56. Tom Bethell, “Festive Foolery,” The Stanford Review, June 9, 1987.
57. Mike Newman, “Condoms Spread Controversy,” The Stanford Review, February 1989.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Jordan Seng, “Stanford Abortions Exceed National Rate: Unwanted pregnancies continue despite educational efforts,” The Stanford Review, April 1989.
61. Precise data on AIDS deaths are not provided by the Stanford administration, but the indirect evidence suggests that the numbers are relatively high. At an exposition of the Names Project (commemorating AIDS victims) in Stanford's Memorial Auditorium in February 1988, 25 people with a Stanford connection were listed. The list included English professor Donald Howard, librarian David Thompson, and alumni Steven Block, Gerald Martin, Jay Spears, John Trowbridge, and Mark Zambrano. According to Daniel Bao, it was difficult to find the names of campus AIDS victims, but “it's safe to say that the number of people being honored were less than half of the people at Stanford who have died of AIDS.” If, as Bao claims, over 50 members of the Stanford community had died of AIDS by early 1988, the proportion would be truly astronomical: With 13,000 students and faculty and staff of about 7,000, over 1 person in 400 would have died of AIDS. By comparison, in early 1988, the nationwide death toll was about 60,000—;less than 1 person in 4,000. See Burke Smith, “University remembers AIDS victims,” The Stanford Daily, February 19, 1988. A more recent indicator occurred in October 1993, when the Cowell Student Health Center considered ending HIV counseling by doctors because of the drain on resources. During 1992, Cowell had counseled 600 people on HIV. See Cathy Siciliano and Julie Tsai, “New director of Cowell to face budget, staff ills,” The Stanford Daily, October 18, 1993.
62. Cynthia Benton, “It's a trip: Conference probes history, culture of drug use,” The Stanford Daily, February 4, 1991.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Mike Langford, “A multicultural church,” The Stanford Daily, February 10, 1993.
68. Monique VanderMarck, “Mem Chu should be a place where everyone can worship,” The Stanford Daily, February 24, 1993.
69. Perhaps one reason why Memorial Church has not yet experienced this fate is its importance to alumni fundraising. In 1993, the Stanford Observer, an alumni magazine, featured the church on its cover. The story gave alumni, many of whom remember the ornate institution fondly, a grossly exaggerated impression of its importance to campus life.
70. Cecilia Tom, “Student seeks ‘sanctuary’ designation for Stanford,” The Stanford Daily, January 25, 1991.
71. Joseph Green, “El Salvador trip controversial,” The Stanford Review, June 9, 1987.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Ashley Ryan, “Religious intolerance,” The Stanford Daily, December 7, 1988.
75. See, for instance, Jeff Brock, “Say What? Dating at Stanford? Not!” The Stanford Daily, September 19, 1991.
76. Michael Ehrman, “The Sudden Tumbling of Our Greek System,” The Stanford Review, October 11, 1993.
77. Eric Young, “Frat crackdown in works,” The Stanford Daily, October 10, 1988.
78. Leigh Burnside, “Dekes get a sharp warning on house: They'll lose it if danger continues,” The Stanford Daily, March 11, 1992.
79. Kimberly Chrisman, “Sigma Chis placed on social probation,” The Stanford Daily, January 14, 1992.
80. Theresa Johnston, “Task Force Recommendation May Change the Way Housed Fraternities Choose Their Members,” Stanford University News Service, February 16, 1988.
81. Sally Shuper, “Unhoused frat makes third plea for housing: AEPi's ask to take over existing house,” The Stanford Daily, April 15, 1992.
82. Adam Ross, “Beta, Delta Upsilon ready to return: University's commitment to Greek system challenged,” The Stanford Review, May 17, 1993.
