EVAT.H. BRANN 221

Liberal Education And i\/lulticuituraiismFRIENDS OR ENEMIES?

By EVA T. H. BRANN, Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland

Delivered at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 11, 1992

IT IS NO use pretending that the question set for metonight, "Liberal Education and Multiculturalism:Friends or Enemies" can be treated dispassionately.

There has grown up around the topic of multiculturalism anenormous collection of writing, mostly in magazines, jour-nals, and quickly-written books. Once the debate is history,there will no doubt be scholarly books on it. At this date, theonly treatment incorporating real scholarly research I haveseen, by Werner SoUors, a member of the Harvard Depart-ment of English and American Literature and Language,which I shall occasionally draw on, was published not herebut in the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free Universityof Berlin. Even as he fixes the histories of the various termsof the debate he explains to his bemused European audi-ence — bemused because they cannot be expected to takeas readily as do we Americans to the condemnation of thosehated, DWEMS, Dead White European Males, that havebecome one focus of attack in the fight — that the debatemay be nearly played out. The philosopher Hegel said thatthe owl of Minerva, the bird of wisdom, flies at dusk. Hemeant broadly that issues begin to be investigated in per-spective only when their day is nearly over.

How do issues pass away? One way is that they are talkedto death. Everyone, like myself tonight, eagerly joins thefray of words, and behold!, people have got enough. If theissue was always more one of perception than substance,surfeit is an effieient kind of termination for it. Another wayis that the opposition begins to collect its forces and tomake itself felt, and that has certainly happened in themulticultural debate, especially in that aspect of it that isusually called political correctness or P. C. (an abbreviationthat took root, I imagine, because many people alreadyhave a love-hate relation to a very different kind of P. C,the one they keep at home and work in front of). The P. C.aspect of the Culture wars has a strange and wonderfultwist to it. In the awful days of Joe McCarthy's era, it wasthe intellectuals and academics who were hounded not onlyby the House Committee on Un-American Activities but bya popular feeling, the fear of Communism. This time it's theother way around: It is in the academic and intellectualworld that persecutions take place, and the public stands byand would like us all to behave more liberally — liberal herebeing used not as an "L-word," but as in Liberal Education.I will come in a moment to that meaning of "liberal."

Yet another reason why the debate will probably diedown is highly worrisome and unsatisfaetory. That reason iscalled money. As the Age of Plenty has passed, the publicand its legislatures will begin to look closely — but notalways carefully — into the spending of their educationdollars, and multiculturalism will seem like an expensiveluxury, insofar as eaeh discernible "culture" — a wordwhose meaning 1 must also take up in a moment — de-mands academie recognition, and that means departmentsor programs within departments, or, at the least, professorsspecially appointed.

My sense is that this particular debate will be displacedwithout being resolved and that the underlying questionswill be with us for a long time. To me that means that thesooner we convert the noisy political passion for the contro-versy to a more sober intellectual passion the better. Thisconversion from engaged noise to objeetive eoneem is par-ticularly hard to make — and here I am, against my ownpreachings, driven into a partisan observation — since themulticulturalists tend to despise objectivity as just anotherpower play that can be unmasked to reveal its motives ofdomination and its consequences in victimization. I simplydo not agree. I think it is worth the effort to try to thinkclearly, with dispassionate passion, so to speak, to make thedistinction between one's material interest and personalattachments on the one hand, and the fair demands of otherpeople and new circumstances on the other. Some clarityabout the thoughts and the terms, the roots and the eonse-quences, of the debate would make the best beginning tothe protracted adjustments that will be going on in the nextcentury. So let me begin right here.

It is generally agreed that the phenomenon referred to asthe "culture wars" is largely an aeademic preoccupation. Itis totally unclear how engaged the American minoritiesthemselves are in the concerns of their intellectual leader-ship. They jostle each other for jobs and politieal influence,as is the American way, but to what degree they wish theirchildren to be initiated into the American mainstream or tobe guided into the ways of separatism no one seems so far tohave honestly ascertained.

