EDITH KURZWEIL
11
[our] Federal Constitution," which Tocqueville admired over one
hundred- fifty years ago.
The same issue of
The Chronicle
recaps the controversy over Carol
Iannone's appointment as a member of the NEH Council. Her oppo–
nents, "led by the Modern Language Association and the American
Council for Learned Societies denied that they had rejected her for
political reasons." But a few paragraphs below, the executive director of
the MLA said her group was "more determined than ever to speak up
when it seems appropriate to do so ... [and] is considering expanding
the conditions that would prompt it to oppose nominees to include
political balance." Her
confreres,
according to another article, a few
pages later, are about to found a new organization: twenty-four pro–
fessors, in English and the humanities, expect to "set the record straight
about such incendiary issues as 'political correctness' and free speech on
campus." They deny that left-wingers were or had been trying to squelch
dissent on college campuses, and they are in the process of organizing
their troops around the country. (The formation of another such group,
advocating "politicized readings of literature, popular culture and the
media" was reported in the November 6, 1991 issue .) I had hoped that,
instead, they too would realize that we need less politics in the university
rather than more, fewer academic interest groups rather than more, in
order to face up to the fact that students aren't taught enough to
function effectively. (Tocqueville appears already to have implied as
much.) If they could abandon their ideology for just a few hours a week,
they might be able to stop posturing for personal ends (even though such
ends must be pursued to get tenure and promotions), and to recognize
that it is more important to be educationally correct than politically
correct. I do not mean to propose yet another slogan, but to suggest
that we all work together. The central issue is not European culture
versus multiculture, singularity versus diversity, but education.
Education never has been associated with
brainwa~hing;
its aim always
has been to open up minds, to make the foreign familiar. This includes
the recognition that European civilization may have survived for as long
as it did precisely because it always was open to other cultures, that it
not only preserved the ideas discussed in Athens and Rome, but was
fascinated with foreign knowledge (which it imported from China, India
and Mrica, among others), and that there never was a fixed canon. Had
Jesse Jackson been aware of this, he might not have started the ruckus
with his "Ho, ho, Western Civ. has got to go." He might have said, in–
stead, "Ho, ho, let's learn all there is to know." But whatever he or
anyone else might say, it's time to drop the politics of higher education
and to pick up the books - any and all books.
E.
K.
