Creation of a working model of multiculturalism;
Development and coordination of new financial resources to support initiatives and projects which are important to institutionalizing multiculturalism at Stanford;
Appropriate placement of the Office [for Multicultural Development] in the University structure; and
Office [for Multicultural Development] functions as University-wide clearinghouse for activities and information on multiculturalism; and
Development of cross-University networks including the Cabinet, Operations Council, Faculty Senate, Staff Affairs Office, Vice-Presidential Representatives, and Human Relations managers, and the Board of Trustees to increase their exposure to diverse aspects of University offices and operations, and to expand upon linkages with University offices and the local geographic community.9
The most striking feature of all of these “definitions” of multiculturalism is that they are not really definitions at all. They are little more than tautologies: The implementation of “multiculturalism” is defined to mean “the multicultural agenda,” which in turn is defined as “a working model of multiculturalism,” as “institutionalizing multiculturalism at Stanford,” or as “activities and information on multiculturalism.” Descriptions in terms of “diversity” or “unity, harmony, and equity” do not have very much content either and do not provide a definition of what multiculturalism, the new guiding philosophy of Stanford University, actually is. What kinds of diversity count, and how is it to be measured? What can “unity” possibly mean in the context of “multi-racial/multiethnic” diversity? Will “harmony” exist because everybody will be in agreement (certainly unusual for a university)? And what of “equity”—does it refer to equality of opportunity, or an equality of results, or something altogether different? What exactly is multiculturalism?
Answers to these questions require more than tautologies, but Stanford's leaders provide little else. They might say that we should study other cultures, but they rarely specify which cultures should be studied. Nor do they answer a more fundamental question: Since the word “culture” is used to refer to everything from “the drug culture” to “pop culture,” what precisely counts as a culture?
There are, to be certain, some commonsense answers to these kinds of questions. If not just Europe and North America, then we should be studying the cultures of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and Japan. More specifically, to obtain a better understanding of other cultures, students should learn languages other than English. Knowledge of other languages, after all, is essential to any in-depth understanding of a different culture, since many of the words, phrases, and books that fully describe a culture's understanding of itself are not entirely translatable.
Remarkably, however, Stanford's multicultural leaders have made clear that these commonsense answers are not the ones they have in mind. As understood at Stanford, multiculturalism has next to nothing to do with a thorough study of other cultures. Confucius and Solzhenitzyn are nowhere on the list of multicultural priorities. Chinese, Japanese, Slavic, Indian, Arabic, African, or Latin American cultures have nothing to do with the OMD's vision of an “interdependent, multi-racial/multi-ethnic” future, and neither do the non-Western world religions, such as Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Nor are student and faculty activists ever found marching in favor of new language requirements. On the contrary, the study of other languages simply is unrelated to the multicultural “transformation.” During the 1980s, while the overall number of professors in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences was increasing, Stanford sharply decreased the staffing of its language departments and closed a number of its overseas campuses.10 The OMD, which has insisted that any financial cuts in university spending should not affect the multicultural experiment (because “change was beginning to take hold” and “more people were opening their minds to a new way of thinking”) remained altogether silent as these language programs were gutted.11
Yet, despite the lack of a clear definition, campus activists have advanced a vast array of causes in the name of “multiculturalism.” These include AIDS awareness weeks, a “1960s” theme dormitory, speech restrictions, and a new course requirement in feminist studies. During the month of November 1991 alone, the OMD cosponsored a campus talk by Rigoberta Menchu (yes, the same Marxist revolutionary we met in “Europe and the Americas”) entitled “500 Years of Oppression;”12 helped draft a controversial new policy on sexual harassment, which concluded that “psychological coercion” (a euphemism for verbal seduction) might be equivalent to rape;13 established the Faculty Incentive Fund, as “an incentive to departments to make faculty appointments of members of targeted racial/ethnic groups by providing special, additional funds for such an appointment;”14 orchestrated a boycott on grapes in solidarity with a local farmers’ union, which was enforced with the help of Casa Zapata, one of the multicultural theme dormitories;15 and banned the use of cardboard axes at Stanford football's annual “Big Game” with the University of California at Berkeley, because the symbol might be offensive to Native Americans and therefore incompatible with multiculturalism.16 In just one month, multiculturalism was invoked to give a platform to a Guatemalan revolutionary, to redefine rape, to provide financial incentives for affirmative action, to ban grapes, and to determine proper etiquette at football games.
