Indeed, the impossibility of a value-free multiculturalism should have been evident at the very outset, during the Western Culture debate. The protestors did not really believe that all cultures were equal, as they reserved a special condemnation for the West. To the extent that Western culture (both as a historical reality and as learned in Stanford's former freshman course) rejected relativism in its search for transcultural truth, it was the culture the multiculturalists had to reject. In committing themselves to cultural relativism over Western universalism, the multiculturalists made their first value judgment. In so doing, their pretensions of neutrality were also rejected and replaced with a different set of values.
Multiculturalism as Conformity
Yet multiculturalism is not exactly the same thing as a radical political program, since, at least on a superficial level, it is about something quite different. On a superficial level, multiculturalism seems to involve a theory that describes groups of people, the decision making within these groups, the interaction between these groups, and the possibilities for special insights by some groups. The multicultural rhetoric about “diversity” and “interactive pluralism” is not unimportant, because it serves the critical function of deflecting attention from the underlying value judgments.
This dual track (ostensibly concerned with “diversity,” while in reality pushing an agenda) runs through much of the multicultural state. The agenda normally remains implicit, but sometimes can become quite explicit. The job description of Stanford's Multicultural Educator involves glimpses of both. At first, the description lists the usual banalities: The Educator must promote pluralism, which “encompasses the full range of human variety, including differences of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, religion, ideological views, and other differences of background and belief.”41 But then comes the real job description: Stanford requires that the Educator be careful about making the multicultural agenda too explicit, because “if students believe that the institution is trying to remake them, inculcate ideas, and push an agenda it will be easier for them to resist educational efforts and avoid personal commitment to increased understanding.”42 A better summary of what multiculturalism is all about would be difficult to find. The OMD signals would-be applicants that there is more to multiculturalism than just “pluralism,” for the job also requires the Educator to “remake [students], inculcate ideas, and push an agenda”—albeit an agenda that must remain beneath the surface (both in practice and in the job description itself), lest students “resist educational efforts” and “avoid personal commitment” to the new regime. With the arrival of more than 1,500 ideologically diverse freshmen each year, such “educational efforts” are required to induce enough “personal commitment” that consensus may be maintained on the values necessary for multiculturalism to operate.
These underlying values, and the “educational” efforts of Stanford's multiculturalists to enforce them, come to the fore in many contexts. One highly illustrative example that is worth exploring in more detail involved a series of events that occurred in the fall of 1988 in “Ujamaa,” Stanford's black culture theme dormitory, named after the Swahili word for “cooperative living.” On the early evening of September 29, 1988, Ujamaa House was the site of a remarkable conversation, whose three principal participants were two white freshmen, Gus Heldt and Ben Dugan, and a black sophomore, B. J. Kerr. According to the “Final Report on Recent Incidents At Ujamaa House,” that would be issued in January 1989 by a select panel appointed by President Kennedy, the discussion's topics included black influence on music, black life in Africa, and the state of race relations in America.43 B. J. informed the students that “all music is black” and that “all music listened to today in America has African origins—beats, drums, and so forth.” A white bystander asked, “What about classical music? Beethoven?” Undeterred, B. J. declared that Beethoven also had been black—he had read it in a book in the Ujamaa library. Ben and Gus were incredulous. B. J. expressed displeasure with Gus and Ben for doubting. The idea that Beethoven had been black “was so far from their own truth,” he declared, that the two freshmen “could not accept it.”44
The following evening, Ben noticed a Stanford Symphony recruiting poster featuring a picture of none other than Beethoven himself (in the poster, Beethoven appeared white). Inebriated, Gus and Ben used crayons to color in the Beethoven flier with the stereotypical features of a black man—brown face, curly black hair, enlarged lips—and then posted the flyer on a “food for thought” bulletin board adjacent to B. J.'s door. The black residents of Ujamaa did not consider the satire amusing. B. J., who had lectured other people on Beethoven's blackness just several days earlier, was particularly flabbergasted: “I couldn't believe anybody would do that. You see things like that in the movies or on TV. It's the kind of thing someone would do in their room and joke about but it didn't seem like anyone would be bold enough to put it on a door.”45 One of the black resident assistants (RAs) in Ujamaa added that the flyer was “hateful, shocking. I was outraged and sickened.”46 Overnight, with the most minute shift in inflection, the symbolic significance of the claim that Beethoven was black had changed 180 degrees—from a source of multicultural pride to a point of multicultural derision.
Ben and Gus's satire was certainly in bad taste. But B. J.'s words and the two white students’ drawing had said precisely the same thing. Nevertheless, the fact that these students were of different races made B. J.'s expression legitimate and the white students’ something of a crime. A black student who said that Beethoven was black was bolstering racial pride, while white students doing the same—with the “wrong” intentions—were racist rabble-rousers. To the multiculturalists, for whom truth is subjective, the accuracy or falsehood of the original claim was irrelevant. Because “subordinated” groups are not subject to criticism by “superordinated” groups, the relevant issue was not what was said, but who said what to whom.
