
##4000550 Whenever I read about another episode of college cheating , I think of a scene in Rounders , a movie about two high-stakes poker buddies who have known each other since high school . One is a character played by Matt Damon . He 's a poker genius , someone who calculates odds with lightning precision and makes precise inferences from the betting . The other , played by Ed Norton , is a shady character who 's just finished a prison term . He 's also a superb poker player . But his specialty is systematic cheating , dealing surreptitious winners -- " hangers , " in poker slang : cards dealt from the middle or bottom of the deck -- to himself or his partner . <p> Norton 's crooked dealing allows them to clean out a bunch of rich kids in a college game . The two buddies then locate a weekly high-stakes game played by off-duty state cops . The cops , unlike the college kids , are n't suckers . Norton is caught dealing a hanger , and a moment later the camera @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bloody and bruised from the beating they 've just been given by the other poker players . <p> There are , it seems to me , two levels to this scene . The first is the obvious one : a weekly poker session is what is called a zero-sum game . If you and I have both put our stakes into the pot , your cheating means that you are , in effect , stealing from me . It 's a situation in which everyone has a personal stake in seeing that everyone else stays honest . <p> The second is less obvious . At a certain deep level of social consciousness , there 's an almost intuitive sense that cheating threatens the whole set of relations that allow groups to function . Children know this instinctively . They react loudly against other children who cheat at games . <p> This is where the parking-lot scene in Rounders tells us something about college cheating . It 's essential that Norton was caught red-handed in a private game , one in which everyone had a stake in seeing everyone else obeyed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as though by moral instinct , why cheating is always an ugly practice . When you change this essential element , everything else changes too . <p> In the days when university grades were given out as an honest measure of academic and intellectual performance , cheating on exams or papers was a lot like the poker game in Rounders , a situation in which everyone was immediately aware that people who cheated were mocking or disvaluing the achievement of those who were acting honestly . <p> Today , all this has changed . It 's the cheaters who are in control of the moral climate in which exams are given and papers assigned , and students who act honorably are very nearly paralyzed by a diffidence or timorousness about calling public attention to what is going on . <p> A lot of the explanation of why this change has occurred , it seems to me , has to do with grade inflation , which by taking away all legitimate standards of actual performance has turned cheating into a matter of " beating the system . " To understand how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ private poker game in Rounders , the practice of card-counting in casino blackjack . In 1962 , drawing on an analysis published by a group of statisticians , Edward O. Thorp published his famous book Beat the Dealer , teaching people a way to beat the odds in a Las Vegas casino . ( As the game proceeds , a player who has memorized which cards have been played knows by inverse inference what cards remain in the deck -- a deck rich in 10 's and Aces shifts the odds dramatically in favor of the player , a deck with lots of 5 's and 6 's shifts them in favor of the house . ) <p> The casinos have gone to great lengths to deal with card-counters . Dealers use multiple decks . Known card counters are banned from the casinos , their pictures kept on file by security personnel . In return , some card counters are suing , claiming that , since they 're not doing anything technically illegal , such banning is unjust . <p> While the courts are deciding the issue , card counting has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important about college cheating . In the period directly after Thorp published Beat the Dealer , many card counters went to casinos along with friends who knew they were using the card-counting system . These friends , who had not taught themselves card-counting methods , usually stood beside the card-counters , playing blackjack in the regular way . But none felt cheated when the card-counter won large sums of money by beating the odds . If anything , they felt admiration : the card counter had n't taken anything away from them -- he 'd only " beaten the house , " put one over on an impersonal system that was , in a sense , the opponent of every player in the casino . <p> It 's the notion of " beating the system , " one suspects , that accounts not only for the widespread cheating that goes on in colleges and universities today , but also the demoralization of the honest students who might otherwise be counted on to resent the way the dishonesty of their peers insults their own attempts to learn by study and hard work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the climate in which cheating is perceived as beating the system . <p> In writing about higher education , the rise in grade inflation and the rise in college cheating are usually treated as separate phenomena . Cheating , in fact , is usually thought to be a problem mainly at lower-level institutions , where either public pressure for " democratic " education or the urgent need of smaller private colleges to keep their enrollments up brings in large numbers of students unable to do college-level work . <p> Grade inflation , on the other hand , is thought to be the special problem of the most selective colleges and universities : it 's at Williams and Harvard and Yale , whose entering classes are filled with students who have never seen a grade lower than A in their lives , that the pressure is supposed to be greatest . When Harvard announced last year that more than half of its undergraduates were getting either an A or an A-in their courses , nobody was surprised to hear that such " good " students were getting such high grades . <p> @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as research for an article she 's writing for a campus publication reveals a quite different story . With one of the most talented student pools in the nation , New Jersey has a very high number of students who go off to the Ivies or good liberal arts colleges like Williams and Amherst . What the survey revealed in case after case -- and with evidence that was not merely anecdotal , but could be independently checked -- is that many of these New Jersey high school students had cheated their way into the most selective colleges in the country . <p> That 's surprising enough , but not , perhaps , astonishing . What 's astonishing is the frequency with which cheaters boasted openly about what they 'd done to their high school classmates . In one interview I read , a student talks about an A paper she 'd written for an AP History course . The following semester a classmate , another AP student taking the same course from another teacher , asked to see the paper , " to help her think about the topic . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the paper , word for word , and when it came back with an A , showed it to its author with a conspiratorial air , as though they 'd been partners in getting away with something . ( The plagiarist is today attending Harvard . ) <p> It 's the brazenness of the cheater 's behavior , it seems to me , that reveals the hidden relation between grade inflation and widespread cheating . In a world where students are given A 's for the most token effort , and where teachers have stopped trying to swim against the tide and give A 's just to avoid trouble , one student 's cheating does n't take anything away from another student 's grade . Like the card counter in blackjack , the cheater is , after all , just beating an impersonal system . <p> In a world where A 's are reserved for the top few students in any class , on the other hand , where B+ and B are reserved for those whose work is genuinely above average , and where those whose work is average for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the local community college -- receive C+ or C , the general attitude of students toward cheating is more likely to be like that of the cops in Rounders : to cheat is to take away from others credit they 've honestly earned through talent and hard work . <p> In the days when I myself was trying to hold out against grade inflation , I 'd give a little talk at the beginning of the course about why inflated grades hurt everyone , teachers and students and higher learning as a total enterprise . I 'd begin by putting a certain sentence on the board and asking the class what was wrong with it . The sentence was this : <p> Every student in this room is taller than the height of the average student in this room . <p> " What , " I would ask , " is wrong with that sentence ? " Some would look a bit puzzled , but most would get the point instantly : " It 's a contradiction in terms , " " Whoever wrote that does n't know what ' average @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than everybody else . " Then I 'd ask , with as much outward innocence as I could muster , " But what if it were a really tall group . What if it were an NBA team , with everybody at least 6-feet-5-inches tall ? " And the students would get impatient : " That does n't change anything -- it 's the average we 're supposed to be talking about . " Then , looking resigned , as though I did n't quite grasp their point but felt myself to have been shouted down by their collective sense of logical outrage , I 'd put another sentence on the board : <p> Every student in the course got an A for the course . <p> " Now , " I 'd say , with an air of spurious puzzlement . " Is there anything wrong with that sentence ? " And this time , invariably , I would get blankness . Not assumed blankness , or embarrassed blankness , or nervous blankness , but genuine incomprehension . Even the brightest students in the class would honestly not see that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentence was logically analogous to the first . It was then that I realized that grade inflation represents not simply a local problem in American higher education , but an Alice-in-Wonderland irreality that has all of us , students and professors and administrators , under its spell . <p> It was n't until my student began working on her survey of cheating at Rutgers , though , that I began to understand the deeper sense in which grade inflation promotes cheating . This is where what I called the second level of the Rounders episode comes into play . In the first instance , I grant , pure