83. Jessica Bar, “Women urged to make their own voices heard,” The Stanford Daily, March 11, 1992.
84. Matthew Moran, “Stereotyping of Greeks as racist, sexist unfair.” The Stanford Daily, March 2, 1992.
85. Arturo Armenta, “Individuals in MEChA do harbor anti-Greek sentiment,” The Stanford Daily, March 31, 1992.
86. Suzanne Corkins, “Greeks to attend diversity discussion,” The Stanford Daily, May 23, 1989.
87. Davis, supra note 24.
88. Carl Irving, “Date rape common on Stanford campus,” The San Francisco Examiner, February 7, 1991.
89. See Rick St. John, “Cal professor calls rape stats inflated,” The Stanford Review, January 21, 1992.
90. Peter Robison, “Student reports sexual assault in Stern Hall room,” The Stanford Daily, September 25, 1991. Miranda Doyle and Andy Dworkin, “Reported rape stuns Stern Hall residents,” The Stanford Daily, September 27, 1991. See also Louis Freedberg, “‘Acquaintance Rape’ Charged at Stanford,” The San Francisco Chronicle, November 3, 1991.
91. Minal Hajratwala, “Coercion or consent? Alleged assault blurs definition of rape,” The Stanford Daily, October 7, 1991.
92. Each year, for example, Stanford distributes to new female students A Woman's Guide To Stanford, which urges: “As women, we should feel comfortable about initiating sex, stating clearly and confidently what we want and don't want in sexual relationships with men, asking men to assume equal responsibility for communication in a relationship and exploring the meaning of our sexuality with the men in our lives.” A Woman's Guide to Stanford, 1993–94.
93. Hajratwala, supra note 91.
94. Stanford Daily columnist Jane Lin, for example, wrote: “Sexual coercion can be subtle or unconscious, and its impact long-lasting.” See Jane Lin, “Of coercion and consent,” The Stanford Daily, April 14, 1992.
95. Lisa Koven and David Sacks, “Rape at Stanford,” The Stanford Review, January 21, 1992.
96. Ibid.
97. Mary Ann Seawell, “Men, Women Interpret Sexual Behavior Differently, Survey Finds,” Stanford University News Service, February 5, 1991.
98. Ibid.
99. Koven and Sacks, supra note 95.
100. Ibid.
101. Jonathan Eisenberg, “Kennedy makes statement on rape,” The Stanford Daily, May 15, 1990.
102. Neil Gilbert, “The Phantom Epidemic of Sexual Assault,” The Public Interest, Spring 1991.
103. Jeanne Im, “Frosh confront date-rape in ‘Sex in the 90s,’” The Stanford Review, October 5, 1992.
104. Ibid.
105. Ibid.
106. Holly Hacker, “Guilt standards perplex many,” The Stanford Daily, November 8, 1991. See also Holly Hacker, “Some profs support lowered proof level,” The Stanford Daily, December 12, 1991.
107. See Koven and Sacks, supra note 95.
108. Adrienne Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience (London, England: Onlywomen Press, 1981).
109. Lisa Lapin, “Was death a suicide born of sex probe?” The San Jose Mercury News, January 30, 1987.
110. Bob Beyers, “1,000 Attend Memorial Services for Cox,” Stanford University News Service, February 4, 1987.
111. Ibid.
112. Ibid.
113. Lapin, supra note 109.
114. “Cox Medal will honor faculty who foster undergrad research,” Campus Report, April 15, 1992.
Part II:
The New Culture
5
Stages of Oppression
In the 1960s, they told us coercion was a terrible thing and that you shouldn't coerce people, but now you will be coerced if you go to Stanford if you use language inappropriate to the American left.1
—Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
As we turn to consider what the multiculture is, it is worth recalling what multiculturalism is not. Multiculturalism is neither relativist nor particularly diverse, even if the rhetoric about relativism and diversity occasionally leads to bizarre behavior on the part of the various actors. Nor is it especially helpful to describe multicultu
ralism as 1960s-style leftism, for this does not tell us what leftism has become since the 1960s or why leftism is good or bad. More generally, perhaps, a focus on intellectual issues can be misleading because multiculturalism is a cultural phenomenon. If multiculturalism were merely (or even primarily) an esoteric branch of academia, then it could be contained in elite universities and would not pose much of a threat to America.