On October 16, an emergency house meeting was called to discuss the Beethoven flier. An Ujamaa “teaching assistant” (TA) had succeeded in extracting a confession from Gus by warning him that “people are really angry,” “people are really suspicious of you,” and there are people planning “to beat the hell out of you.” According to the Final Report, “We asked T/ A Brown if in fact there were residents planning to beat up [Ben] and [Gus]. He said no; this was a ruse to get [Gus] to tell the truth.”47
If Gus's confession was extracted by intimidation, the emergency house meeting resembled a show trial. Ujamaa's residents had been discussing the matter among themselves for the previous two weeks, and the atmosphere was highly charged. Gus attempted an explanation: He had been disturbed and offended to find that people cared so much about race at Stanford, and he thought the focus on “ethnic differences” was counterproductive. Gus suggested that the poster had been attempted as “food for thought,” educational, and “avant-garde” art.48 Ujamaa's residents, however, were not interested in an art lesson, much less the suggestion that their focus on race—of which the show trial was but the latest instance—was excessive. A resident interrupted Gus's speech: “You arrogant bastard, how dare you come here and not even apologize. I want an apology.”49 Gus's flip reply indicated that he remained unrepentant: “1, 2, 3, we're sorry.”50 The “apology,” needless to say, was inadequate, and some of the residents began to demand that Ben and Gus be removed from the Stanford dorm system. Ron Hudson, an assistant dean of student affairs, suggested rather lamely that it would be good to keep the two freshmen in the dorms so they could receive a better multicultural education.51
The din of the crowd quieted as B. J. rose to speak. Noting that Dean Hudson's suggestion was silly, B. J. stated that Ujamaa's residents should not educate the two freshmen because “this all came about because [black Ujamaa residents] were trying to educate [these two] about African history [in the first place].” It would be a waste to educate persons with “such dogmatic racism who came to Stanford with ei
ghteen years of belligerent ideology,” and he “shouldn't have to pay $20,000 to educate white people about racism” in his own home.52 B. J. concluded that the proper remedy would consist of throwing the culprits out of the dorm.
In the course of his speech, B. J. had become more and more emotional. There are conflicting accounts of what occurred next, but observers interviewed for the university's Final Report generally agreed that towards the end of his speech, B. J. started to gesticulate wildly, lunged violently at the two white freshmen, and, seeming to have lost his mind, collapsed on the floor. According to the residence staff, when people caught B. J. “he was groaning and flailing his arms”; it “seemed as if B. J. had lost his mind”; he was “not in control of his actions” and was carried out of the lounge to his room by about six students, while he was “crying, screaming and having a fit.”53
B. J.'s tantrum was only the beginning of the end of the house meeting. The university's Final Report describes the pandemonium that broke loose next:
As many as 60 students were crying with various degrees of hysteria. At least one student hyperventilated and had to be assisted in breathing. According to R/F Brooks there was “utter chaos.” People were “crying, screaming,” “hysterical” and “distraught.” R/F Weiss said that there was “mass chaos,” “people were holding hands and crying, tears were running down,” the “staff was running around trying to collect people.” She compared the scene to the mass hysteria that occurred when the [space] shuttle exploded or the U.S. exhibition air show in Germany where a group of planes simultaneously crashed. R/ F Brooks told the staff “to make sure no one was alone.” R/A Johnson reported that “one woman was jumping up and down saying this is not fair.” She “herded” crying persons into her room which was a “wreck,” “bodies everywhere.”54
Multicultural diversity has its limits, and at Ujamaa events had moved far beyond the breaking point. Two freshmen, at Stanford for only a few weeks, had done nothing more than poke fun at multiculturalism with a satirical flier. In the subsequent days, the flier's significance became exaggerated to the point where it caused an entire dorm to have a collective nervous breakdown. Since the administration was unwilling to tell Ujamaa's minority residents (members of a privileged multicultural group) that they had overreacted, Ben and Gus had to be found guilty of instigating the entire episode. They were blamed for the “painful experience” and were removed from university housing for the remainder of the year.55 The fact that Ujamaa's residents were largely responsible for blowing events out of all proportion was conveniently overlooked in the cathartic hunt for scapegoats.
As unfortunate as the entire episode was for Ben, Gus, and the other residents of Ujamaa, the incident is still useful for its instructional value. For multiculturalism to “work,” some groups of people must defer to other groups of people. Within each group, some persons are “correct” (while others are “sell-outs”), and so on. Ben's and Gus's actions undermined multiculturalism on almost every level: They challenged a claim made by a representative of a favored group, they renewed the challenge with a flier, and (perhaps worst of all) they refused to confess to their crimes in front of a crowd that desperately needed reassurance. Because Ben and Gus were partially right in what they had said (that is, Beethoven was not black), their challenge could not be dealt with in a rational or intellectual manner. Rather, the residents of Ujamaa restored consensus by demanding the literal expulsion of the two nonconformists. Ben and Gus had to go because the multicultural community requires (as the substitute for objective truth) widespread agreement on underlying ideological values. At the same time, their punishment would also serve as a warning and deterrent to other would-be contrarians. Incidentally, the question of whether Beethoven actually was black, around which much of this debate ostensibly had revolved, was never resolved or even addressed.
