I
,
BRIGITTE BERGER.
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perspectives, and I take it as a given that each generation is compelled to
review the "cultural canon" that holds the academic curriculum to–
gether, to decide which parts have lost their power to inform and en–
lighten and which new works to incorporate. And it goes without say–
ing that with a task as precarious and essential as this, debate is to be ex–
pected, and rhetoric and tempers are likely to fly high.
I,
too, am convinced that decent men and women, whoever they
are and wherever they may be, are obliged to make determined efforts to
transcend the narrow confines of their personal lives which have been
determined by accidents of birth, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion,
and social class. To be introduced to new worlds of knowledge and to
acquire the analytical skills needed to this end is one of the most exhila–
rating experiences the academy has to offer students during long and of–
ten tedious educational careers. Vice versa, to show students how diverse
and complex bodies of knowledge can be approached and mastered re–
mains one of those rare gratifYing moments in the life of an otherwise
harassed professoriate. Efforts to deepen and refine this quintessential ped–
agogical task abound today, as they did in the past, and while some aca–
demics may be faulted for having failed to pay sufficient attention to par–
ticular dimensions of discrete bodies of knowledge, even for having
abused their authority, hardly anyone would deny the singular impor–
tance of this educational mission of the university. During the last
decades America's much-lamented parochialism has become a thing of
the past. Today there are hardly any institutions of higher education
where courses on a great variety of cultures have not become a part of
the standard fare.
Nor, I must confess, am I overly distraught by the misuse of the term
"multiculturalism" currently bandied about in the public arena. To be
sure, the term itself is a misnomer, and it is not difficult to agree with
critics who argue that a good portion of the multiculturalist menu does
not amount to much more than a celebration of the politically correct
sensibilities of a new class of intellectuals, whose muddled pronounce–
ments swamp the campus today. At the same time, it is useful to bear in
mind that the academy has always had its share of fads and fools, and on
more than a few occasions knowledge of dubious quality and value has
ruled the day.
When, however, on occasion I force myself to overcome an inclina–
tion to intellectual sloth - natural for most, to be sure, but indefensible
in an academic - the reasons for my continued skepticism about the
nascent multicultural movement are not difficult to explain: To put it
simply, at its hard, ultimate kernel the multiculturalist agenda is over–
whelmingly a political agenda and has very little to do with the essential
tasks and mission of a modern university. This is not to say that academic