A good place to begin trying to understand this new culture is with its obsession, apparent even to a very superficial observer, with victimization. Played out in myriad variations, the recurrent theme is the need to rehabilitate and make whole perceived victims, to undo present and historical injustices. The multicultural movement perceives itself as a radical improvement upon the cultures of the past, and Western culture in particular. Like Hegel's owl of Minerva, multiculturalism promises to bring forth a new consciousness, so as to transcend and overcome history: In the new society, there will no longer be victims and victimizers, only persons.
The multiculture is the means towards that new society. It determines what kinds of distinctions are important, defines groups according to these criteria, and then divides people into groups, each according to his victimization. Once people have been so identified, it is hoped, concrete remedies may be offered to ensure the equal treatment of the members of each group in relation to those of all other groups. This diverse collection of groups and the ways in which they understand themselves and interact with one another constitute the new multiculture. Beneath the superficial diversity of the multiculture, therefore, also lurks a deep conformity: The divisions between all of these different groups are predicated upon a consensus regarding the propriety of these divisions. For the multiculture to work, everybody (or at least a large majority) must agree on what kinds of diversity should count for how much.
Perhaps all cultures require this type of consensus. In the Middle Ages, for instance, Western societies took as their reference the Great Chain of Being—a hierarchical ordering of Nature, with God and the angels at the apex. Just as the multiculture seeks to identify people's stations in relation to their victimization, medieval culture sought to identify people's stations in relation to the divine order. The king served as the living equivalent of God, and presided over a descending hierarchy of nobles, knights, clerics, townspeople (ordered into guilds of butchers, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, bakers, and so forth), peasants, and serfs. There were further subdivisions: Within each guild, for example, there would be a master craftsman, more junior craftsmen, and various apprentices. In this respect, medieval culture was more diverse than modern society, because no two persons ever could occupy the exact same position. Under the medieval regime (and its successor, mercantilism), these divisions guaranteed each person a unique niche; peace could be maintained by preventing people from competing against one another directly.
The diversity of medieval culture did not result in any genuine individuality, however. Even though each person's role was different from every other's, the set of differences (which added up to the medieval society) was itself closely circumscribed. As with multicultural diversity, medieval diversity depended on a deep conformity. People had to agree that the human world was divided into different groups (shoemakers, bakers, etc.) and that each of these groups performed its proper function only so long as it stayed in its proper place. The differences between groups could be maintained only if the members understood themselves to be truly different from the members of other groups. A shoemaker could not become a baker, and a baker could not become a shoemaker. For the most part, these stations were determined at birth: One could not choose to become a shoemaker, and one certainly could not choose to become the king. In practice, of course, the medieval order and the divine right of kings were not guaranteed by God, but depended on the unquestioning agreement of many (if not all) of each kingdom's subjects. When sufficient numbers of people started to challenge the Great Chain of Being and the related notion that each person occupied some well-defined place in the human world (and, indeed, that such well-defined places even existed), the social fabric of medieval society inevitably disintegrated.
The predominant line of thinking about contemporary cultural debates and conflicts in America is radically incomplete because it focuses on the superficial diversity of the multicultural movement but ignores the deeper conformity. The tack of most conservatives, as well as some traditional liberals, has been to denounce multiculturalism for focusing excessively on difference—and thus for being inimical to the common ground on which the educational process and, for that matter, any community must stand. All of these critics have compared multiculturalism to a kind of tribalism, which dissolves the cultural understandings that cement our polyglot society and which therefore threatens us with the sort of perpetual strife faced by other societies torn by ethnic or nationalist hatreds. Multiculturalism, they say, increasingly emphasizes differences over commonality, deconstructs cultural icons one by one, and defines groups in ever narrower and more precise terms. These critics have suggested that the logical conclusion of multicultural identification is a sort of extreme individualism. In the limiting case, each individual becomes his (or her) own multicultural group, judged by his own standards and evaluated on his own terms. Social life becomes either impossible or unbearable.
According to the critics, then, a “multicultural community” (at least of the sort envisioned at Stanford) involves something of an oxymoron, because no common elements are left in a society where every person is given free rein to be as different as he or she desires. And for these critics, conservative and liberal alike, the response to multiculturalism will require individuals to sacrifice parts of their identities into a collectivist “melting pot”—so that the larger American society can return to a more homogeneous, functioning whole.
