Rather than dismissing classical works on the basis that they represent a limited world view, they should be studied for the principals of equality which many contain and which often played a role in their selection as classics.

The weakness of Illiberal Education is that it often seems to be a merely collection of anecdotes which leave the reader wondering whether they really represent the reality of contemporary higher education or whether they merely reflect the most extreme aberrations. for many, including prospective college parents such as myself, this is an interesting study of disturbing trends in higher education.