Since the controversy takes place in the sehools, fromkindergarten to graduate school, it is most certainly aneducational phenomenon. That part of the educationalspectrum where liberal education is usually thought to haveits place is the college, be it an independent institution or apart of a university — the school in which that educationtakes plaee which follows the training of childhood andadolescence and that precedes training for the adult profes-sion. Liberal education is the education of the betwixt-and-between years. Therein lie its opportunities and its dangers.

How is educating the young liberally distinguished frombringing up children, socializing adolescents, training for avocation, or acquiring the credentials for a profession?

I speak of educating the young because liberal edueation,as I will describe it, is for the young, with the understandingthat there are two types of youth: chronological youth,from, say, seventeen to twenty-two, the normal eoUegeyears, and intelleetual youth, whieh has no age limit. WhenI say "the yotmg," I therefore mean, generally, all those whoare free to be free, who have, at least for the moment, nocrushing worldly responsibilities and no rigidified mentalattitudes. The two most favorable times for liberal educa-tion are therefore before people enter on the life of makinga living, and after they retire from it — though of course,most people can snatch moments of free time throughouteven in that burdened middle stretch of life.

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The veiy earliest understanding of liberal education,which comes from Aristotle, emphasizes the liberty that isto be heard in the word "liberal." Liberal education presup-poses not only actual liberty from labor, actual leisure, but acertain kind of leisurely outlook, a sense that education isnot to be undertaken immediately for a constraining profes-sion or a binding vocation, but that it gives the student acertain liberty. It is the liberty to be impractical, freely tolearn things worth knowing mostly for their own sake, suchas poetry and new theory, and seriously to entertain opin-ions that are daring and probably insupportable in the longrun — for example, nihilism and solipsism. It is a curiousand comforting fact that a good many parents have alwaysbeen willing to give their children the gift of four years ofleisure with no goal except to learn those things that areworth knowing for their own sake. And they have trustedthe faculties of schools of higher education to know whatthese things were.

Let me, as a member of thirty-five year's standing of sucha faculty, to whom at Convocation parents bring their chil-dren to be liberally educated, trusting in our judgement toteach them what it is good to know — let me say plainly andboldly what I think it is good to know and what 1 havedoubts about. I shall begin with my doubts, and they comeunder three sets of opposites:

Method vs. Matter,Problem vs. Paradigms,Parochialism vs. Universalism.By the heading Method vs. Matter I want to raise a doubt

about the growing curricular device of orienting students hymeans of "methods courses," courses on methods of think-ing, of criticism, about approaching a subject matter. Meth-ods are like jigs on machine tools; they guide thinking alongpre-set lines, and that is just what liberal education, by itsvery name, should avoid. My colleagues and I think thatstudents should study books and subjects, and approachthem freshly and immediately. Later, when they are ready,they can devise their own matter or choose someone else's.But not at the beginning.

By the heading Problems vs. Paradigms I want to raise adoubt on the well-intentioned notion that students shouldearly on, as a part of their common experience, be intro-duced to the academic version of the societal problemscurrently identified as urgent. This way of beginning aneducation holds the danger of illiherality for two reasons.The first is that such courses cannot help but be politicized,in the sense that the professor's political passions and opin-ions cannot help but play a large role in the classroom. Thesecond reason is deeper and less remediable. It is that, inmy opinion at least, the best preparation for long range,wise, and effective action is not a premature engagementwith present problems, which wears out the indignation andoutrage of youth in academic gestures, but the quiet andcumulative study of books that give paradigms, that is tosay, models and exemplars, of the good life. To my mind thebeginning of good actioh is a firm view of how things rightlyought to be, acquired individually and communally, throughrespectful criticism of the finest texts available — not somuch through absorption in how things wrongly are.

