Abstract
Is multiculturalism “the closing of the American mind” or “the opening of the American mind?” The multicultural debates in higher education have been framed by this formula since the late 1980s, which has brought about a fundamental question regarding what kind of knowledge should be taught in colleges and universities. The cultural wars over legitimate knowledge have emerged out of social and academic changes in recent years. U.S. society has encountered multicultural phenomena that proliferate cultural diversity, accompanied by rapid changes in the ethno/racial demography. At the same time, the development of new scholarship on race, gender and class has seriously challenged the Eurocentric nature of knowledge.
The historical conjuncture has evoked completely opposite reactions from conservatives and progressives to the curriculum of higher education. On the one hand, conservatives have developed enormous anxieties regarding the multicultural tendency that they see as undermining the current values and orders of the society. On the other hand, progressives have welcomed the new trend of multiculturalism, valuing the various voices of minorities that have historically been silenced and unheard.
This paper aims to explore the issues of multiculturalism and curriculum in higher education by analyzing the multicultural debates at Stanford University in the late 1980s. The Stanford case, which was spawned by a multicultural curriculum reform of its general education program, is of great significance. It became the focus of tremendous media attention, which triggered intensive multicultural debates at colleges and universities throughout the country. The issue was whether common academic experiences for students should be based on Western culture or diverse cultures. Some of issues explored in this paper are:
(1) The history of higher education in the United States has always been associated with cultural struggles between monoculturalism and multiculturalism. The historical conjuncture of the Stanford controversy is located at the intersection of two major streams. One is the conservative restoration movement to regain control over social practices in response to the progressive gains since the 1960s and 1970s. The other is a multicultural education movement to further open voices to minorities of U.S. society. The Stanford case, which triggered nationwide media coverage, set the tone for the subsequent multicultural debates between conservatives and progressives throughout institutions of higher education in the United States.
(2) The conservative arguments of multiculturalism are: “America” consists of diverse people so that curriculum of higher education also reflects its diversity to some degree; however, “America” has primarily been developed out of European origins and the Western civilization tradition, so Western culture needs to be the foundation of knowledge in higher education. Nonetheless, they argue that the progressives initiated an anti-Western project to change the Western culture to the CIV (cultures, ideas, values) curriculum requirement by “political intimidation.”
(3) The progressive rearticulations of multiculturalism are: the notion of a timeless “America” is myth; the “political intimidation” that conservatives claim is misrepresentation and distortion of actual events; in reality, “America” consists of people of multicultural origins from all over the world, so that knowledge in higher education also needs to be multicultural; moreover, cultural, economic, political, and academic influences from other cultures in a global age require a relevant multicultural reform of curricula at colleges and universities in the United States.