One begins to understand the reluctance of Stanford's leaders to define “multiculturalism.” A precise definition would have to possess sufficient content to explain why football game spectators cannot wave cardboard axes and why rape may include seduction; it would have to reveal why grapes are non grata at Stanford, and why Rigoberta Menchu was invited to give a campus talk and not Alexander Solzhenitzyn (on, say, “74 Years of Oppression”). Such a precise definition would, no doubt, be far more controversial than vague generalities about “harmony, unity, and equity” or “ways for our racial minorities and majority to acknowledge and build mutual respect for their similarities as well as their differences.”17 For if multiculturalism involves nothing more than these vague generalities, no sensible person would have any reason to oppose it. On the other hand, if multiculturalism involves more than vague generalities—and the actions of the OMD suggest that it does—then there may be far less consensus on the specifics of multiculturalism. The biggest obstacle to achieving a consensus in favor of the “multicultural agenda” may in fact be a detailed exposition of what “multiculturalism” really means.
“Multiculturalism” is an elastic term, used in several different senses. When confronted with outsiders or critics, multiculturalists make reference to broad and convenient generalities, which suggest that nothing very dramatic or controversial is going on and that no well-meaning person should have any reason to be alarmed or critical. At the same time, however, there exists another aspect of “multiculturalism,” far more precise and understood by all of Stanford's multiculturalists, which explains why Menchu receives an invitation to campus, grapes are boycotted, and cardboard axes are banned. A comprehensive understanding of this unspoken definition is essential to an understanding of multiculturalism and to the new Stanford that was to be founded on this idea.
Multiculturalism as Relativism
If pushed to provide more details on what “multiculturalism” means, the average Stanford student would define the term in roughly the following way: Multiculturalism represents a bold and hopeful attempt at dealing with the changing nature of American society. Whereas the America of the 19th and early 20th centuries was overwhelmingly white, European, and Judeo-Christian, the America of the future will become increasingly multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious. It will confront problems that did not exist in the earlier, more homogeneous society, as people with different backgrounds will have to learn new ways of getting along with one another. In the earlier America, each new wave of immigrants entered into society by integrating its identity in the “melting pot.” And, while such attempts were only partiall
y successful in the past (as many distinct American subcultures have retained key aspects of their identity), such attempts will prove utterly inadequate in the future. It will not be possible to impose a “monocultural”18 standard on all people in the United States, as there will be too many individuals for whom such a standard would be unacceptable. More generally, in the global and interdependent world of the future, it will be necessary for people to have a better understanding of a wide variety of different cultures, upon which a unitary (Western) standard cannot be imposed. Harmonious relations will depend upon knowing about other cultures and evaluating them on their own terms.19
This characterization of multiculturalism is highly attractive because its conclusions appear to follow from objective demographic facts. It seems incontrovertible that America's ethnic make-up is currently changing, and will continue to change dramatically in the 21st century. Nevertheless, none of these demographic “facts” translates easily into multicultural policies. Student leader Stacey Leyton inadvertently revealed some of the weaknesses of the demographic paradigm when she used the new thinking to justify a ruling of Stanford's Student Senate. The Student Senate, as on many occasions, was busy appointing student senators to a university committee—this one being the important University Committee on Minority Issues (UCMI). This time, however, the Senate decided to forgo its usual constitutional process of selecting representatives from among its ranks in order to let campus minority organizations choose the delegates instead. Ms. Leyton explained:
We in the ASSU [Associated Students of Stanford University] feel that the Third World communities themselves are better qualified than we are to determine who can best represent their concerns on this committee…. For too long other people have been claiming to understand and represent the minority communities and have proven insensitive and inadequate; only the communities themselves can define their needs, and they therefore deserve the right to choose their own representatives. And, indeed, they want this right: At the senate meeting where we made this decision, all four student-of-color organizations brought numbers of students to lobby the senate; it was one of the largest public turnouts in years.20
Ms. Leyton's argument is a textbook invocation of multicultural relativism: “only the communities themselves can define their needs”—not even elected representatives in the Student Senate could do an adequate job. But Ms. Leyton does not explain why “all four student-of-color organizations”—blacks, Chicanos, Asians, and American Indians—are the only “Third World communities” deserving special representation on the powerful committee. It is true that “they want this right,” but she offers no limiting principle to explain why other groups (religious minorities, for example) that also wanted such a right were not granted a similar degree of cultural autonomy.21 Why did the Baha'i, for instance, who also requested autonomy, not receive special attention? More generally, if minority issues affected the whole community, then why didn't the whole community deserve to have input on the UCMI? An even more basic difficulty involved the attenuated connection between minority groups and Third World cultures. Were members of minority groups who never had lived in the Third World (and most Stanford students, whatever their race, have not) still entitled to a vote within their communities? It seemed unlikely that demographics alone could provide answers to these questions.
