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tural program, peculiar to a small group of intellectually homeless dis–
contents. The folly that has led multiculturalists to abandon cognitively
binding standards of scholarship as irrelevant, if not immoral, will un–
doubtedly come to haunt them one day, perhaps sooner than later.
Multiculturalists who feel inspired to proclaim a better univer ity of the
future promote their own extinction. For if one form of intuitive
thought can be declared as supreme, then why cannot another, totally
different form be equally valid?
The end result of all this turbulence will be the elevation of a smor–
gasbord of contradictory claims, all unable to unite their propagators in
the search for truth which has given shape and legitimacy to the modern
university. The lines that used to sharply distinguish the political, eco–
nomic, religious, and personal pursuits of wider society from those car–
ried out in the autonomous sphere of the academy will be removed and,
to paraphrase the slogan of the sixties counterculture in which the per–
sonal became the political, the political will become the academic. Thus,
in caving in to the destructive demands of multiculturalism, the university
will be deprived of its essential moral and pedagogical function .
Forgotten is the fundamental lesson of the past that united scholars re–
gardless of their disciplines or perspectives:
to
be a moral community in
its own right, the university must maintain a primary commitment
to
its
own moral values rather than attempt to be a microcosm of the moral–
ity of society as a whole.
Along with this politicization an astounding "primitivization" of
thought makes its entrance in the academy. As argued earlier, multicul–
turalism's reliance on intuition, in place of exegesis and analysis based on
the premises of cognitive rationality, brings with it an inability to clearly
define, sharply differentiate, and cogently explicate. Everything must be
expressed unequivocally and starkly. Lost is the ability to convey sophisti–
cated meanings, to comprehend shadings in communication, subtle dis–
tinctions, and with it the belief in the necessity of precise and abstract
conceptualization. In its dominant impulse to derationalize and simplify,
multiculturalism imperils the essential worth and validity of any knowl–
edge.
Such impulses, the German philosopher of culture Arnold GeWen
argued some time ago, "undermine the proud self-sufficiency of concep–
tual mastery and condemn it to irrelevance." In today's atmosphere, it
may be argued, individuals are compelled to form opinions and feelings
concerning aspects of reality which are far beyond their actual intellec–
tual and emotional reach. Instead of patiently and systematically acquir–
ing the habits and tools for rational analysis, students are pressured to
form this or that "good" sentiment. In the multicultural university of the
future, students and faculty alike will be condemned to live and function