Finally, by the antithesis of Parochialism vs. Universalism1 mean to raise douhts about the current notion that self-respect comes from concentrating on one's own -. he itone's own culture or one's own prohlems. I agree that self-

respect is of the essence, and that that half of our educa-tional troubles that doesn't come from lack of intellectualimagination comes from deficient self-respect. I also agreethat the mastery of our particular origins is necessary toself-respect; this mastery may make us either appropriateour own heritage or decide to let it lapse. We have a choicein this country and can go either way. The question iswhether the place called the "university" ought to be theplaying field of parochial concerns, or if indeed it ought tobe that, in what way. To me it seems that before and abovethe nurturing of the diverse cultures of this country shouldcome the preservation, through critical study, of the univer-sal, encompassing ground on which they must fiourish orfail. One objection to my claim must of course be the diffi-culty of telling what that universal ground is.

Let me, once again, boldly try to tell what is universal andwhat all students should therefore learn and think about.Our common ground consists of two, it seems to me, unde-niable, elements: constitutional democracy and science-based technology. It seems to me to follow that every stu-dent should have the wherewithal to refiect on these tworoots of contemporary life. That means that all studentsshould study, sometime early on in their four years, the verylong and complex tradition, literary and philosophical, be-hind the democratic mode. At the same time they shouldalso know something of the elements of mathematics andscience.

Now, you might well ask, are these liberal or illiberalstudies? Is study so deliberately turned to understandingthe contemporary scene, even if it takes a long view of theantecedents of our present condition — is such study notjust as narrowly focused on living in the present as theproblem courses about which I have just expressed douhts?

No, I think not. The point is that when the governingaspects of current life are approached from a long and highperspective rather than within the terms of a current butpossibly already passing debate, the political questions gaina human universality which makes them intellectually com-pelling on their own, quite aside from their current pres-sure, just as the scientific bases of technology are intellectu-ally captivating quite aside from their tremendouspresent-day consequences. It seems to he a truth that cer-tain pressing questions gain in independent interest as theyarc taken to a higher level. Let me give you a very liveexample of what I mean: One of the writers we must cer-tainly study to begin to think about our own politics isAristotle. Aristotle presents a notorious theory of slavery:that some human heings are slaves by nature, that they, likechildren are simply deficient in the capacity for self-deter-mination. Since Aristotle's argument implies a condemna-tion of slavery by capture or race, it leaves us free to thinkabout the basic requirements made of human nature if it isto be true that, as Rousseau will argue, "All men are bomfree," or as Jefferson will announce, "All men are createdequal." Arguments carried on this level are not only morethoughtful, they are also simply more intellectually engag-ing, more worth thinking about for their mere interest, thanideologically determined debates.

Where does multiculturalism fit into liberal education?Is it friend or foe?

Of course, I have to begin by saying what multicultur-alism seems to be. Let me remind you that, to put muchhistory in a capsule form, there has been a progression of

EVA T. H. BRANN 223

terms — three terms that I know of:Melting Pot,Pluralism,Multiculturalism.The "Melting Pot," became known to many of us through

the hook, Beyond the Melting Pot, published in 1963, byNathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moyihan, who showedthat the old assimilationist dream — or nightmare, depend-ing on one's point of view — never really prevailed in theurban ethnic population. The melting pot theory was thatall immigrants would melt into the prevailing Anglosaxonmainstream. Whatever its tyrannies and impositions, itsproponents saw to it that we learned English — but fast. Isay "we," because I was an immigrant under its dispensa-tion — one who learned English fast.

There succeeded a kinder, gentler notion, that of Plural-ism. The pluralists appreciated and encouraged the diversi-ty of American cultures on a common American ground. Byand large, the way it worked is that we were Americansduring the week in school or at work, and on the weekendswe became hyphenated Americans: went to our shuls orGreek orthodox basilicas, learned Hebrew or Norwegian,ate hratwurst or keftedes. This was to me, I might as welltell you forthrightly, the golden mean and the golden mo-ment.

