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PARTISAN REVIEW
You can see the distinction between the challengers and the tradi–
tionalists if you imagine a counterfactual situation. Suppose it was dis–
covered by an amazing piece of historical research that the works com–
monly attributed to Plato and Aristotle were not written by Greek
males but by two Chinese women who were cast ashore on the coast of
Attica when a Chinese junk shipwrecked off the Pireaus in the late fifth
century
S .c.
What difference would this make to our assessment of the
works of Plato and Aristotle? From the traditionalist point of view ,
none whatever. It would be just an interesting historical fact. From the
challengers' point of view, I think it would make a tremendous differ–
ence. Ms. Plato and Ms. Aristotle would now acquire a new authenticity
as genuine representatives of a previously underrepresented minority, and
the most appropriate faculty to teach their works would then be
Chinese women. Implicit in the traditionalist assumptions I stated is the
view that the faculty member does not have to exemplifY the texts he or
she teaches. They assume that the works of Marx can be taught by
someone who is not a Marxist, just as Aquinas can be taught by some–
one who is not a Catholic, and Plato by someone who is not a
Platonist. But the challengers assume, for example, that women's studies
should be taught by feminist women, Chicano studies by Chicanos
committed to a certain set of values, and so on.
These three points, that you arc defined by your culture, that all cul–
tures arc created equal, and that representation is the criterion for selec–
tion both of the books to be read and the faculty to teach them, arc
related to a fourth assumption: The primary purpose of education in the
humanities is political transformation. I have read any number of authors
who claim this, and I have had arguments with several people, some of
them in positions of authority in universities, who tell me that the pur–
pose of education, in the humanities at least, is political transformation.
For example, another dean at a big state university, herself a former
Berkeley radical, has written that her academic life is just an extension of
her political activities.
In
its most extreme version, the claim is not just
that the purpose of education in the humanities
ollghl
to
be political, but
rather that all education always has been political and always will neces–
sarily be political, so it might as well be beneficially political. The idea
that the traditionalists with their "liberal education" arc somehow
teaching some politically neutral philosophical tradition is entirely a self–
deceptive masquerade. According to this view, it is absurd to accuse the
challengers of politicizing the university; it already is politicized.
Education is political down to the ground . And, so the story goes, the
difference between the challengers, as against the traditional approach, is
that the traditional approach tries to disguise the fact that it is essentially
