STANfORD DOCUMENTS
669
have a place in the college education for modern men and women .
The relevant question here is: Why has the new curriculum focused
on them, and why was it necessary to repudiate the course in West–
ern Culture and Civilization to do so?
The answer to that question is suggested by the nature of the
criticisms that originally spurred the revision of the course in
Western Culture - a course which year after year had been judged
by an overwhelming number of students who had completed it to be
highly satisfactory. These criticisms centered on the charge that the
course was "racist, sexist, and imperialistic." They were made by a
small militant minority of students and echoed by a few junior
members of the faculty. No specific illustration of the way the course
was taught in any of its sections was ever cited by anyone in substan–
tiation of the charge. The use of the epithets implied that race, sex,
and class were being taught in an invidious and intellectually unac–
ceptable manner. The only evidence offered was the list of books
studied and, inferentially, of books not studied . Much was made of
the fact that none of the authors of the core list of works was a
woman or a person of color, and that there were no great works from
foreign cultures. The Bible was not considered a work of non–
Western culture, nor was Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, regarded
as a man of color.
When the proposal to revise the course to correct these deficien–
cies reached the Senate floor, however, there was hardly any men–
tion of the original charges that had inspired the movement for revi–
sion. The impact of the Reverend Jesse Jackson's famous march at
the head of several hundred chanting students demanding the aboli–
tion of the Western Culture course threatened to be more damaging
than helpful to the cause. The rhetorical abuse in the student
newspaper by members and officers of the Black Student Union,
directed against a handful of faculty who had raised some critical
questions about the proposal to substitute the revised course, had
embarrassed some of its architects. They indignantly denied that the
repeated charges of racism, sexism, and imperialism against the ex–
isting course in Western Culture, that had been heard at mass
meetings and had filled columns of the press, had anything to do
with the grounds for urging reform . Occasionally, however, these
charges surfaced, as in the remarks of a professor, not in the
humanities, who said : "I have no doubt but that the Western
Culture requirement embodied chauvinistic, racist, and sexist
values. The recommendation for change is, and is perceived to be,
