RONALD RADOSH
McCarthyism of the Left
Can
anyone doubt at this late date that both political correctness and
multiculturalism are a real threat to the integrity of our culture?
Certainly, a countereffort has been made by its adherents to present
themselves as a group with a reasonable agenda - attempting only
to
once and for all have some attention paid to women, blacks, gays, and
other oppressed minorities whose contributions have been ignored for
decades. Actually, for the past twenty years responsible historians have
been engaged in rectifying the old scholarship, as anyone who reads
professional journals knows. But that is not what the PC debate is really
about. Let me just mention a few highly publicized incidents occurring
in 1993, which allow us to perceive the real issues.
As readers know, the jury verdict in the Leonard Jeffries trial found
the City University of New York to have vio lated Jeffries's free speech
when it removed him from the chairmanship in the Department of Black
Studies at The City College of New York . The response of City
University was more instructive. Its administrators sought to appeal the
verdict, without owning up to the fact that when Jeffries was originally
hired , all standards applied to others in the system had been waived.
Jeffries had been given tenure and a chairmanship immediately after re–
ceiving his doctoral degree, had not been required to show any scholarly
growth, and was never admonished for his consistent loony ranting -
until
The New York Post
exposed him and his position became difficult
for the university.
Having exposed its desire
to
run a school by placating a militant mi–
nority, City University then proceeded to appoint as president of City
College of New York a junior administrator from the state university
college system, who announced as she took office that scholarship and
standards would be denigrated and new value put on "community ac–
tivism," since high standards adversely affected the black minority.
At the Unive rsity of Pennsylvania , a Jewish student was brought up
on charges of racial "harassment," because he had told noisy black female
students who were carrying on in front of his dorm window at 2
A. M.
to be quiet and had referred to them as "water buffalo." As the world
learned, the student, of Israeli origin, had used a term which, roughly
translated, means "rowdy, rude, and noisy." The university first sought
to
have the student plead guilty to the charge and force him to attend sen–
sitivity training seminars, all of which led his advisor, Professor Alan Kors,
to observe that universities are "becoming increasingly surreal." Under