Now we have Multiculturalism. In its most radical theo-rizing it differs from Pluralism in acknowledging no com-mon American ground and allowing no weekend ethnicity.Some multiculturalists are radical separatists, as you know.Their separatism is hindered by the fact that the membersof the groups in question are scattered all over the conti-nent. If that were not the case there would undoubtedly bea real movement for territorial secession. It is an enormousblessing that the various groups are, inner cities apart, sointermingled, because this country's bloodiest war wasfought to establish the principle that political secession isintolerable. Instead they practice internal secession. Be-sides heing separatists, they are cultural totalitarians, in thesense that they claim that the particular culture does andshould pervade existence totally, including schooling andsocial life. I shall set aside the most extreme form of multi-culturalism as being simply incompatible with liberal edu-cation as I have described it: This ideology would have noroom for the ardent but objective involvement with intellec-tual matter, for the careful and critical study of the bestmodels, and for the receptive universalism of liberal stud-ies. Liberal education and radical multiculturalism are sim-ply enemies. The reasons can be given in far more detailthan this occasion allows, but a more detailed expositionwould not change the judgment, I believe.

Happily multiculturalism covers a wide spectrum ofagendas, and with some of them liberal educations can verywell eome to terms.

Perhaps it is time to say something more about the mean-ing of the word multiculturalism. The word incorporates aterm whieh denotes what is prohably the most difficult,swampy, theory-laden ideology-driven concepts of anthro-pology. A scholar, Raymond Williams, in his bookKeywords, says that it is "one of the two or three mostcomplicated words in the English language." It is a wordthat anyone wishing to say something definite might wish toavoid. I would say that it has its most powerful applicationprecisely in contexts where the point is to divert responsibil-

ity from a concrete and definable agent. It is often verymuch a part of the thinking of those who refer to culture,that human deeds are not only partially but totally culture-conditioned — that the crimes of oppression as well as theanti-social reactions of victims are largely unconscious anddeterministic behavior indueed by society and culture.

In older times "culture" in the anthropological sense re-ferred to tribal or ethnic ways. Now there are corporatecultures, victim cultures, cultures of gender, raee, poverty,disability. It follows that when human conduct is referred toas culture, there is a great complex of cultures which can bemade responsible, so that people are caught, as it were, in avise of cultures that are thought to fix their behavior. At thesame time they are, somewhat inconsistently, bidden orforced to acknowledge these cultures — as in the recentstratagem of "outing," in which homosexuals are exposedagainst their will by fellow homosexuals so that they may thesooner join the gay culture, or in the pressure put on youngblack students by their peers to make race a major aspect oftheir intellectual life so as not to divorce themselves fromtheir cultural roots by too much commitment to a traditionthat treacherously presents itself as universal.

The point that I am making is that the "culturalism" ofmulticulturalism is at once a perception and a program: theperception of the overwhelming importance of "culture" inhuman existence and the program of compelling people toacknowledge that fact.

Is culturalism friend or enemy to liberal education? Well,as a perception it plays a major role among the kinds ofquestion to be addressed in those free four years, and for aslong after as the mind remains liberal. The question wheth-er we are the masters or the subjeets of our culture, and theprior question, how we might delineate the factors thatshape us, and whieh go deepest and which are shallow intheir effect, that concatenation of questions is an unavoid-able preoccupation of liberal education. But the program ofcompulsion is inimical to liberal learning, which is by itsnature incompatible with propaganda. For such education,as 1 have depicted it, is more concerned with asking howthings truly are than with trying to bring about predeter-mined states of mind.

Now here is the difficulty: To think about such matters asthe dependenee on our independenee of human beings ontheir society or culture, we must be ourselves well-rooted ina society. To reflect on culture, we must ourselves be culti-vated, be shaped by a eivilization. It used to be thought thata considerable part of a liberal education eonsisted in ac-quiring the taste and the morals, the sensihilities and thevirtues of one's culture. Ancient eulture in this non-anthro-pological sense invariably meant high culture. In fact, theways of the uneducated were thought of preeisely as uncul-tured.