We have serious reservations about the prescriptive aspects of such a response and doubt whether it is desirable or even possible—a point to which we return in the final chapter. But for the moment, we merely observe that the descriptive premise—that multicultural identification may be equated with extreme individualism—is simply false.
At Stanford, multicultural diversity has simply not led to extreme individualism. While extremely destructive in many ways, multiculturalism has not had precisely that kind of corrosive or fragmenting effect. The transformation of the curriculum (as we saw in chapter 3) and of extracurricular life (chapter 4) has been sweeping and unified. There were certain debates and controversies, but these pitted multiculturalists against everyone else—the CIV protestors versus recalcitrant faculty, for instance, or feminists versus heterosexual males. The multicultural advocates, in spite of all their cherished differences, proved remarkably cohesive and capable of cooperating with one another. More generally, the multicultural community meets challenges in a united way that quickly restores a consensus for multicultural “diversity”; there is no epidemic of strife among the various multicultural tribes. But the paradox remains: If the critics are mistaken in their diagnosis, then what is it exactly that holds the “multiculture” together?
We have already hinted at the answer. The Great Chain of Being, while hostile to genuine individuality, both effectively defined each person as his own group and held medieval society together for centuries. A very similar sort of “unity in diversity” (to borrow from the OMD's declaration of purpose) animates the new multicultural society.
Like the medieval social hierarchy, the carefully calibrated differences multiculturalism devises are not a threat to the continued survival of a unitary culture; this system of differences has become the new culture. If this diversity actually had preexisted the multiculture, then it might pose some real challenges because there would be no guarantee that the new culture could accommodate all of those who are truly different. But multicultural diversity is not natural in origin. The multiculture does not wake people up to long-ignored “diversity” that already exists within themselves and is just waiting to be discovered; it ge
nerates that diversity itself. The forging of this diversity is coeval with the genesis of the multicultural community. (As we shall see in the final chapter, this dangerous new culture is gradually reshaping American life and is increasingly becoming the dominant culture.)
Ultimately, the conventional understanding of multiculturalism does not really come to terms with the problem of how something like the multiculture may exist or work, or even get off the ground in the first place. Although the multiculture appears to be organized around the fault lines of race, gender, and sexual orientation, its real problem lies not with excessive diversity or individuality, but with conformity. For the multiculture to operate, individuals must sacrifice the freedom to determine their own paths in life and become actors in a larger communal drama.
Creating Difference
In late September of each year, 1,500 eager freshmen descend upon Stanford for a five-day “Freshman Orientation,” to be introduced to their classmates and to campus life more generally, and to find their place in the new community. Before the freshmen arrive, their respective RFs and RAs have already memorized their names and photographs. They are greeted with balloons and screams, promptly handed schedules with long lists of orientation activities, and instructed to participate in a series of icebreaker games. After dinner, the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band careens through the dorms, announcing itself with a boisterous cacophony of blasting trumpets and drumbeats. The freshmen do not hesitate to join the band's raucous rally, and begin what will be the first of many celebrations.
But “the Farm” (as Stanford is known to undergraduates) is not always the Norman Rockwell image of rustic beneficence. Orientation also is the first stage on which the multicultural dramas of oppression are acted out, and in this sense these first few days well prepare freshmen for some of the trials and tribulations of their next four years.2 The tone grows particularly serious when orientation leaders turn to diversity “programming.” A process of differentiation begins with special events for minority students, sponsored by the Asian American New Student Orientation Committee, the Black Recruitment and Orientation Committee, the Chicano/Latino Orientation Committee, and the Native American Orientation Committee. Minority freshmen are invited to attend a variety of receptions, banquets, organizational meetings, beach trips, and panel discussions on “minority issues.”3 These logistical differences in activities soon lead to real barriers, as students become friends with other students from their particular groups. Within several weeks, many dining hall tables become self-segregated, as students eat their meals with others they have come to know from the same race.
The Diversity Myth Page 20