In the academic context, the multicultural principle of judging groups according to their own standards suffers from similar shortcomings. Consider, once again, the debate over the canon: It is certainly possible and may be highly desirable to study books from non-Western cultures. But a truly relativistic reading list is impossible. At some point criteria must be selected to determine which books from which cultures are read. These judgments, naturally, are imposed upon all cultures which offer competing criteria. As in the case of the UCMI, multiculturalists claimed to solve this problem with “proportional representation,” a criterion seemingly based on objective demographic facts, rather than subjective judgments: Each culture (or, in the American context, each ethnic or gender group) should be studied in proportion to its numbers; each group, in turn, should be allowed to choose its own great works. On the surface, the rhetoric appears to have a certain degree of internal logic. But this illusion of coherence occurs only because, like Ms. Leyton's argument, the demographic facade simply dodges a deeper level of foundational questions, all of which require value-laden answers:
First, which groups (or cultures) count in the multicultural world? If it is said that they all do, then it may be asked: What are relevant criteria for distinguishing groups? Are Americans of Irish or Italian backgrounds multicultural groups worthy of “proportional representation?” Are Japanese and Chinese Americans distinct groups, or are they lumped together in the category “Asian American?” Are homosexuals a group? Are conservatives? More abstractly, since there seems to be no limiting principle, why are chess players not a group? Answers to these questions are critical, because the central tenet of multiculturalism is that groups must be evaluated on their own terms. If groups are not correctly defined at the outset, then crucial resources (for example, required books, admission slots, and teaching positions) will be allocated improperly. These definitional problems with multiculturalism can become quite complex: If both women and blacks, for instance, are distinct multicultural groups, then do black women fall into two categories or are they treated as their own group?
These questions are not merely academic; sometimes they take concrete form. In May 1993, for instance, the Stanford Irish American Student Association formed. Like other ethnic groups on campus, the organization demanded the creation of an introductory course that would explore “its” issues—in this case, Irish American issues, from the mid- 19th-century Irish migration to America to modern-day IRA terrorist bombings in London.22 “Most Irish-Americans have been assimilated into the white mainstream, but they have a unique history and culture that many of them are ignorant of and that have been pretty much ignored by the academic world,” Chip Curran, a sophomore, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We want to raise the awareness on campus that there are other non-English groups that have had a major impact on the building of America,” explained Chip, a double major in economics and African and Afro-American Studies.23
Curran's proposal caused a schism among the ranks of the Stanford Daily's editorial writers, who split over the proposal in unusual side-by-side editorials. Each group believed that it was arguing consistently from multicultural principles. One side favored the course, invoking the logic that had already been used on behalf of new race and gender studies requirements. Stanford “owes its students a wide variety of classes that incorporate different backgrounds, heritages and viewpoints,” they wrote.24 The other group opposed Curran's proposal, wondering if Irish American studies might not be an “ethnic error.”25 In other words, the multicultural correctness of Curran's proposal hinged on how one arbitrarily weighed and defined cultural differences. While the University eventually rejected Curran's proposal, it never addressed the deeper quandary the proposal raised about multiculturalism's definitional vagaries.
Second, how are differences between groups to be resolved? Even assuming that workable criteria for defining groups can be determined, what does one do when the desires of these groups conflict? If two groups are acting in a manner consistent with each one's own standards, what set of external standards exists to arbitrate disputes? “Proportional representation” is not a sufficient answer unless both groups already agree to this standard, an unlikely possibility if the parties seek more than a partial victory. Even if multiculturalists concede that this might be a theoretical problem, but claim that it is one that can be worked out in practice through compromise, they still cannot explain what to do with groups that reject compromise altogether. Who is to say uncompromising groups are wrong?
This confusion arises whenever multiculturalists must choose between the conflicting views and desires of different groups. The preferred group almost a
lways seems arbitrarily selected, because no explicit rationale is offered to justify the choice. To the dismay of football fans and school patriots, for instance, the university in October 1993 cancelled the annual Big Game Bonfire, a century-old tradition, in order to protect the habitat of tiger salamanders.26 Once thought extinct from the San Francisco bay area, the salamanders had recently been rediscovered in the lake-bed site of the scheduled bonfire. The administration overlooked the fact that the salamanders had survived 100 such bonfires, and pandered to environmentalists and animal rights activists seeking to end the celebration. In this case, multiculturalists preferred environmental extremists over football fans.
The problem of irreconcilable groups can even be internalized by individuals. In a widely discussed editorial in the Stanford Daily in the fall of 1992, for instance, columnist Andrea Park described the ritual clitorectomies performed by some African and Middle Eastern cultures, but stopped short of condemning the barbaric practice.27 As a feminist, Park despised the oppression of women and wished to condemn the custom; but after much soul-searching, Park wrote that she realized she could not judge other cultures by her own standards:
How can I argue against a culture I haven't tried to understand? Is it relevant that I, an outsider, may find the practice cruel? As hard as it is for me to admit, the answer is no. To treat the issue as a matter for feminist outrage would be to assume that one society, namely mine, has a privileged position from which to judge the practices of another.28
Park had arbitrarily cast her lot with African and Middle Eastern cultures instead of feminists, even though there was no principled reason for her to do so. As a result, she apologized for a heinous form of ritual torture.
The Diversity Myth Page 7
