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PARTISAN REVlEW
stantive one. It seems to me Irving talked about the liberal conception of
democracy, a set of procedures with outcomes that are a consequence of
the regular processes of debate, of majority rule, and so on. But people
have moved to a different conception of democracy, where the out–
comes are far more important than the process. If you engage in fair play,
they say you're really being racist because you're not taking into account
the history of others in order to make a "fair judgment." So if you say
"I don't care about the color of your skin, I'm just going to grade your
paper," and you grade it blind, you are already called racist, because
you're not taking history into account. The outcomes of democracy
now are felt to be far more significant than what we used to associate
with the liberal democratic order. That's a very hard problem, given the
political reality and the function of the university in a politicized con–
text. There are a whole range of interconnected questions that are not
so easy to resolve. It's not just a question of rhetoric, or a public rela–
tions game.
Wilson
Moses: You are correct is saying that one standard should ap–
ply. I don't know any black scholar who would disagree with you on
that. I don't think Teachers for a Democratic Culture would disagree
with that. My objection to the National Association of Scholars and
Teachers for a Democratic Culture is that both have inflated conceptions
of their own importance. The more moderate leaders in the latter orga–
nization, like Henry Louis Gates, have vigorously opposed exactly the
sort of foolishness you refer to. Perhaps you saw Professor Gates's recent
essay in
The New York Times,
"The Lesson of Little Tree. " In every or–
ganization there are persons who are motivated simply by a desire for
power. I see them as throwbacks to the old days of American politics,
when Boss Tweed, Jay Gould, and George Armstrong Custer gave us the
historical definition of American democracy. But none of us want to re–
turn to that old-fashioned definition of democracy. I think the newer
definitions are better.
Al Shanker:
I think that this exchange is most important. As in any
political discussion, we talk about ideas. But at the same time, you win
or lose not on the abstract terms of the argument but by convincing
large numbers of people. That is what the other side is trying to do, to
use one set of ideas in promoting their interest. Or they work it two
ways. They tell some people, "If there are standards you're going to be
cut out, so it's in your interest not to have them. " And they tell the
others that they're going to feel guilty, because to go for standards is
to
represent their own narrow self-interest and exclude all those other folks.
But it seems to me that our side often tends to avoid stating why it is in