self-interest is what 's likely to make students intolerant of cheating in any situation where grades reflect actual performance . If your cheating directly harms my chances of getting into medical school or law school or one of the top philosophy programs in the country , I 'm much more likely to tell you to stop . <p> Still , there 's another way of looking at the matter . If I catch you plagiarizing your work from the web or getting high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply want to tell a professor or a dean that I 'm doing my own work , and I want to be measured only against other students who have done theirs . <p> If you look closely , you 'll see that this response is only incidentally an example of what might be called zero-sum outrage , where I 'm angry because your gain equals my loss . Instead , it 's much closer to the reaction that takes us to the second or " ethical " level of the Rounders example . At this level , what makes one angry is a deeper sense that cheating dishonors the very pursuit in which some people are trying their best , working as hard as they can , and taking the objective measure of their performance -- whether it 's a C+ in a calculus course or a 3:18 time in a marathon -- as a true assessment of their accomplishment . <p> Perhaps the worst consequence of grade inflation , in other words , is that it hides or masks the ethical dimension of cheating , even from the honest student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to anything we might want to think of as a genuine intellectual community . I thought of this recently when , in quite another context , I was reading Anthony Kenny 's A Life in Oxford . Kenny , as many readers will know , is an Oxford philosopher who began his career as an ordained Catholic priest . His gradual estrangement from Catholicism is recounted in A Path from Rome , to which A Life in Oxford is an autobiographical sequel . <p> The moment that caught my attention was this . After he has applied for and achieved laicization , married , and taken up a position at Oxford , Kenny -- by now an agnostic -- continues to attend Catholic Mass . But he does so as a non-Catholic , always careful to limit his participation in the liturgy to those portions that do not imply either religious belief or membership in the Church . His reasoning seems to me exactly appropriate to the subject of grade inflation and cheating : " to recite the Creed or receive Communion would be , in my view , not only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but also an insult to the seriousness with which these actions are undertaken by believers . " <p> There we have , in a nutshell , a logic that brings to light the real moral ugliness of academic cheating . To cheat on an exam or plagiarize a paper is not simply to try to receive credit for work that is beyond one 's own capacity . It is to insult the seriousness with which students who act honorably are taking their university education as a process of personal and intellectual development . In the same way , the dean or " Office of Student Services " who treats cheating as a mere slip or trivial inadvertency is telling every real student on the campus -- the students whom any university worthy of the name ought most to value , encourage , even cherish -- that he or she is valueless , nothing more than another anonymous unit on the endless and indiscriminate assembly line that , at very many schools , passes today as higher education . <p> It 's only when everyone is operating within a system that reliably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that one perceives the true moral degradation involved in cheating . It 's only then that the marathoner who has undergone ten months of arduous training will have no hesitation about telling the race officials that the person who finished ahead of him cut through the woods , or that a student who 's put an enormous amount of time into getting an honorable C+ in calculus will get up and tell a classmate copying answers from a friend on the midterm to knock it off . <p> It 's easy enough to see that the cops who beat up the card cheats in Rounders were at some level motivated by self-interest . It 's harder to see that , beyond that , they were instinctively acting to preserve a certain rudimentary moral contract implicit even in weekend card games . It 's not unreasonable , I think , to ask that university administrators , by putting an end to grade inflation , do what they can to raise the ethical level of their institutions at least to the level of ordinary folks who get together to play a game of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University of Virginia Medical Center employee in a staff meeting , quoted approximately below , was enough to prompt the university 's president to issue a strongly worded press release , to impel the medical center CEO to investigate the incident for racial insensitivity , to incite a hasty " Protest against Racism at U. Va and the U. Va . Medical Center after a Recent Racial Incident " by the staff union , to result in " follow-up " measures for the employee , and it was grounds for the chairman of the NAACP to declare , " My first impulse is that this should be a dismissible infraction . " : <p> I ca n't believe in this day and age that there 's a sports team in our nation 's capital named the Redskins . That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called the " N-Word " would be to blacks . <p> By William C. Dowling <p> <p> William C. Dowling is a professor of English at Rutgers University . He is author most recently of The Senses of the Text : Intensional Semantics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) . <p> 
##4000551 PREFORMATTED TABLE -- A. A. Milne , Winnie-the-Pooh <p> <p> In a promising gesture of diversity , the Modern Language Association has been welcoming community colleges ( CC ) into its conference agendas . Since this sector constitutes the majority of college teachers , and a silent one at that , it could furnish valuable perspectives to the Association . <p> What are these perspectives ? To begin with , take the average CC teacher : The vast majority are agreeably personable and people-oriented , articulate and communicatively disciplined , even after years of service , because the nature of their teaching orientation demands that attitude . How many at the university level can boast so consistent an attitude ? <p> Yes , but do CC instructors publish , it might be asked ? Actually some of us do . Besides , at a time when so much of current humanities publication is of frankly questionable scholarly value , what is the practical difference between that and no publication at all ? <p> CC teachers are practical because their institutions were designed to be so . Here at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , sounds and smells of the Vocational Technology shops one passes with pleasure on the way to class . And by the air conditioning plant , which elsewhere would be hidden bashfully from view , and which is here glass-encased to be enjoyed by connoisseurs for its gleaming industrial craftsmanship . Benjamin Franklin , the craftsman-intellectual par excellence would have felt at home here . This is practicality , rootedness in community . But also savvy : Laney knows the dirty little secret of our so-called techno-information age : Highly-paid traditional crafts are going begging , and can only barely be filled by massive , and often not very legal , immigration . <p> What then would draw the practical-minded CC instructor in search of professional enlightenment to the MLA convention ? As a language teacher my own natural interest in Washington lay in suitable sessions , such as the Foreign Language and Culture session . Naturally I looked for practical suggestions and helpful hints for teaching these , especially for the continuing practical problem of adequately testing for culture in a typical language course . Unfortunately I found none of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bewail in a general way the misfortune of oppressed minority cultures . Now , even being sympathetic to the causes , I could not help feeling baffled and even patronized : What environment did these speakers come from ? Had they ever been in genuine touch with the objects of their study ? <p> And then it struck me : These were university staff , obviously from an environment different from my own . Here at Laney where the absolute majority of students are from the official minority categories -- a fairly accurate microcosm of Oakland as a whole -- sensitivity to them and their practical needs are a natural part of our practical reality , as part of the CC mission in general . And yet how is it that I as a white male feel vastly more appreciated here than at the elite , overwhelmingly white , private university ( Stanford ) where I also taught extensively ? The difference is ideology : Whereas at that university 's humanities division white males as a group are welcome only if they are avowed stereotypical Marxists and cultural revisionists , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for whatever direct practical contribution I can make to each individual 's learning process . How truly rewarding for a teacher ! <p> Here then is the Achilles heel of so many universities : most reality is seen primarily in terms of theory , stand-offishly and sterilely , with too little input from practicality . This is especially true with regard to ideology . Marxism , for example , so often presented as a Rousseauesque utopian vision of perfect social equality and perfect economic justice by government fiat , is on the surface truly attractive -- in theory . And teaching it to gullible post-adolescents who have never participated significantly in any normal economic life is heady stuff . Not that these should be shielded from getting to know it . Quite the contrary . But how ethical is it not to tell these same students the terrible truth that the actual totalitarian practice of Marxism has cost the lives of an estimated 100 million people in the course of the twentieth century , surpassing even Fascism ? On a purely human level must it not be asked , how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , live with himself asserting that Stalin succeeded , and that Mao did not go far enough in his agenda ( Marxism , 250 ; Ideologies , 2 : 207-8 ) ? Yes , capitalism , if unrestrained , can , and often does , " kill " the soul , but it does not as a rule deliberately target the bodies , not least because it needs them as consumers . Intellectual purists might call this cynical , because they miss lofty visions of youthful sophomoric idealism , but sane common sense also finds it surprisingly practical . Why ? Because it is this attention to mercantile practicality that has saved democratic capitalism , even as admittedly imperfect as it is , from the horrific practical