Education Beyond Politics
On
March 6, 1992, we invited a number of people to continue the dis–
cussions we started at our conference, "The Changing Culture of the
University," the proceedings of which were published in
Partisan Review
in
the spring issue of 1991. This time, we invited persons who, for the most
part, had been known as "leftists" but had come out publicly against
what recently has come to be called the "politically correct" line. Our
participants belonged to different disciplines, had had different experi–
ences, but shared a concern about the future of American education. And
they appeared to fear the effects of teaching fictitious histories and ab–
struse theories to innocent students - in the universities and other educa–
tional institutions. Everyone at this meeting had come out in one way or
another against fashionable academic trends and had decided
to
examine
why, in the name of democracy, some of our democratic institutions are
being undermined.
[n order to get into these issues, [ formulated a number of questions.
Some of the participants addressed these extemporaneously; others spoke
from prepared papers, and yet others gave us their notes after the meet–
ing. [n the following pages, I relied primarily on the transcript but in–
serted written remarks as well, in order to relate all of the ideas we
touched on while assessing the state of our various educational systems
and groping for concrete and useful recommendations. These were the
questions I asked the participants to think about before we met:
1.
We all appear to agree that there is an even stronger anti-intel–
lectual drift than ever before. How do we go about reversing it? If, as
some say, a reversal already is in progress, how do we go about pushing
this reversal into high gear?
2. If we separate the "politically correct" into proponents and fol–
lowers, how can we detach the latter from the former?
3. Can we counter the "politically correct" position without en–
gaging the politics behind it? And to what extent are these politics in–
temal
to
the universities or coming from outside?