Much as with the Western Culture debate, the details of the Beethoven incident gradually would fade, but as a putative racist episode it would provide the justification for additional “sensitivity training” sessions, more multicultural workshops, and new regulations on conduct. Speaking at a “Rally Against Racism” several weeks later, undergraduate Cheryl Taylor cited the Ujamaa episode as symptomatic of widespread oppression of blacks. The genesis of a new multicultural myth was well under way:
By now, y'all must have heard about the Ujamaa incident—the racially defaced Beethoven flyer…. This is a big deal; in the context of American society, these incidents are truly racist. They weren't just isolated incidents committed out of ignorance; rather, they were deliberate actions committed in response to the Res Ed. focus on diversity. In effect, these individuals sent a message to Stanford, and all communities of color[:] “we're sick of this cultural diversity bullshit that's being shoved down our throats. Your cultures are not legitimate—they don't mean shit to us—they have no place in this University—Niggers, we will put you back in your place.[”] Well, they've been kicked out of the dorm and we are here today to say that no one is going to stand in our way as we fight for justice and respect.56
Close up, the OMD's effort to forge “harmony, unity, and equity” begins to appear far less benign. Certainly, Ujamaa achieved a “unity” of sorts by collectively expelling the two freshmen. But this unanimity comes at a high price, as scapegoats are made of those (and there will always be some) who do not conform willingly.
In practice, multiculturalism will tend towards either relativism or conformity, depending on whether one stresses the silly slogans or the hidden agenda. There are many instances where multiculturalism is relativist (or merely confused), for the simple reason that multiculturalists often have not probed their own rhetoric about diversity very deeply. But the Beethoven incident is a reminder of the widespread agreement that exists on certain basic values and that will assert itself very powerfully whenever “diversity” is pushed beyond rather narrow limits.
As we will show in the next two chapters, political activists have used the multicultural vehicle to effect sweeping change at Stanford. From areas such as the curriculum to extracurricular life, from faculty hiring to student admissions, from speech codes to long-range planning, the ambiguities of a simplistic (or relativist) multiculturalism have been resolved in favor of a number of radical policy objectives. On this level at least, multiculturalism represents a spectacular success for the American left, one that may not have been possible without the existence of this extremely enthralling, and confusing, idea.
On a deeper level, however, the need for a misleading idea like “multiculturalism” represents a colossal failure for the radical left. The need to engage in word games rather than an honest discussion of the real issues suggests that such an honest discussion would not lead to results that fit the desired agenda. In this respect, multiculturalism is a symptom of the retreat of the 1960s left, of its unwillingness—indeed, its inability—to participate in the marketplace of ideas that is the hallmark of a successful university and of a healthy society. As we will suggest in the second half of this book, multiculturalism may represent the last effort of a failed system of beliefs that could no longer be rationally supported—and that therefore required a conceptual framework that encourages its practitioners to retreat into a sort of cultural and intellectual regionalism, and, like the Ujamaa residents who suffered a collective nervous breakdown, perhaps to stop thinking altogether.
Notes
1. Lisa Koven, “Gerhard Casper: Man of the Year,” The Stanford Review, January 4, 1993.
2. Colleen Krueger and Cathy Siciliano, “Diversity a source of campus vitality; Stanford students enhance their education with multiculturalism,” The Stanford Daily, September 23, 1993.
3. David Sacks, “Departments Paid Bonuses for Minority Hiring; Affirmative Action Vital to Perpetuation of Multiculturalism, Says OMD,” The Stanford Review, November 4, 1991. The OMD was moved from the second floor to the first floor after it was chastised for insensitivity to people in wheelchairs.
4.
Ibid.
5. Sharon Parker, Affirmative Action Plan For Stanford University, October 16, 1991. The Plan was released by the Office for Multicultural Development and approved of by University President Donald Kennedy.
6. Ibid.
7. “DK welcomes freshmen to ‘real world’: ‘Pluralism experiment must succeed,’” Campus Report, September 27, 1989. The article reprinted Donald Kennedy's September 22 welcoming speech to freshmen.
8. Ibid.
9. Parker, supra note 5.
10. Andy Dworkin, “Concern mounting over loss of billets,” The Stanford Daily, May 24, 1994. According to The Daily, over the last five to ten years, the departments of French and Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and Slavic Languages have lost a combined eight billets for tenure-track faculty—an approximate drop of about 20 percent in the number of faculty billets. An administrative merger between the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese departments also decreased support staff for languages. Budget cuts to the humanities focused on the language departments, reported John Etchemendy, a university official. In addition, Stanford closed its popular program in Salamanca, Spain, and overseas studies programs in Paris and Florence were scaled back. See Thomas Wasow, “Many factors contributed to the closure of Stanford's Tours program,” The Stanford Daily, November 13, 1990. The total capacity of Stanford's overseas centers has decreased by more than 200 “student quarters”—the number of total terms spent by students abroad—since 1984. See Sarah Katz and Romesh Ratnesar, “Report indicates concerns about Overseas Studies,” The Stanford Daily, January 7, 1994.
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