Inside American Education (45 page)

Derek Bok’s picture of a left-wing takeover danger long past on campus is a view widely promoted by defenders of the academic establishment. Superficial comparisons with the magnitude of disruption and violence on campus during the 1960s might well suggest that there is no comparable level of turmoil today. However, much of that calm is the calm of surrender. Bok’s own institution, Harvard, is a classic example. By allowing disruptions and thugs on the left to harass and assault visiting speakers with impunity, thereby discouraging other potential speakers with views abhorrent to the left from appearing on campus, Harvard undoubtedly has succeeded in minimizing the total amount of violence and negative publicity it has had to endure. But this is a
confirmation
of the power of those using storm trooper tactics, rather than a sign that they “overestimated” that power. Bok’s claim that “the principles of academic freedom are now widely accepted”
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is not true even on his own campus, unless all he means by “acceptance” is lip service.

As one of Harvard’s giants of the past, J. A. Schumpeter,
once said: “Power wins, not by being used, but by being there.” Left-wing storm trooper power has won on elite campuses all across the country. There are organized, nationwide campus groups who openly proclaim their intention to prevent speakers with views they abhor from being able to talk at colleges or universities.
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Their members include faculty as well as students.

Ideological double standards have become so common in the academic world that any criticism of them is treated as an attack on the particular groups receiving the benefits. Those who criticize double standards for minorities are almost certain to be labeled “racist” while those who criticize double standards for homosexuals will automatically be labeled “homophobic” and those who criticize double standards for radical feminists will be labelled “sexist.”

Another trivializing tactic is to respond to any criticism of academic politicization by claiming that education is
already
politicized, so that it is hypocritical to object when someone else’s politics become influential. These are not arguments but word games. The facts are blatant that scholarly associations which had never taken a stand on political controversies before, throughout their history, have collectively become shrill partisans on many political issues in recent times, that free speech on ideological issues has been stifled by violence and/or administrative punishment on many campuses, that ideological questions once considered taboo in employment interviews are often used as litmus tests for academic appointments. The list could go on and on.

It is a true but trivial statement that no individual or institution has ever been 100 percent free of political or ideological views or 100 percent free of some influence of those views on their choices of words or deeds. But this is like saying that Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler were both imperfect human beings. It is true in itself, but more than a little misleading. That defenders of contemporary academic trends so frequently resort to misdirection and trivialization does more to establish the substantive bankruptcy of their positions than the worst their critics could do.

Stung by media attention to “political correctness” on campus, many academics and their media allies have struck back by either denying its existence or by equating “political correctness”
with the holding of particular social and political views, rather than the suppressing of opposing views through double standards.

Defenders of “political correctness” almost invariably evade the heart of the criticisms against it—namely, that it is an imposition of ideological conformity. Instead, defenders proclaim the merits of their particular ideology or its social goals. Those merits and those goals are things which might well be debated in the marketplace of ideas, but the charge against “political correctness” is precisely that it is antithetical to the marketplace of ideas. The very rhetoric of “politically correct” zealots betrays the fact that they are not seeking an open debate between opposing viewpoints, but rather an institutional process by which they “raise the consciousness” of others, give others “awareness” or “sensitivity,” or otherwise engage in one-way enlightenment of the benighted. Everything from “residential education” programs to automatic deductions of students’ “contributions” to the Naderite P.I.R.G.s shows the weight of academic institutions being put behind one particular ideological vision.

This is done, not simply at the expense of other viewpoints, but more fundamentally at the expense of the educational process itself, as more and more courses and programs are set up to lead students to ideologically defined conclusions—whether about the environment, race, sex, or other topics—rather than to develop their own ability to think for themselves, and to subject all arguments to the various kinds of systematic analysis known as disciplines. One symptom of this fundamental shift in the purpose of education is the zest for so-called “interdisciplinary” studies, where this means in practice
non-disciplinary
studies—studies which require no mastery of the analytical methods of science, economics, logic, statistical analysis, or other encumbrances to “exciting” ideological discussions.

What is routinely passed over in silence by defenders of “political correctness” is the institutionalization of ideological conformity, not only through propaganda courses—increasingly required—but also through active suppression of alternative viewpoints via cultural
Gauleiters
in the dormitories, restrictive speech codes, and administrative toleration of storm trooper tactics against outside speakers who seek to bring alternative
viewpoints to campus. These issues are almost never confronted by defenders of “political correctness.”

Race

Among critics’ charges against American colleges and universities is that they have engaged in preferential admissions policies to fill racial quotas. Here again, the education establishment’s response has been tactical rather than substantive.

President James Duderstadt of the University of Michigan, for example, gave a typical academic response on the issue of racial quotas in admissions: “There is no quota system at the U-M.” He added, “We’ve never had quotas.” At the same time, he said, “We seek a student body composition that is reflective of the national composition.”
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Such a distinction without a difference has been typical of the utter unreality of so much that has been said and done as regards the racial policies of American colleges and universities.