That was when one culture was acknowledged as prevail-ing. But this consensus is failing. Note incidentally that Isaid "acknowledged as prevailing," for it is by no means clearto me that one eulture does not in fact prevail: Don't we alleither use English or wish we could? (1 am thinking of thedesires of real-life immigrants). Don't we all want to readbooks or wish we wanted to? Don't we all see television anduse telephones? Don't we all speak of our rights, and makeuse of our freedoms? And doesn't one and the same tradirtions stand behind all these achievements of modern times?But that is an argument whieh, important though it is to the

224 VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY

multicultural controversy, I cannot pursue tonight.The point is that when in our day the people charged with

absorbing the young into their civilization are no longeragreed on what that civilization ought to be, two things arehappening simultaneously: Not only is the old distinctionbetween high civilization and popular culture lost, but soalso is the old difference between respectable and disrepu-table ways of life lost: All discernible ways are equally to becalled cultures and have a right to respectful reception inthe academy. At the same time that old distinctions arecollapsing, new ones clamor for recognition. And so we getthe multi-cultural society, in which ethnicity race, gender,sexual orientation, disability and other selected propertiesof human beings each in turn become the catalyst of acultural configuration which is thought to deserve academicattention. That is the "multi" in multiculturalism, the claimthat America is divided along many lines which delineatemany sub-cultures, each of which deserves not only humanrespect but academic inclusion.

Or rather that is what the word multiculturalism ought tomean: the acknowledgement of a multitude of ways of lifein one country. Multiculturalism in this sense should have afriendly relation to liberal education. For it is part of aliberal education to free students from narrow views so thatthey are open to all kinds of ways. To put it concretely: astudent whose liberal education had really taken holdwould naturally be an avid reader of anthropological re-ports and an appreciative observer of communal ways, fa-miliar or alien. This kind of multiculturalism is older on thiscontinent than the Republic itself, as Professor Sollors,whose work I mentioned early on, has shown. It is only theold Pluralism in a new guise and under the pressure of somedemographic shifts. It presents the candid proponent ofliberal education with some serious and dignified problems:what taste and sensibility, what customs and morals shouldeducators inculcate when many students are brought upoutside what is as of this date still the statistical main-stream? Which of the many cultures shall become the mod-el to be studied? Should students spend most time withwhat is closest to home or with what is farthest from theirminds? Should colleges emphasize to their students theuniversality of human nature or focus on its particularity?These are, as I say, serious questions, and happily we have amulti-institutional educational sy.stem to allow for a multi-tude of solutions.

Unfortunately multiculturalism is not, as often used now-adays, an inclusive term. Not all cultures are equally enti-tled, by current multiculturalists. The aim of the multicul-turalists that turn up in the news are not stated in a liberalmood. Their purpose in introducing multiculturalism intothe curricula, from kindergarteri to college, is to foster "cul-tural identity," and "racial or ethnic self-esteem," not for allcultures but only for those that have victim credentials andalso some political clout. Thus there are plenty of dailydemands for African-American, women's and gay pro-grams, but far fewer for Asian-American, and Hispanicgroups, while most of the large ethnic cultures of the main-stream are not thought worthy of special attention at all.The argument is, of course, that these are compensatorymeasures: There are "marginalized" groups, groups longpushed from the center of power, which need to assertthemselves.

Inclusive multiculturalism poses enlivening problems forliberal education, but exclusive multiculturalism is a deadlyenemy. Liberal curricula, meant to be a place for leisurelyreflection on the human condition, cannot serve as a battle-ground for exclusive factions seeking empowerment andnot as interested in hard truths as in supportive myths. Evenwhen these debates, these so-called "culture wars" havefinally subsided, the wreckage could be great. A broken anddiscarded tradition is not easily mended and reassembled,for who will teach the teachers?

Yet there is much reason for hope even in the face of thisinimical multiculturalism. As the various cultural studiesmature, they develop backlogs of scholarship and methodsof their own and these will make them eventually as dullyacademic and as repulsively respectable as any other uni-versity subject. Student generations turn over every fouryears, and every new generation is irritated by the estab-lished myths and hungry for corrective truths. But above all,when the dust settles, there will be many learners, youngand old, who will be avid for studies attractive for their ownsake, unclouded by political or social motives. Not so verylong from now I think exclusive multiculturalism, the enemyof liberal education, will be history as an academic stance.The inclusive Multiculturalism, the old-fashioned Plural-ism, on the other hand, will bedevil the colleges and univer-sities for the foreseeable future. But it may well turn out tobe a friendly devil, the kind that galvanizes rather thandestroys liberal education.