consequences of idealistic but deadly totalitarian Rousseauan utopias . And while Marxists-Leninists like Marcuse and Jameson might dismiss this crucial difference with an amazing verbal sleight-of-hand as democracy 's " repressive tolerance , " it has allowed even them to live and indeed thrive very well personally , has it not ? <p> Students at most universities are intellectually vulnerable . In a manner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a wide scale are divorced from their families at the age of eighteen and thrown together with equally naive peers , often stranded in isolated suburban or country settings ( " farms " ) away from the gritty life experience of city centers . Here an artificially academic lifestyle and correspondingly utopian narrowness of life experience exclude the rich vicissitudes of ordinary personal and public , commercial life . Thus intellectually captive and reality-deprived , young students can become easy prey for conscienceless ideological raptors , who set upon them with more or less refined subtlety . It is an irony of history that the traditional land-grant colleges , originally designed to protect students from the " vices " of city life , have now in many cases become intellectual ghettoes , ideological traps , propaganda camps for proselytizing impressionable youngsters , closer in spirit to the ominous " reeducation camps " of totalitarian regimes than to traditional humanities departments , judging by the curricula . Thus the university experience , which was originally designed to broaden a person 's outlook , is now in danger of being more narrowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ <p> CC students are luckier in this sense . They are for the most part commuters , many with demanding jobs . Daily contact with family and real life are the norm rather than the exception . Ideas learned at school stand at least a minimum chance of being tested at home or at work on a constant basis . Parents of all social backgrounds would be wise to start off their offspring at a CC first until they become mature enough to judge a university experience more critically . <p> Academic remoteness from reality is particularly evident in the epistemologically disastrous presentational jargon of literary and cultural studies . Average visitors to so many MLA convention sessions may be excused for feeling that they have arrived at a sort of Baudelairean " temple o de vivants piliers / laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles . " Honestly , how difficult would it be to require all presenters to state their central thesis clearly in one or two sentences ? But then how many current presentations could survive such a practical test ? We CC teachers work hard to hone our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knowledge as democratically accessible as possible . This requires us to be truly centered as individuals . The current fad of deliberate cultivation of communicational " decenteredness " runs entirely counter to our mission . To use a blunt but honest old adage , the use of " dollar words for nickel concepts " strikes us not only as elitist and antidemocratic , but simply as fraudulent . <p> There is , of course , a reason for this deliberately equivocating language that makes so much of MLA-English sound like a bad translation of notoriously undigestible Hegelian and Heideggerian German , mediated through the artificial , pretentious French of Foucault and Derrida . It is the deliberate goal of undermining the primarily Western empirical language and thought as bourgeois " false consciousness , " the disenfranchisement of the common sense of free thinking individuals , all to one end : Namely , so that radical intellectuals may seize control of public discourse and become Foucault 's " masters of discursivity , " who , priest-like , define and control for the rest of us all truths beyond all ordinary facts and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come to pass . <p> What damage such radical , dogmatic opposition to empirical truth can wreak on an individual is tragically illustrated by Foucault 's personal fate . He died because he refused to acknowledge the empirical evidence of the danger of AIDS . And when he did recognize it , and himself contracted it , he refused to communicate this fact to his sexual partners , with consequences that " can only be surmised " ( Tallis , 3 ) . <p> On an institutional level , what does this epistemological development portend regarding the quality of humanistic studies ? For the cause of any kind of serious science it is plainly a disaster , as the steep decline in useful empirical scholarship indicates , thus threatening to return American literary scholarship to the level of the pre-1950s . Tell-tale signs are such simple things as the vanishing footnote , that instrument of straightforward verifiability and in-depth research . Already a new generation of young critics is establishing itself , one that has little concept or appreciation of plain facts , as current MLA presentations attest . And these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ universities . Moreover , this is the first generation whose view of the world is shaped not only by the massive absorption of television images , but whose informational universe is , in addition , circumscribed largely by the concept of cyberspace . Together these two worlds reduce the perception of reality to the epistemological level of cartoons , devoid of the experiential complexity of ordinary life , producing the kind of existential naivet that incidentally shows up in the amply proven fragility of the " dot.com " economy . Add to this a constricting , mind-numbing set of narrow ideologies , and a vision of the twenty-first-century humanist emerges that can easily make one shudder . <p> This endangerment of the empirical at the university level aggravates a process already under way in American society as a whole , due to the significant social changes of the last decades . As the bulk of American economy and population has moved away from farming , crafts and manufacturing , it is losing the sense of making " real , " tangible , objectively verifiable things , and with it an important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , high schools over much of America used to include in their curriculum shop classes that taught skills involving hand/eye coordination . These stimulated the brain and instilled in many teens , even the college-bound like me , an appreciation of the value of craftsmanship , and with it a sense of empirical achievement at an early age . Most of these programs have been abandoned with short-sighted fervor in favor of , at best , esthetically narrow computer classes . So now many teens , already largely growing up in experientially narrow , sterile suburbs where their imaginative outlet is limited to unrealistic , manipulated media portrayals of reality , seek illusory achievement in a neurotic , narcissistic sex-and-drugs culture . But worst of all they grow up without a balanced sense of the overall importance of the empirical in daily life . <p> The challenge of the new century then is to maintain the empirical tradition . At the university level , this calls for a philosophy of the authentically experiential to counteract the deleterious effects of excessive theory , one which asks , for example : What is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never directly experienced his subject : such as that of a Marxist who has never experienced the effects of communism on his own body ? And as all the new technologies begin to predominate and impose new conditions on our lives we need to ask once again those age-old humanist questions on the most basic level : What is reality ? What is the purpose of each individual human life ? At present , American universities are not equipped for this challenging task , because the narrowness of ideological conformity , combined with an uncautious trust in technology , that characterizes the once best of them from Stanford on the West Coast to Harvard and Yale in the East , makes any factual exploration of these questions close to impossible . This is because the empirical epistemological tools that are the hard-won fruits of Western philosophy and culture are now being openly disavowed , if not totally demonized , by the anti-enlightenment forces inside Western culture itself . So strong is the attack on empiricism that not even the " hard " sciences are spared , as the spectacular Allan Sokal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , anti-Western cultural revisionism is that it is not at all an American homegrown phenomenon , but paradoxically a European import . It is actually a by-product of a long tradition in European civilization , which has always been accompanied , as by a Jungian shadow , by elements of nihilistic philosophy , always lurking and poised to erupt in times of crises . Goethe , a wise European , ingeniously summed it up in the character of Mephistopheles : " I am the spirit that always negates , " ( Faust I , line 1338 , my translation ) . As such , it was imported to America in a moment of spiritual weakness , of Faustian soul-searching , during the Vietnam War upheavals when many here were ready to listen to gifted Mephistophelian pied pipers from Europe . It is a spirit of doctrinaire hardness , forged in the harsher climate of an older civilization , and immeasurably amplified by the massive bitterness , inhumanity , and suffering of twentieth-century Old World events from which my own family were refugees . For the more individualistic , optimistic , newer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which has never experienced misery on that scale ( no , not even the 9/11-trauma comes close ) , it is simply not practical . <p> Stepping out of the conference halls in Washington , I felt once again the fresh breath of reality . Fortunately , we are in a profession the consequences of whose works are mercifully not immediately evident in the outside world . These are the liberal arts , after all , reasonably detached from immediate material impact . In Washington , the MLA-buses still ran smoothly , regardless of what was being said inside the halls of the convention . Their drivers strove to be on schedule and did not insist on " indeterminacy . " Passengers happily crowded in without suffering from " contiguity disorder . " And could one imagine a traffic system that was culturally determined , with separate traffic lanes and traffic signs for black , white , gay , straight , feminist , or male chauvinist cultures ? And speaking of traffic , would you entrust your car to a " deconstructionist " mechanic ? Finally , on the streets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in " commodity fetishism " at Washington 's classier stores , and counting their change without complaining about " empirical bias . " <p> On