“At Stanford, we don’t have a double standard with regard to admissions,” that school’s alumni have been told.
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However, race and ethnicity of minority students are “taken into account and may give them an edge over other outstanding candidates.” The distinction between an “edge” and a “double standard” can also be a distinction without a difference, depending on how big the “edge” is—and it is precisely this which Stanford refuses to reveal, despite the other statistics it issues on all sorts of other aspects of its students, including minority students. At the University of Virginia, an official likewise denied that they would admit a black student “just for a number.” However, while fewer than half the Asian applicants were accepted, more than two thirds of the black applicants were accepted—even though the Asians admitted had SAT scores averaging 180 points higher than that of blacks.
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One of the most remarkable counter-attacks against critics of preferential admissions policies for minorities has been the claim that these critics are hypocritical for not criticizing preferential admissions policies for alumni children and other groups admitted on non-meritocratic grounds.
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An Amherst professor made the charge even broader, accusing the critics of believing in some kind of prior perfection—the Camelot or
Eden argument already noted in other contexts—leading to “fantasies of unconditional individual accomplishment” as a basis for their “critiques of affirmative action.” This professor then launched into a list of special privileges in general, such as “the deduction of mortgage interest” from taxable income, “insider trading,” and many other “special advantages” underlying “many Americans’ individual achievement and comforts.”
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These might be telling arguments
if critics had been saying that minority students were benefitted too much
. Yet, for more than twenty years, critics of racial double standards have been arguing just the opposite—that preferential admissions are
damaging
to minority students. Whether preferential admissions policies are also damaging to privileged alumni children is obviously not an issue of comparable social importance, partly because the privileged are in a better position to look out for themselves. As for the Camelot and Eden arguments—if one took them seriously, it would mean that no criticism of any policy on any subject could ever be made, except on the assumption of prior perfection, which no one believes in.

If believers in racial double standards wish to argue that these are in fact a net benefit to minority students, and do no substantial harm to the colleges and universities, then they are of course free to take on the formidable task of trying to make that case. Their misleading characterizations of the critics, and especially their suppression of hard evidence, suggest that they are not about to take on such a task. They find it far easier to argue on the basis of rhetoric and dogmas.

Dogmas about a need for racial “role models” on the faculty or a “critical mass” of minority students on campus, as a prerequisite for their academic success, are confidently asserted and unquestioningly accepted, with evidence being neither asked nor given. So are other dogmas about a need for special racial or ethnic enclaves to cushion minority students from the culture shock of encountering an alien, white, middle-class environment on campus. On some elite college campuses, where this kind of doctrine is most prevalent, a majority of the black students have come from middle-class, racially integrated neighborhoods and have attended predominantly white high schools. Yet the creation of separatist enclaves and the expansion of minority mini-establishments on campus is defended
by speaking of these native-born, English-speaking, middle-class Americans as being from a radically different culture, almost as if they were fresh off the boat from Africa.

At Harvard, for example, 70 percent of the black undergraduates have parents who are in professional or managerial occupations.
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At Cornell, a report labeled “not intended for public consumption” revealed that more minority students came from suburbs than from cities—in one year, twice as many.
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A study of black students at Stanford found that two-thirds came from predominantly white high schools.
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Nationwide, less than 2 percent of all college students come from completely non-white high schools, even though blacks alone are nearly 10 percent of these college students. Altogether, nearly 16 percent of all college students are non-white, while only 7 percent of college students come from schools which are either completely non-white or mostly non-white.
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A majority of non-white college students therefore comes from predominantly white high schools. In short, the separate racial and ethnic enclaves on many college campuses are the first segregation experienced by many minority students.

The campus minority mini-establishment’s self-interest in having a segregated and alienated racial enclave is obvious, but what makes this possible is that so many others unthinkingly accept what is said from this quarter as if it were disinterested “expertise.”

If there were any interest in checking the “role models” and “critical mass” dogmas against facts, one way would be to look at the academic achievements of minority students in the era before either of these factors was present. Those black or other minority students who attended predominantly white colleges in the era before there were any minority “role models” on the faculty, and when the small numbers of minority students never approached a “critical mass,” showed no signs of having been less successful academically than the minority students of today. A study of black students who graduated from an elite university in the 1950s found that their grades were closer to the school average than the grades of black students who graduated in the 1980s.
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In an earlier period, during which 34 graduates of all-black Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., went on to Amherst College over the years, 7 of these 34 became Phi Beta Kappas. Seven of the 12 who went to Williams
College during the same era also became Phi Beta Kappas.
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Very similar stories could be told of other racial or ethnic groups from the same era who had neither “role models” nor a “critical mass”—second-generation Asian students on the west coast and second-generation Jewish students on the east coast being prime examples. It was a little over half a century ago when the first black professor was hired by a major university, the University of Chicago—and this was just a few years after the first Jewish professor achieved tenure at Columbia University. The likelihood that a Japanese American student would ever see a professor of his own racial background was even less than for blacks and Jews. None of this produced the academic disasters so common in colleges and universities today. If evidence rather than dogmas were the test, it would be easier to argue that the minority students of those days were more successful. If incentives rather than hopes were the focus, it would be easy to see why: They were not enough of a constituency for anyone to mobilize them politically and create distracting agendas.