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PARTISAN REVIEW
demic community that have organized in protest of specific violations of
academic freedom, there are major institutional groups whose interests
would seem to support academic freedom and academic integrity. While
the faculty has been presumed to be historically the primary supportive
constituency, there is also an interested public which is closely involved
with the governance of the university, particularly boards of trustees, as
well as the hypothetically decisive "consumer" interests of students and
their parents. Thus, although Aristotle may have overstated the case
when he began his
Metaphysics
with the opening line, "All men by nature
desire to know," there is, among a proportion of those persons who are
attracted
to
the academy as scholars and teachers, a desire, even a com–
mitment to defend academic freedom if only to defend the favorable
features of the academic environment. So some clements of the faculty
may represent a constant interested party against politicization .
Again, the American political community, whose support is necessary
for the financial security of the university, has not been noted for its at–
tachment to such cutting-edge academic tendencies as Marxism, radical
feminism, and other ideologies of racial or sexual separatism or libera–
tion. The historical record of that community contains several much-re–
hearsed instances of instrusion or assault on faculty rights when they were
suspected of supporting much less pervasive varieties of perceived radical
ideologies. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, the elite media
community, which since the late 1960s has found itself aligned with the
social and political agenda of the radical faculty groups, has participated
in a satirical campaign against "politically correct" conformism on cam–
pus. Ironically, even while circulating the anti-academic barb, these same
media have maintained political correctness in their own domain .
Any review of the present situation would recognize the inertial
force of the established tendencies for politicized instruction. There is no
accepted moral position which demonstrates the illegitimacy of scholar–
ship or criticism seeking to justify a political agenda. Since the great
majority of the faculty share the liberal or radical political views and val–
ues identified as politically correct, there is no felt need to rise to the
defense of the nonconformist on grounds of principle. All the more so if,
as in the case of multiculturalism, the operation of a politically correct
conformism can be defended as experimentalist in terms of curriculum
and supportive of historically victimized minority groups within
American society. Further, the result of past confrontations between the
community and the university faculty has resulted in the general accep–
tance of the illegitimacy of intervention by the community or even uni–
versity boards on academic issues. The university faculty, having won the
battle for non-intervention against external pressures for political con-