the last day of the convention , I decided to explore the authentic Washington , this city named for a deserving individual who acted in tune with the demands of his time , admittedly had luck on his side , and overall discharged himself of what he saw his historical responsibility with humane dignity . And yet , this is also the man whose achievements are now , against all facts , severely marginalized in a number of current history texts , as a result of an ideology heavily represented at the MLA . Truly , listening to many of the sessions , how many attendees at the convention would have liked to see this city renamed , imitating modern European examples , " Karl Marx City ? " Or perhaps more up-to-date and American : " Jamesontown ? " <p> My exploration of Washington took place in the most authentic way possible -- on foot . The city is actually a government island surrounded by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ line from the center in many directions , one can soon very easily find oneself in a neighborhood that is predominantly African American . Indeed , after one lengthy bracing walk , I clearly seemed to be the only Caucasian within immediate sight . Stopping in the cold crisp air for a hot coffee , I chanced to exchange some conversation with the cashier , smiled , and received a smile in return : A splendidly ordinary encounter ! And as I stood on the sidewalk , relishing the steam from my cup rising in the cold air , it suddenly occurred to me : What if others had done what I had just done ? What if the thousands of devoted cultural theorists , with their cultural sensibilities honed to the nth degree , had on this almost final day of the millennium dropped their academic stand-offishness , fanned out over this significant city , and just once made actual practical contact with the objects of their sympathy , a simple , human , non-dogmatic , nonpolitical contact ? What a sensation ! Could one have imagined the possible news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Spectacular Practice . " " Whispers of Millennial Fraternization . " " Alle Menschen werden Brder ? " <p> But it did not happen . A once-a-millennium opportunity had come and gone . And the cold hung heavy over Washington . The Fall 2003 Newsletter of the University of Michigan 's Program in American Culture describes the current research of assistant professor Nadine Naber . <p> Dr. Naber is also developing her dissertation , " Arab San Francisco : On Gender , Cultural Citizenship , and Belonging , " into a book manuscript . The book locates Arab American identities at the intersections of hegemonic U.S. nationalisms and Arab cultural re-authenticity , a term she coined to refer to the gendered and sexualized nationalist discourses produced in the context of bourgeoisie Arab immigrant politics . Dr. Naber 's book highlights diasporic Arab identities as sites for contesting the forces of assimilation , acculturation , and racism , while exposing a variety of oppositional locations ( such as queer Arab , Muslim student activism , inter-racial dating/marriage and radical Arab feminism ) that are often rendered invisible by the neo-colonialist discourses of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . <p> 
##4000552 This is a tale about impairment of academic freedom that I experienced while teaching in the MBA program of a respected business school . The management department chair restricted my use of Saul Alinsky 's Rules for Radicals ( n1 ) in a course called Conflict and Negotiation . The political correctness movement has come full circle when it restricts the use of books , like Alinsky 's , that advocate civil rights . Because of this self-contradiction , I conclude that left-wing diversity advocates are just point men and women for university administrations aiming to make universities more market driven . <p> My claim is that political correctness furthers the marketing and molding of universities to what Thorstein Veblen calls pecuniary purposes in two ways. ( n2 ) First , political correctness itself constitutes a production goal that forestalls a less manageable target , namely academic freedom . Once in the door , the more manageable political correctness target can be transformed into other market-driven targets , and likely will be . In our free economy , institutional survival depends on meeting market demand efficiently , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a political choice , market responsiveness will in the end replace it . <p> Second , the replacement of academic freedom with political correctness helps to teach students that the efficiency of conformity ought to trump costly free inquiry and debate . In turn , reflexive conformity makes MBA graduates ever more marketable to corporations , which benefit from it . Fear of disagreeing with politically correct ideas is good training for the workplace . MBA graduates who are psychologically compliant reduce firms ' training and turnover costs . In turn , the inculcation of conformity has become a key goal in MBA programs , which increasingly mandate uniformity and predictability in instructional methods . <p> But nonconformity and variation are sine qua non for academic dialogue . The reason is that instruments can not be refined to measure and control the uncontrollable . Creative dialogue or idle curiosity , as Veblen put it , can not be managed as a production process . Combine the incapacity to measure true academic quality with asymmetry in power between university administrations and faculties , and application of pecuniary purposes and total quality management @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . <p> George Ritzer colorfully terms the process of introducing efficiency , calculability , predictability and control into a wide range of social institutions McDonaldization , because the pattern echoes McDonald 's standardization of its menu and processes. ( n3 ) Efficiency , calculability , predictability and control minimize unpleasantness and risk . Much as amusement parks provide a safer alternative to trips abroad , so the establishment of quality targets causes education to be watered down , for example , through preferences for safely standardized text books and the full-scale standardization of courses . In MBA students ' post-1984 undergraduate education , ethics , diversity , conflict and morality must come , as Ritzer puts it , pre-sliced , pre-cut and pre-prepared , or else dialogue threatens therapeutic targets important to sensitive markets . Warning labels on offensive ideas need to be provided . Such narrowly defined customerization is of course inconsistent with academic freedom , but entirely in line with political correctness . <p> It was enough that several students found Alinsky 's book to be racist even though Alinsky was writing about his activities as a civil rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understood or read the book . One student complaint was enough for the chair to encourage me to limit my using it in the classroom , for in a McDonaldized business school the customer is always right . Context <p> During the summer of 2002 , I taught as an adjunct professor in the full-time MBA program of a respected business school in which I have taught intermittently since 1996 . Different from the recent past , when I have taught as an adjunct in the evening program ( where the students are somewhat older and are currently working ) , this semester I was teaching in the full-time program , where the young-adult MBA students graduated from college in the late 1990s and seek jobs similar to the jobs that the evening students already have . <p> Adjunct teaching in the MBA program has from time to time supplemented income from my full-time teaching career at Brooklyn College , a component of the City University of New York . Although I have taught as a part-time adjunct in the MBA program for seven years ( with student ratings evidencing my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prepared for changes among MBA students since I last taught in the full-time program in the late 1990s . <p> The course I was teaching , Conflict and Negotiation , arises from the work of labor relations scholars , who argue that there are several kinds of negotiation , most importantly the integrative and distributive . In integrative negotiation , the parties aim to expand the opportunity set , and in distributive , the parties aim to divide the spoils . Saul Alinsky and Rules for Radicals <p> The incident involved the reading I assigned from Saul Alinsky 's Rules for Radicals . The book is about Alinsky 's experiences as a civil rights agitator. ( n4 ) <p> In the 1940s , Alinsky was active in the Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood of Chicago , the setting of Upton Sinclair 's The Jungle. ( n5 ) In his organization work he encouraged the joint efforts of youth groups , businesses , and churches , and emphasized the resolution of hostilities among working class ethnic groups . He worked closely with striking stockyard workers , who were associated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lewis as well as the Catholic Church . Building on ideas he learned from Lewis , he formed the Industrial Areas Foundation in which he refined his organizational tactics . In the 1940s , he wrote Reveille for Radicals , which codified his ideas and was a bestseller. ( n6 ) Alinsky emphasized that organizers could facilitate , but that local people had to lead . His concepts constitute a potential solution to the breakdown in pluralism and the emergence of the brokerage of special interest groups that economists , political scientists , and journalists have pondered with distress . <p> In the 1950s , Alinsky became involved in organizing African American communities , and helped to create the Temporary Woodlawn Organization , which was the " first time that a black community in Chicago had , through sheer political power , won a major role in shaping an important urban-renewal program . " ( n7 ) After his departure from the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council , Alinsky attempted to counteract the racism that emerged in this and other working class white community organizations by proposing quota systems to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has since been termed affirmative action. ( n8 ) Then , in 1965 , Alinsky was invited to Rochester to help organize a civil rights protest movement against Eastman Kodak . These later civil rights activities are discussed in Alinsky 's Rules for Radicals . <p> In his analysis of race relations and the civil rights movement , Charles E. Silberman writes of Alinsky : <p> Alinsky has been attacked at various times as a communist , a fascist , a dupe of the Catholic Church , the mastermind of a Catholic conspiracy ( Alinsky is Jewish ) , a racist , a segregationist , and an integrationist seeking to mongrelize Chicago . His supporters are equally immoderate in their praise. ( n9 ) <p> What better author to include in a course called Conflict and Negotiation ? Classroom Incident <p> In discussing Alinsky 's ideas on conflict , in which I mentioned his activities in labor and community organizing and did not mention any race issues , a student privately raised a concern with me during the class break that Alinsky was a racist . I replied that I could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Rules for Radicals is about Alinsky 's civil rights activism , but I would be happy to discuss her concerns during class time if she would raise them in class . She agreed to raise them . <p> My suggestion of an open discussion reflected my concern for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas . My approach was consistent with the university 's policy " Academic Freedom and Tenure " which appears in the Faculty Handbook that was first adopted more than forty years ago . According to the handbook : <p> Academic freedom is essential to the free search for truth and its free expression . . Freedom in teaching is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student in learning . Academic freedom imposes distinct obligations on the teacher . . Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject , but they should not introduce into their teaching controversial matter that has no relation to their subject . <p> Indeed , the American Association of University Professors ' 1967 Statement on Rights and Freedoms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inquiry and expression " in the classroom . Furthermore , " students should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment about matters of opinion . " ( n10 ) In fact , I make it a policy to reward students with extra credit toward their grades when they disagree with me in class or in their written assignments , and I did so in this case . The courage to debate is among the highest virtues . It seemed to me instinctively , and continues to upon reflection , that open debate is the best and most tolerant way to handle a student 's concern . <p> In explaining her view to the class , the student referred to an indented quote in the chapter on tactics ( 136 ) , which follows 135 pages of Alinsky 's discussions of his activities in civil rights protests and other politically correct social action . In the indented quote , Alinsky describes a tactic in which African American victims of housing discrimination picket to get " Jones " to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the slum landlord 's residence . Their picket signs , which said , " Did you know that Jones , your neighbor , is a slum landlord ? " were completely irrelevant ; the point was that the pickets knew Jones would be inundated with phone calls from his neighbors . <p> Jones : Before you say a word let me tell you that those signs are a bunch of lies ! <p> Neighbor : Look , Jones , I do n't give a damn what you do for a living . All we know is that you get those goddam niggers out of here or you get out ! <p> Jones came out and signed . <p> The student indicated that Alinsky 's use of the " n-word " in this context suggested racism on his part . She said that she had " shown the passage to her roommate and other friends and they had agreed that the passage was racist . " <p> I told the student that she had considerable courage to raise the issue , but that given the context in which the book was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his fight with racism , that Alinsky wrote in a period that was rife with racism , and that much of Rules for Radicals was about his experiences in fighting discrimination , I did not agree that Alinsky 's book expressed any racism . <p> The student then replied that there were many students in the class who would n't understand the context in which Alinsky wrote because they were from foreign countries . " The book is full of racism . For instance , he uses the word ghetto instead of blighted urban area , " she argued . <p> I replied that such terminology did n't likely exist in Alinsky 's day , and it did n't make sense to ask him to use politically correct bureaucratese from the 1990s . " If we limit ourselves to books written in the 1990s , we will be stuck with Gwyneth Paltrow , " I said sarcastically . I became frustrated as I sensed that the student had scanned the book for political incorrectness after noticing that Alinsky was writing about race issues . <p> As we discussed the topic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least a few of whom had read the book , disagreed with her . Several of her fellow students made suggestions about how to accommodate the student 's concerns . One suggestion was that I should warn future classes that the " n-word " is in the book in advance of assigning it . <p> Another student , however , supported an outright ban and said that , " the business school should n't be teaching racist material . " <p> I replied that , as far as I knew , I was the only instructor who uses Rules for Radicals in the business school ( it is used elsewhere in the university ) and that under ordinary standards of academic freedom , instructors ' choices in teaching are independent of the university 's policies . <p> I was surprised that the class as a whole was unaware of basic concepts of academic freedom and was unwilling to express views that differed from the politically correct one . In the post-1984 university , an accusation of racism is tantamount to a conviction ; for anyone , including an instructor , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is racist automatically condemns the arguer . My students , educated in post-1984 elite universities , knew this better than I did . <p> As a postmodern business instructor , I am responsive to group dynamics ( that is my field , more or less ) and so I agreed to consider warning the class before assigning the book again . I also said that I would consider dropping Saul Alinsky from future teaching altogether because the book might be too " advanced . " I said this despite feeling in my gut that I was compromising academic freedom and pedagogic standards . <p> I also mentioned that the film Harlan County , USA , that we were to watch during the next class , also includes the " n-word " just as Alinsky uses it -- in depicting a racist opponent . <p> The young woman who raised the issue was one of three African American students in the class of about forty students . One of the other two said that he was n't bothered by the word 's being in the book but he agreed with the student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the word 's being in the book before assigning the book in the future . <p> After class , a young woman ( and later two other students ) privately told me that many students had disagreed that Rules for Radicals is racist and that the book " definitely should not be dropped . " I asked her why she and her camp did not voice this view during the class discussion , and she replied that they were afraid of being accused of racism . <p> I had never before met this level of fear of expressing opinions in a classroom . Nor had I previously heard students make claims that reflected such a poverty of understanding of basic concepts of academic freedom . Students were unaware that my views as a professor were separate from those of the university . The political correctness movement seems to have done a hatchet job on awareness of academic freedom . The degree of fear , conformity , and lack of awareness of the academic process is something I had not encountered before , at the business school or anywhere else . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book and shown Harlan County , USA three times at Brooklyn College , where about 20 percent of my students are African Americans ( Brooklyn College is wonderfully diverse ) , as well as four previous times at the business school , without prior incident or complaint . <p> The course proceeded largely without incident . When the semester ended , the third black student in the class , an African diplomat attending the business school full time , approached me privately and , thanking me profusely , said that this was the best single course he had taken while at the business school . Meeting with the Department Chair <p> At the end of the semester , but before I submitted the final grades , the departmental chair summoned me to her office to offer me future summer teaching at the business school ( which I went on to do ) . After inquiries about possible teaching arrangements and my teaching interests , she told me that the Conflict and Negotiation course was to be redesigned into a half-semester module and that it was to become a required course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the sections would now consist of identical content . In other words , Conflict and Negotiation was to be McDonaldized . <p> After discussing reappointment , the chair surprised me by changing the subject entirely . She raised the Saul Alinsky complaint . She told me that a ( white ) student , not the student who had first raised the issue in class , had come to her office to complain that I had been teaching from a racist book . The chair told me that she had asked the student to show her the racist book , and was surprised when she saw that it was Alinsky 's Rules for Radicals . She told me that she had read the book as an undergraduate in a political science course at an Ivy League university and that Alinsky was " Mr. Civil Rights . " She said that she had been astonished that the student thought that Alinsky was a racist . She told me that the student had then told her that the " n-word " had appeared in the text . She proceeded to ask me , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ " <p> Following , as it did , immediately after a discussion of contract renewal , the implication was , of course , that " doing something about it " was related to contract renewal . I was surprised and angered about the question , but responded as carefully as I could , as I wanted the contract to be renewed . I also was surprised that the chair seemed to be unconcerned about this student 's adoption of a Red Guard-style informant role , a role style that the political correctness movement seems to have encouraged among post-1984 graduates . <p> I asked the chair whether she really had read the book , and she replied that she had . She added that she understood what I was doing in the course , and that Alinsky 's tactics involved throwing opponents ' book of rules back at them in a conflict situation . She made it clear that she did not seriously believe that Alinsky 's book was racist . <p> I retorted that then she must understand why I found it hard to believe that the student who complained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word appeared on page 136 in an indented quote , I scarcely knew it was there , and how could someone have found the word without having grasped the book 's meaning ? <p> She answered , " Well , maybe you did n't assign the part of the book that explained Alinsky 's views . " In fact , I had assigned the entire book , but said in class that the students should emphasize the chapters on ethics and tactics in their reading . Might not a student read more completely before complaining above my head ? Anyway , Alinsky 's point of view is evident from those two chapters alone . <p> The chair then added , accusingly , " You discussed racial issues in class , and some explanation is needed . " <p> I replied that I did not bring up racial issues . Maybe I had made a mistake in asking the student to discuss the matter openly , but that seemed like the right thing to do ( it still does ) . The student had raised the issue , and so the issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ n't upset with the way the discussion went , " I said . <p> The chair rejoined , shaking her head and adopting the tone of a child therapist scolding an inept parent , " Well , she did feel uncomfortable -- for the rest of the semester . Maybe it was n't a good idea to discuss the subject . " <p> I repeated that she had come to me with a complaint , and we discussed it in the class , spending forty minutes on her point . I was n't sure what else I could have done . <p> She then said in an exasperated tone , " You have to understand that we attract so few black students here in a city that has a large black population and we need to worry about their concerns . " <p> I agreed that the small number of African American students in the business school was a cause for concern . <p> The chair again asked , " What do you plan to do about the complaint ? Have you thought about warning the class in advance ? " @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . One of the students had suggested doing that . But perhaps I 'll just drop the book altogether . I am not interested in a to-do . There are plenty of alternative books that cover conflict and distributive negotiation tactics . " It had become obvious to me that no matter what I said , I stood accused ( hence convicted ) of racism . If I capitulated and agreed , then I would be able to make amends . If I continued to argue , then I would stand accused and possibly lose the thousands of dollars of salary for two summer classes . <p> When I said that I would drop the book , the chair nodded approvingly and smiled . " Oh , you 're thinking of dropping it . Good , " she concluded , adding that she had another meeting to attend . Conclusion <p> Perhaps the chair was concerned that I had been insufficiently responsive , insufficiently therapeutic , and not customer targeted . Remember , not a single racist word was uttered by anyone in the class . The sole issue was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other elaborate ideologies , political correctness is easily misinterpreted and transmuted , and the dictates of managerial expediency make misinterpretation a certainty . Administrators ' needs for power and their overriding concerns with maximizing endowments and tuition revenues guarantee that subtle arguments about speech codes will be easily forgotten . <p> The chair responded to a student 's misguided complaint by restricting my teaching and creating a rule that could not have possibly reflected an underlying concern for racist speech . Ultimately , and perhaps unconsciously , her response was a market-driven one . She believes that certain target markets are under-exploited ; she received a complaint from a member of that target market ; and she called on me to help resolve the marketing and quality problem . Sadly , such a pattern tends to replicate itself . As administrators institute control in the name of political correctness , the McDonaldization of higher education proceeds apace . Courses will be standardized and speech codes implemented . The McDonaldized institutions arising from the patterns that political correctness has instigated will remain in place long after the race issue has been forgotten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 
##4000553 Grutter <p> As of this writing the response by conservatives , classical liberals , and constitutional and academic traditionalists to the revolutionary Grutter v. Bollinger decision continues to be stunningly weak , even as the dominant liberal culture is presenting the decision 's redefinition of America as a fait accompli . It is notable , for example , that in a list of elements constituting " the core of a civil society as understood in the West " that America hopes to install in Iraq , reporter John Burns of the New York Times includes " entrenched individual and group rights " ( emphasis added ) , a formula that would have been inconceivable prior to the Grutter decision . New York Times , 14 December 2003 , " There Is No Crash Course in Democracy . " <p> One factor that might explain the lack of effective conservative protest against Grutter is that in the same week that the decision was handed down , along with its companion decision in Gratz v. Bollinger , the Supreme Court also issued its landmark ruling in Lawrence v. Texas . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rules , " First Things ( October 2003 ) , devotes the better part of his attention to Lawrence and , although he deplores the decision in Grutter , does not grapple with its implications . Commentary published a symposium , " Has the Supreme Court Gone Too Far ? " ( October 2003 ) , which also takes both Lawrence and the affirmative action decisions under purview , with some respondents focusing mainly on the former . Strong entries come from William Bennett , Robert Bork , and Lino Graglia , but the overall tone of the symposium is disconcertingly mild , featuring as it does a number of legal experts who see no problem with Grutter whatsoever , as well as a number of past affirmative action opponents who unaccountably fail to argue with any urgency against it here . The overall impression is that Grutter is just another regrettable Supreme Court decision , like many others we have had over the years , and not something of any particular significance . The casual attitude is also suggested by the symposium 's title : " Has the Supreme Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question . On the other hand , Carl Cohen in the letters section of the January Commentary presents a superb refutation of the arguments supporting " diversity . " <p> Another possible factor in the anemic conservative and traditionalist response to Grutter is that racial preference opponents , never having imagined that the Court would actually inject racial discrimination into the United States Constitution , were simply confounded by the decision and did n't know how to reply . ( As Justice Thomas pointed out in his dissent , previous Supreme Court findings permitting racial preferences had been on narrow , specific grounds . ) Thus the stalwart Stanley Kurtz confesses that " after the Michigan decisions , the battle seemed lost and I did n't have the heart to look into the matter any further . " But he goes on to say hopefully , " I was wrong . . We opponents of affirmative action have only lost that battle if we think we 've lost . Look closely at the Michigan decisions and you 'll see any number of ways in which we can still pare back -- @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ " Kurtz 's argument hinges on the expectation that large schools will find it inordinately hard to attain the desired group proportionality without recourse to the more blatant forms of racial preference that were repudiated by the Court in Gratz . " Affirmative Signs : Preferences Wo n't Be on Campus Forever , " NRO ( 17 November 2003 ) . Peter Kirsanow makes a similar point . " Still Unconstitutional , " NRO ( 30 September 2003 ) . <p> Yet another possible factor in the passive response to Grutter is simple denial , namely the inability of those who have staked a large part of their intellectual capital on their vision of America as a country " dedicated to a proposition " to accept that the proposition has been radically altered to encompass group rights . Finally , for more than a few , there is the perceived need to avoid a divisive political battle over civil rights while the country is in the midst of a contentious war on terror and is attempting to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq . It is important to keep in mind , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the law fails here , in perhaps the most optimal conditions on the face of the earth and in the history of man , and must be buttressed by group guarantees in order to pacify various minorities , it can scarcely be hoped that the Experiment will succeed in primitive countries with far less developed common cultures and traditions of citizenship than our own . <p> Even without undertaking arduous legal battles , it is important for adherents of individual rights not to let themselves lapse into silence , but to be crystal clear about what has happened and to keep it before the public mind . In this regard , one heartening sign of energy in the anti-racial preference camp is , of all things , the Affirmative Action Bake Sale movement , supported by Alan Kors 's Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and run by courageous young " cookie rebels " who are keeping the controversy alive on campuses throughout the country . Numerous articles on the bake sales can be found on the web , and a good summary is offered by Wendy McElroy , " The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) . <p> Certainly the pro-racial preference forces have not been resting on their laurels . On the contrary , they have been been busy as bees dissecting the potentialities of Grutter and planning their next steps . An organization with the belligerently thuggish name By Any Means Necessary , devoted the plenary session of its national conference to " Our Tasks for the Next Period " on 8 November 2003 . Harvard University sponsored a forum called " Moving Beyond the Supreme Court Decisions " on 31 October-1 November 2003 . The Jurist , an unofficial website emanating from the law school at the University of Pittsburgh , featured " The University of Michigan Affirmative Action Admissions Cases : A Jurist Online Symposium . " Echoing Justice O'Connor 's climactic passage in Grutter , these discussions all stressed the need to extend affirmative action beyond the university into virtually every area of society , including housing , the workplace , and the professions , and to defeat any and all individual civil rights initiatives , such as the one being promoted by Ward Connerly in the state of Michigan . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in part by Bill Lann Lee , former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton administration : <p> " Our responsibility as educators can not end with admitting a diverse student body . . We also need to make sure that the process begun in college and law school carries through to the workplace . . We need to ask , as responsible bar associations and legal employers are doing , why we do n't have more nonwhite judges and law firm partners . We need to inquire about the climate for nonwhite lawyers in their workplaces , in court , and with clients . As leaders of our communities , we also need to take responsibility for the discrimination in housing , education , and the workplace that surrounds us all . Prejudice is individual , but the best tools for combating bias are collective . <p> The symposium also features critics of Grutter , such as Peter Schuck , author of Diversity in America : Keeping Government at a Safe Distance ( Belknap Press , 2003 ) . Academic Restoration ? <p> A New York University student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of intercourse before her video-making class but was prevented from doing so by the college administration . Will wonders never cease ? " Keep the Sex R-Rated , N.Y.U. Tells Film Students , " The New York Times ( 4 December 2003 ) . <p> " Topsy-Turvy , " Victor Davis Hanson in National Review ( 13 October 2003 ) . After an astute and comprehensive summary-analysis of what has gone wrong in the contemporary university , Hanson declares that students today " are more than ever questioning their professors ' ideology , " and therefore concludes that " much of our present academic pathology is the cargo of a particular generation , one that is slowly making its way out of the university . Its influence is felt most acutely today as it reaches the apex of power , but as this generation nursed on campus protest passes -- and it soon will -- there is reason to hope that it may not have replicated itself and so will be remembered as a sad artifact of our recent history . " Would that it were so , but we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and have discovered again and again that reports of the demise of the degraded academy have turned out to be quite premature . In fact , this too hopeful attitude may well be responsible for the complacent dismissal on the part of many conservatives and conservative institutions of the significance of recent academic trends and their effect on our society as a whole , as factors contributing to increasing passivity in the face of the politically correct agenda . Scholarship <p> In Proust , Mann , Joyce in the Modernist Context ( Catholic University of America Press , 2003 ) , Gerald Gillepsie , Professor Emeritus at Stanford and past president of the International Comparative Literature Association , argues provocatively that these three giants of twentieth-century literature transcend modernist fragmentation and discontinuity to attain holistic vision . Important Issues <p> " Degree in Debt , " Angie Cannon , Reader 's Digest , November 2003 , is an informative discussion of this too neglected topic , the burdensome debt young people and their families often incur nowadays in order to secure the college degree . Is n't it ironic that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many of its workers as poorly compensated adjuncts , but has also managed to make its product so expensive as to put its " consumers " in debt for half of their adult lives ? <p> Amanda Paulson , Christian Science Monitor ( 10 December 2003 ) , " Religious Upsurge Brings Culture Clash to College Campuses , " reports on the rising interest in evangelical Christianity at Northwestern University . Other reports have noted similar movements at places like Harvard and M.I.T. Lest anyone think this portends an automatic shift toward traditional social values , however , Phillip Johnson offers this caution on an Internet news list dealing with religious questions : " The great universities all adopted a dogmatic naturalism in the century after 1859 , and turned thereafter to the romanticism of the Sixties and then the relativism we call postmodernism . . The current upsurge in Christian witness will become permanent only if epistemic naturalism is effectively challenged . " Johnson 's insight seems borne out by Alan Wolfe 's new book , The Transformation of American Religion : How We Actually Live Our Faith ( Free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America has been reduced to therapeutic individualism and that even evangelical Christianity is now comfortably mainstream and generally quiescent in the culture wars . The Great Tradition <p> Steven Lenzner and William Kristol , " What Was Leo Strauss Up To ? " Public Interest ( Fall 2003 ) is a valuable summary of the work of this influential thinker . The reader learns of " Strauss 's rehabilitation of the classical understanding of ' regime . ' To understand political life in terms of regimes , " the authors continue , " is to recognize that political life always partakes of both the universal ( principles of justice or rule ) and the particular ( ' our ' borders , language , customs , etc . ) . " <p> It would be most helpful if Straussians began to emphasize this second aspect of the master 's thought , unknown to many of us who admire him for his critique of historicism . Post Grutter , it is clear that " signing onto a slate of universal propositions " is not enough for America to retain its character or even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention to particularism is the outstanding critique Michael Novak makes of the United States District Court 's decision against former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore , who installed a large monument of the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse . Taking issue with the decision 's reasoning that the monument violated the First Amendment in that it accorded a special role to Judaism and Christianity in the nation 's understanding of civil and political rights , Novak argues that the specific right of religious freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution is based on Judeo-Christian concepts not replicated in any other religion . " The Ten Commandments Controversy , " Imprimis ( December 2003 ) . Notable Publications <p> A Reader for the Politically Incorrect ( Praeger 2003 ) , edited by George Zilbergeld , is a useful compendium of important anti-PC essays . <p> My Brother 's Keeper : A Memoir and a Message by Amitai Etzioni ( Rowman and Littlefield , 2003 ) . Professor of sociology and founder of the influential communitarian social movement , Etzioni tells his life story and explains the evolution of his beliefs . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Network , which publishes a quarterly , The Responsive Community . <p> In " Death of the Liberal Arts : A Special Report from the Independent Women 's Forum , " Melana Zyla Vickers examines the first-year offerings of a number of prestigious liberal arts colleges -- among them Williams , Amherst , Swarthmore , Carleton , and Wellesley -- and concludes , " Even at the best liberal arts colleges , freshmen ca n't obtain a sound education in history , literature , and other fundamentals of civilization . " Available from the IWF . In Closing : <p> " The Importance of the Humanities to Democracy " was the 2002 McDermott Lecture at the University of Dallas , given by Dr. Bruce Cole , Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities , available from the University of Dallas , Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts . Dr. Cole discusses the initiatives that the Endowment is undertaking to combat decline in the comprehension of American ideals . One of the initiatives , called " We the People , " will give grants to enhance the teaching , study , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ People is also the title of a high school textbook , one of the publications of the Center for Civic Education , the organization commissioned by the Department of Education and by Congress ( most recently under the Goals 2000 and the No Child Left Behind legislation ) to create the national standards in civics and government that are virtually mandated in K-12 education throughout the country at the present time . The textbook asserts that America 's founding principles arose from an eighteenth-century context , and suggests that we need to evolve toward newer ideas , as embodied in documents such as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights . The standards are discussed at length in Alan Quist 's Fed Ed , published by the Maple River Education Coalition and noted in last issue 's B &A.; Let us hope that the NEH 's We the People will counter the effects of that of the CCE . <p> Apropos of the idea of political " evolution , " a recent issue of the monthly newsletter of the Claremont Institute , The Proposition offered this magnificent quotation from Calvin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our present context : <p> About the Declaration of Independence there is a finality that is exceedingly restful . It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 , that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day , and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern . But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter . If all men are created equal , that is final . If they are endowed with inalienable rights , that is final . If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed , that is final . No advance , no progress can be made beyond these propositions . If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness , the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward , but backward toward the time when there was no equality , no rights of the individual , no rule of the people . Those who wish to proceed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They are reactionary . Their ideas are not more modern , but more ancient , than those of the Revolutionary fathers . <p> Compiled , with Commentary Carol Iannone <p> 
