What has been happening on university campuses these days depends on whether you see it as Ted Hamerow sees it, or as David Trubek sees it.
”The ability to express unfashionable views on campus has never been less than it is now,” said Hamerow, a University of Wisconsin European history professor and spokesman for the National Association of Scholars.
Says Trubek, dean of international studies and a law school professor:
”I`ve never heard anyone say, `I feel afraid to speak out.` I`ve never seen situations where people appeared unwilling to express dissident views . . . I think the university is significantly more tolerant than when I was a student (in Madison during the 1960s).”
Wisconsin is one of scores of universities caught up in a national debate over what some say are the stifling, coercive effects of ”political correctness.”
Political correctness is a term that during the Stalinist era applied to those who toed the party line.
Now it is used as a catch-all for a number of sensibilities and positions on race, culture, sex, politics, ecology and curriculum.
There are degrees of compliance. Many who may not otherwise consider themselves PC may favor greater sensitivity to the plight of minorities, for example, whether defined by race, gender, ethnicity, physical or mental ability or sexual orientation.
As for those who are four-square PC, however, the popular conception is that they are against anything that hints of being racist, sexist,
militaristic, homophobic, eco-derelict, eurocentric or imperialistic. They favor more minorities and women on faculties, separate ethnic studies departments, more Third World and feminist courses in the curriculum and, say some, fewer Western civilization and literature courses that feature ”dead white male European writers.”
”The biggest problem with this debate is that it is now very hard for an individual to follow certain parts of this agenda without seeming to be committed to PC,” said David Ward, vice chancellor of the university.
Collectively, Yale president Benno Schmidt Jr. said in a recent speech before the National Press Club, advocates of PC views form a ”coercive enclave . . . trying to achieve political objectives” through curriculum.
Others say PC has been overblown by the media and has become a red herring. They say its many separate issues are unrelated, and have been linked together by critics for reasons that have to do with general politics and resistance to change.
Trubek says the glacially slow working through of new ideas on university campuses has suddenly been perceived off campus as a threat to the university status quo. Add to that a generational and gender conflict between older and younger scholars over the pace and direction of change, he said.
Hamerow, who dismisses the suggestion that the issue stems from a clash of generations, sees this as overlooking the main point. ”Never has higher education in the country been as dominated by a particular outlook. This is unprecedented,” he said.
Oft repeated anecdotes of PC`s alleged effects have swirled intensely among columnists, commentators and politicians. But no one has measured the extent or existence of the ”chill” that some say has descended upon the nation`s campuses.
”All of us are concerned about any instance in which people are kept from speaking their mind,” said Mark Pollock, an assistant professor of rhetoric and communication at Temple University in Philadelphia.
”But this isn`t clearly a situation where you have people in power silencing people who are not in power. The anecdotes have to do with people feeling uncomfortable.”
Eric Rasmussen, 25, a University of Wisconsin graduate student in African-American studies, bolsters that perception.
”I don`t want to convey that PC has real . . . power,” Rasmussen said.
”But people on this campus are feeling there are things they can`t say without fear of reprisal.
”There`s a definite sentiment that you have to watch what you say.”
The concern may be over words, such as calling an adult woman a ”girl”
or saying ”chairman” instead of ”chairperson,” Rasmussen said. Or, say others, it may be over an opinion on affirmative action, or whether an American literature course should replace a novel written by a male with one by a feminist.
Some point to campus speech codes-enacted at universities across the nation after a rash of racially insensitive incidents in the late 1980s-as an example of what they call the stifling of free speech.
University administrators say hate speech or any one-on-one language that is demeaning in a racial, ethnic, gender or sexual way creates a hostile educational environment for the victim. And that, they say, could be a problem of growing dimensions in an increasingly diverse, multicultural university setting.
Unofficial straw polls indicate most students support the codes.
But it is at the faculty departmental level that stress over political correctness is most intensely felt. Traditionalists and multiculturalists stew over the pace of affirmative action in appointments, curriculum, classroom demeanor and approaches to knowledge in the humanities.
One perspective espoused by some who are labeled PC holds that scholarly truth-seeking cannot be absolutely objective because it is influenced by historical and social factors.
This is especially unnerving to some traditionalists, who believe their methods can yield objective truth.
”I think a number of faculty members feel the free expression of ideas is being hindered in some ways by the need to be correct on some issues,”
said Iris Molotsky, director of the American Association of University Professors.
But hard evidence of this in Madison is hard to come by. Vice chancellor Ward says he sees no basis for allegations that faculty members are being stifled.
”There`s no question in my mind that anti-PC voices are not being suppressed, and they are certainly not quiet. Free speech is alive and well,” he said.
Political science professor Donald Emmerson says he sees nothing that intimidates faculty members from expressing their views.
What he does see is a lack of diversity in intellectual discourse. And the reason, he says, has something to do with a hegemony of political correctness.
”PC is the death of the university, the triumph of partisanship over tolerance,” he says. The lack of diversity is reflected in the speakers invited to appear on campus, he adds.
A teach-in held during the Persian Gulf fighting was decidely anti-war. But when someone like conservative Republican Jeane Kirkpatrick comes to speak, she is shouted off the stage, Emmerson says.
”Where are the conservative voices, and on some subjects, where are the moderate voices?” he asks.
What is at work is much more subtle, say some faculty members. For Richard Long, the issue is one of summary judgment and accusation by a PC partisan that can play havoc with a faculty member`s reputation and career.
”What`s going on around here makes the `50s look like a walk in the park in terms of intimidation and watching your step. Only this time they are inside the university, and they are on the Left,” said Long, a tenured art professor.
Long, a member of the National Association of Scholars, said that he was denounced in November as racist, sexist and homophobic by two white male graduate students.
He was summoned before a faculty investigating committee, but no formal charge was ever made, he said.
Still, the accusation and the appearance of an investigation stood until the matter was dropped in March, he said.
”Rumors circulated for six months, and I never had my day in court,”
said Long, who feels his opportunities for grants and appointments are now dead.
He said that he now avoids classroom art discussions that touch on sexual orientation, race, or gender.
”It`s not a good feeling when you are 51 years old to be perceived as the very thing you have detested your entire adult life,” Long said.
