Both Gary Weissman '02 (The Dartmouth, Feb. 22, "Ethnic Representation") and Hannah Kwon '02 (The Dartmouth, Feb. 25, "Liberal Arts in the Ivory Tower: A Tradition Worth Keeping?") respond to my Feb. 18 column in The Dartmouth, "Ethnic Studies and the Liberal Arts Tradition," by questioning my definition of the "ivory tower." Mr. Weissman calls me arrogant, saying that I assume "academia is elevated and free from bias[because it] blinds us to the fact that the 'established disciplines' have already generated normative academic paradigms that reinforce their own validity." I am then dismissed as a "status-quo supporter." Ms. Kwon, similarly, thinks that I subscribe to hegemonic paradigms and am afraid that they will be torn down by the inception of ethnic studies.
Let us rise above the name-calling and realize that all of us engaged in this discussion have the best interests of Dartmouth at heart. The questions over what we should be studying are too fundamental to be taken for granted.
I am not opposed to the idea of individual classes dedicated to ethnic studies, nor am I opposed to examining existing disciplines under the lens of ethnicity. I am far from being, as Mr. Weissman and Ms. Kwon suggest, someone with vested interests in maintaining the "hegemonic paradigms" of the status quo. But I oppose, for practical and intellectual reasons, the subordination of entire curricula to such studies and view with alarm their growing politicization. And I also pose the question that has not yet been answered: where do you draw the line when it comes to determining what ethnic studies disciplines to allow and not to allow?
Nowhere in my column did I state that "academia is elevated and free from bias." Academia today is rather besotted with bias, particularly of the left-leaning political sort -- and that, as I stated, is the problem (to reassure people that I am not a political conservative, I will state that it would be just as bad if the bias was right-wing). Ethnic studies, as Professor Evelyn Hu-DeHart and Ms. Kwon say, is explicitly politicized. Ms. Kwon says: "Everything that AAS students learn, regardless of their race, has practical applications to our contemporary society and the struggle for social change."
You might not think there's anything wrong with this, but imagine if some professor walked into class and started spouting extreme right-wing political views. Most of us would be offended, and rightly so. The same thing goes for saying things in class like America is a "white supremacist society backed up by a complicit state apparatus." By expanding existing departments to include classes on ethnicity, we are becoming intellectually diverse without losing sight of some sense of perspective. If you don't agree that objectivity and disinterestedness are intrinsically worthwhile goals, then we must go our separate ways. For me, Dartmouth is the chance of a lifetime to devote my mind to reading, to quote Arnold, "the best that is known and thought in the world" -- Western and non-Western.
Ethnic studies departments, as their short history suggests, are founded on a series of beliefs that their supporters claim to be irrevocable truths. First, they imply that existing disciplines are rigid and inflexible and thus irrelevant to contemporary society. Mr. Weissman says that Dartmouth is "growing moldy" with the "same old 'established disciplines.'" Second, that there exists in the world, according to such social theorists as Marx and Foucault, power structures in the hands of a privileged elite, who are white, male, heterosexual, rich, etc.
Are these two beliefs really facts? Proponents of ethnic studies claim that they seek to debunk our assumptions about the way the world is, but they never turn that same level of scrutiny upon themselves and ask, "Do the beliefs upon which my arguments rest actually hold up?" I noted in my earlier articles that there is no evidence today suggesting that racism, sexism, and other injustices have been institutionalized in American society. Those who question this should spend some time travelling the world to find out just how lucky America is. For the only intellectual tradition in the world that examines all aspects of itself with such candor is, ironically, the very tradition that proponents of ethnic studies are rebelling against -- the Western tradition. One thinks of Socrates, Plato, Martin Luther, Mary Wollstonecraft and many, many others whose works have fed into this tradition of critical dissent against dogma and social injustices. By cutting themselves off from existing departments, ethnic studies would lose sight of this tradition and fall prey to its own passions and prejudices.