##4000556 23 June 2003 was a dark day for the United States of America . On that day the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Grutter v. Bollinger , allowing preferences in admissions to the University of Michigan Law School based on race and ethnicity and for the purported goal of securing the educational benefits of diversity , a purpose deemed a " compelling state interest " by the Court . Writing for the majority , Justice O'Connor accepted the Law School 's claim that a " critical mass " of minority students had been achieved not through quotas but through " individualized review , " even though the number of minorities accepted each year exactly tracked their various proportions of the admissions pool , as was pointed out in the dissent written by Chief Justice Rehnquist . <p> On the same day , in Gratz v. Bollinger , the Court disallowed the automatic awarding of bonus admissions points to minorities in Michigan 's undergraduate division as constituting a quota system . This hardly compensated for Grutter , however , which effectively overrides the Fourteenth Amendment and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been the bedrock of the American ideal . ( See Edward J. Erler , " The Michigan Affirmative Action Cases : An Historical Perspective , " Imprimis , September 2003 . ) The following are some of the notable responses from opponents of racial preferences . A number of them appeared in National Review and National Review Online . Both have shown an especial and welcome interest in this crucial discussion . ( See the editorial , " Travesty : The Court Failed to Do Its Duty , " National Review , 14 July 2003 . ) <p> " Not in my most nightmarish speculation about what the Court might do regarding these cases did I envision that the justices of the highest court in the land would actually accord ' diversity ' not only equivalent status to the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment , but to make the latter subordinate to the former , " writes Ward Connerly ( " Murder at the Supreme Court , " National Review Online , 26 June 2003 ) . He continued , " Let it be said that when given a chance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 23 , 2003 five justices consigned them to another generation -- or , perhaps , a term of indefinite duration -- of virtual enslavement to the past . " <p> Another commentator who sees the dire implications of the decision is Peter Wood ( " Affirming Faction , " National Review Online , 27 June 2003 ) . Wood lamented the " bad news , " adding ominously that " just how bad it is has yet to register with many people . " <p> Wood 's observation is borne out by Peter Kirsanow ( " Michigan Impossible : Grutter compliance may be a problem , " National Review Online , 1 July 2003 ) , who reports that a " review of post-Michigan commentary reveals a gathering consensus among conservatives to just ' move on . ' " Kirsanow paraphrases the thoughts of his conservative colleagues : " We fought the good fight and lost -- maybe it 's time to take a different tack , such as racial-privacy initiatives , and hey , if they do n't fly , maybe in 25 years it 'll all be over anyway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and not only because of the naivete regarding what was merely a tentative , toothless suggestion of a 25 year limit to affirmative action on the part of the Court in Grutter . Even more astounding is the bland complacency with which these conservatives countenance the obviation of the " proposition " that " all men are created equal , " the proposition that many conservatives ( and liberals too ) have insisted constitutes the very definition of America . Now that the " proposition " has been overruled , one would have expected widespread alarm rather than the kind of supine quiescence that Kirsanow reports . <p> Marcia Coyle ( " Battle Over Affirmative Action Expected to Expand , " The National Law Journal , 11 July 2003 ) , quotes the reaction of Michael Greve of the American Enterprise Institute and co-founder of the Center for Individual Rights , the organization that led the battle against race-based admissions policies in Texas , Washington , and Michigan . " I just think this was a complete wipeout , " Greve declared . <p> " What happens in the litigation community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drum up money for this and harder to persuade people this is a righteous fight . I personally would not think there 's enough oomph behind this movement now to say , ' Let 's hold the Supreme Court to what it pretended to be saying , ' " that is , insistence on " narrow tailoring " and " individualized review " of all applicants . <p> Abigail Thernstrom , quoted in the same article , agrees : " It 's a total defeat . It really does n't matter if there is a Supreme Court resignation . This is a momentous decision rewriting the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court is not going to overturn precedent with abandon because there is a new justice . " <p> Unfortunately , the estimable Greve may himself be partly responsible for helping to craft the CIR platform against affirmative action that failed to convince the Court . ( Although the purported educational benefits of diversity had been challenged in friend-of-the-court briefs , these were not part of the plaintiff 's own arguments . ) In an article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Is on the Rocks , " 20 April 2001 ) , Greve accepted the importance of diversity as an educational ideal but endeavored to show that affirmative action is not needed in order to obtain it . CIR 's legal affairs director , Curt Levey , wrote a similar article ( " Diversity on Trial , " National Review Online , 11 June 2001 ) . They both suggested lowering standards for all applicants , de-emphasizing objective criteria like SAT scores , and , as Greve put it , employing " individualized file review that makes it impossible to trace racial discrimination . " <p> John J. Miller ( " ' Diversity ' . D'oh ! " National Review , 28 July 2003 ) argues that CIR made a mistake in relying only on equal protection and the consequent unconstitutionality of race preferences and in not challenging the validity of diversity as an educational ideal in itself . Miller cites Peter Wood : " I say this more in sadness than in anger , but CIR made a tactical error " in not confronting " the diversity argument . " <p> @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent ( in a UPI release published on 25 July 2003 ) : " The whole idea of diversity as a compelling state interest was not litigated . . They believed they could win on a 14th Amendment ( equal protection ) analysis . " <p> Nevertheless , not everyone is ready to give up . Miller suggests some strategies for resistance , and in the same issue of National Review in which Miller 's article appears , John O'Sullivan ( " Affirmative Action Forever ? " ) outlines some ways in which opposition to affirmative action might arise , one of them being that continued mass immigration will bring the proportion of the minorities eligible for preferences to over half the population in the coming decades , thus greatly increasing the burden on the unprivileged groups . <p> For his part , Kirsanow , a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights , believes that " Michigan renders preference programs extremely vulnerable to legal assault . " And the CIR is ready to continue the fight . Curt Levey is quoted in the Coyle article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there will be a lot of litigation on the narrow tailoring grounds . The Court said you ca n't use race in a mechanical way and it should not be a decisive factor . Those are vague terms so we 're going to have to litigate in the lower courts to make sure that is a meaningful distinction and our victory in Gratz is not for nothing . " <p> Taking a different tack , Ward Connerly has begun a Civil Rights Initiative in the state of Michigan to outlaw racial discrimination and preferences in public institutions . ( " Taking it to Michigan : Announcing the ' Michigan Civil Rights Act , ' " National Review Online , 8 July 2003 ) <p> Unfortunately , Henry Payne ( " Putting Preferences to a Vote , " National Review Online , 10 July 2003 ) , is obliged to report the thuggish behavior displayed by preference supporters during the press conference at which Connerly introduced the measure . Payne 's article also exposes the sense of absolute , apodictical entitlement on the part of minorities that affirmative action has encouraged . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's Choice : Michigan Republicans Confront Ward Connerly , " National Review Online , 17 July 2003 ) , gives a dispiriting reminder that President Bush and the GOP support diversity as racial proportionality and will oppose such state initiatives as Connerly is sponsoring as " divisive . " Despite the fact that his administration actually argued against Michigan 's admissions policies in both cases , President Bush declared after the decisions were handed down : " Today 's decisions seek a careful balance between the goal of campus diversity and the fundamental principle of equal treatment under the law . " Additional responses to Grutter <p> Carl Cohen ( " Winks , Nods , Disguises -- and Racial Preferences , " Commentary , September 2003 ) . The man who first exposed Michigan 's discriminatory admissions practices and expresses his consternation and surprise that the Supreme Court has given constitutional validity to racial discrimination . <p> John Perazzo ( " Rewarding the Unqualified " Frontpagemagazine.com , 3 July 2003 ) illustrates the large disparities in qualifications between the preferred and the non-preferred groups admitted to various selective schools . <p> @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Grutter , " National Review Online , 1 August 2003 ) draws attention to the little noted dissent of Justice Kennedy in Grutter . Unlike the other dissenters , notably Justices Scalia and Thomas , Kennedy is a firm supporter of affirmative action who nevertheless found that " the concept of critical mass is a delusion used by the Law School to mask its attempt to make race an automatic factor in most instances and to achieve numerical goals indistinguishable from quotas . " <p> In an exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books ( 14 August 2003 ) , Stanley Rothman and Ronald Dworkin discuss Rothman 's recent survey countering the claim that diversity enhances the educational experience . ( Rothman 's survey is summarized in the Public Interest , " Racial Diversity Reconsidered , " Summer 2003 ) . Rothman 's final rejoinder , not printed by the NYRoB , can be found at NAS Online Forum <ttp : // n a s . o r g / f o r u m b l o g g e r/f o r u m a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exchange is important for revealing the intellectual sloppiness and duplicity of which preference supporters are capable . Other <p> Steven Malanga ( " Union U. , " City Journal , Summer 2003 ) , exposes the radicalization of yet another academic field , labor studies , now promoting a one-sided political agenda , recruiting students as pro-union activists , and turning the idea of liberal education on whatever is left of its head . <p> Alan Quist , Fed Ed : The New Federal Curriculum and How It 's Enforced ( published by the Maple River Education Coalition , 2002 , and available from EdWatch.org or Amazon.com ) outlines how this widely used and virtually mandated curriculum created by the Center for Civic Education at the behest of the federal government is subverting American constitutional ideals and purveying global , multicultural , socialist , and group-entitlement concepts instead . <p> Compiled and Commentary by Carol 