Universities
Strive for Diversity in Everything but Opinion
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Originally published under the title "How Cultural
Relativism on Campus Has Chilled Freedom of Expression."
My seminar students at McGill University told me that you can't say
anything at this university without being accused of being sexist,
homophobic, Islamophobic, fascist, or racist, and then being threatened
with punitive measures. They felt silenced by the oppressive atmosphere of
political correctness. Nothing significant — sex, religion, relationships,
public policy, race, immigration, or multiculturalism — could be discussed.
Only the acceptable opinions could be expressed without nasty
repercussions.
It is generally held today in the West, if not elsewhere, that diversity
is a good thing. Diversity in origin, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexual
preference is now regarded as not only desirable, but mandatory.
Universities strive to increase their physical diversity. The currently
accepted theory in Western academia is that physical diversity reflects
diversity of experience and thus an enriching diversity of viewpoint.
McGill's committee on diversity proposed that we no longer define
excellence as intellectual achievement, but as diversity. Their view is
that a university populated by folks of different colours or having
different sexual preferences is by virtue of this diversity
"excellent."
Diversity in origin, ethnicity,
gender, and sexual preference is now seen as not only desirable, but
mandatory.
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However, among this excellent diversity, what is not encouraged
or accepted is diversity of opinion. Only politically correct views are
welcome. On the very first day in last year's seminar, students challenged
my assignment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel on the grounds that
"she is a controversial figure." These students felt that
university was not a place to explore controversial issues, but only to
repeat what everyone agrees with. Several students dropped out of the
seminar saying that they disagreed with Ali's politics. They were
apparently unable to tolerate ideas with which they disagreed.
Ali is a critic of Islam. To my students that is a violation of strict
cultural and ethical relativism, which dictates that criticism of other
cultures and religions is unacceptable. That Ali was an insider who had grown
up in a Somali Muslim family, gone to Islamic schools, lived in Islamic
communities and countries, and had at one time been rigorously observant,
cut no ice with my students. Although they themselves were largely ignorant
about Islam, they insisted they would not accept Ali's account as
authoritative. Many of the students, notwithstanding their unfamiliarity
with Islam, made an effort to defend it. What they were really defending,
of course, was political correctness — in this case, upholding relativism by
rejecting criticism of a foreign culture.
What is not accepted in
academia today is diversity of opinion.
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Ali's criticism of Islam focuses on the treatment of women, their
second-class status (receiving one-half of a male share of inheritance, and
their court testimony worth half that of a male), the forced marriages,
polygamy, the requirement of obedience to men, doctrine-justified beatings
of wives, and so on. One might have thought that these concerns would be of
interest to women — and cultural anthropology these days is dominated by
women. The sex ratio in my classes is usually around seven females for
every male; in last year's seminar, there were 21 women and four men. The
ratio of female to male professors also increases from year to year. Almost
all would identify as feminists. My female colleagues are militant
feminists who prefer to hire other female feminists. But their feminism
stops at our borders. They, like the stalwarts who man the national
feminist organizations, would never criticize other cultures for their
treatment of women, and certainly not Islam. Cultural and ethical
relativism trumps even feminism.
Blocking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from visiting
Concordia University in 2002, shouting down Ishmael Khaldi, Israel's first
Bedouin diplomat who spoke last year at the University of Windsor, the
abuse of pro-Israel students at York University — these are par for the
course at institutions infamous for Israel Apartheid Week. Canadian
departments of Middle Eastern Studies and university speaker panels on the
Middle East commonly represent only the Arab and Palestinian narratives,
excluding any neutral or pro-Israel speakers.
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Ayaan
Hirsi Ali is considered out of bounds on campus today.
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No less than Infidel did, I shocked my students with my views of
anthropology and of the world. My students repeatedly told me that they had
never heard opinions such as mine at university. I was told that I was
"out of the mainstream." This did not surprise or frighten me; I
have been an anthropologist for over 50 years, have long been a tenured
full professor, and have observed closely the development of my field.
Classic liberal political views such as mine are unusual among the many
Marxists and fellow travellers in the social sciences and humanities.
Anthropologists have always tended to be left-leaning in their politics;
some of the early founders identified as communists, as do some
contemporary Canadian anthropologists. In the 1970s, Marxist anthropology
became the hot new trend, camouflaged after the fall of the USSR by labels
such as critical anthropology, political economy, political ecology, and
postcolonialism. University students in anthropology in Canada, the US, and
in Europe have been consistently taught, and take for granted, that the
West, capitalism, and globalization are evil, and that purity and goodness
lie only in other cultures. Students from my seminar independently told me
that capitalism needs to be replaced, seemingly unaware of the hundreds of
millions murdered in the last attempt to do so.
The dominant leftist political stance in anthropology and beyond has
been facilitated by the turn away from scientific methods and goals in
favour of subjectivity, on the one hand, and political engagement, on the
other. As there can be no objective truth, but only many subjective truths,
postmodernists argue, there can be no authoritative knowledge; thus the
only worthwhile activity is political engagement on behalf of the oppressed
and exploited. The question is no longer whether some understanding is true
or false, but whether you are on the right or wrong side. One "right
side" for my students was multiculturalism; people should no longer be
considered as individuals, but as members of categories, and treated as
such. Any disagreement about treating individuals as members of categories
made you "sexist" or "racist."
In the minds of my students and colleagues, none of these matters could
be legitimately debated. They weren't matters of logic or fact, but of
whose side you were on. They had never heard John Stuart Mill's argument
that a position that has never been defended against others is untested and
feeble. They know what is correct, and any other view is heresy.
Philip Carl Salzman is a professor
of anthropology at McGill University and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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