The debate over "P.C." at America's universities is the most important discussion in American education today and has grown into a major national controversy raging on the covers of our top magazines and news shows. This provocative anthology gives voice to the top thinkers of our time, liberal and conservative, as they tackle the question. From the multicultural perspective of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who argues passionately for more diversity, to the erudition of Irving Howe, who stresses the profound value of the literary canon, this exciting collection is required reading for thinking Americans . . . and for everyone concerned with the future of higher education and the shaping of young minds. Contents include: “The Big Chill? Interview with Dinesh D’Souza” by Robert MacNeil “On Differences: Modern Language Association Presidential Address 1990” by Catharine R. Stimpson “The Periphery v. the Center: The MLA in Chicago” by Roger Kimball “The Storm over the University” by John Searle “Public Imaged Limited: Political Correctness and the Media’s Big Lie” by Michael Berubé “The Value of the Canon” by Irving Howe “The Politics of Knowledge” by Edward W. Said “Whose Canon Is It, Anyway?” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Why Do We Read?” by Katha Pollitt “’Speech Codes’ on the Campus and Problems of Free Speech” by Nat Hentoff “Freedom of Hate Speech” by Richard Perry and Patricia Williams “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too” by Stanley Fish “The Statement of the Black Faculty Caucus” by Ted Gordon and Wahneema Lubiano “Radical English” by George F. Will “Critics of Attempts to Democratize the Curriculum Are Waging a Campaign to Misrepresent the Work of Responsible Professors” by Paula Rothenberg “Multiculturalism: E Pluribus Plures” by Diane Ravitch “Multiculturalism: An Exchange” by Molefi Kete Asante “The Prospect Before Us” by Hilton Kramer “P.C. Rider” by Enrique Fernández “Diverse New World” by Cornel West “The Challenge for the Left” by Barbara Ehrenreich

Examining college and university curricula, this annotated bibliography cites over 300 articles, books, and other works that document the impact of multiculturalism on higher education during the 1980s and 1990s. Included are writings that address change in both the traditional disciplines and the interdisciplinary fields of women's studies, African American studies, and ethnic studies, with emphasis on other controversial works that focus on integrating the emerging scholarship into core curricula and on the evolution and current status of that scholarship. After an introduction to multiculturalism, the book looks at works that define multiculturalism and examines its effect on traditionalists and reformers alike. The authors discuss institutional experiences, citing specific examples of curricular integration and resistance. Quantitative and qualitative studies are highlighted to show multicultural change in the academy, including political correctness debates. Each chapter begins with a summary of major issues and works, an appendix lists all referenced journals, and there is an author index. This book provides easy access to a wide range of literature across many disciplines and fields. It will be useful to faculty and administrators, researchers and students in women studies, African American studies, ethnic studies, and other interdisciplinary fields.

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The freedom of academics to pursue knowledge and truth in their research, writing, and teaching is a fundamental principle of contemporary higher education in the United States. But this freedom has been hard won and regularly abridged, reinterpreted, and violated. Academic freedom has been central to many issues and controversies in higher education and has thus generated literature in a variety of disciplines. This book provides access to that literature. Included are entries for nearly 500 books, chapters, articles, reports, web sites, and other sources of information about academic freedom. Each entry includes a descriptive annotation, and the entries are grouped in topical chapters. While most of the works cited were published since the 1940 American Association of University Professors Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, some older studies have also been included. Though the volume focuses primarily on higher education in the U.S., it also includes a chapter on academic freedom in other countries.

American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s fully updates Vincent B. Leitch’s classic book, American Literary Criticism from the 30s to the 80s following the development of the American academy right up to the present day. Updated throughout and with a brand new chapter, this second edition: provides a critical history of American literary theory and practice, discussing the impact of major schools and movements examines the social and cultural background to literary research, considering the role of key theories and practices provides profiles of major figures and influential texts, outlining the connections among theorists presents a new chapter on developments since the 1980s, including discussions of feminist, queer, postcolonial and ethnic criticism. Comprehensive and engaging, this book offers a crucial overview of the development of literary studies in American universities, and a springboard to further research for all those interested in the development and study of Literature.

Challenging prevailing media stereotypes, Generation at the Crossroads explores the beliefs and choices of the students who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. For seven years, at over a hundred campuses in thirty states, Paul Loeb asked students about the values they held. He examines their concepts of responsibility, the links they draw between present and future, and how they view themselves in relation to the larger human community in which they live. He brings us a range of voices, from "I'm not that kind of person," to "I had to take a stand." Loeb looks at how the rest of us can serve young people as better role models, and give them courage and vision to help build a better world. This insightful book explores the culture of withdrawal that dominated American campuses through most of the eighties. He locates its roots in historical ignorance, relentless individualism, mistrust of social movements, and a general isolation from urgent realities. He examines why a steadily increasing minority has begun to take on critical public issues, whether environmental activism, apartheid, hunger and homelessness, affordable education, or racial and sexual equity. Loeb looks at individuals who have overcome precisely the barriers he has described, and how their journeys can become models. The generational choices he explores will shape our common future.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and Bush’s belligerent response fractured the American left—partly by putting pressure on little-noticed fissures that had appeared a decade earlier. In a masterful survey of the post-9/11 landscape, renowned scholar Michael Bérubé revisits and reinterprets the major intellectual debates and key players of the last two decades, covering the terrain of left debates in the United States over foreign policy from the Balkans to 9/11 to Iraq, and over domestic policy from the culture wars of the 1990s to the question of what (if anything) is the matter with Kansas. The Left at War brings the history of cultural studies to bear on the present crisis—a history now trivialized to the point at which few left intellectuals have any sense that merely "cultural" studies could have something substantial to offer to the world of international relations, debates over sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, matters of war and peace. The surprising results of Bérubé’s arguments reveal an American left that is overly fond of a form of "countercultural" politics in which popular success is understood as a sign of political failure and political marginality is understood as a sign of moral virtue. The Left at War insists that, in contrast to American countercultural traditions, the geopolitical history of cultural studies has much to teach us about internationalism—for "in order to think globally, we need to think culturally, and in order to understand cultural conflict, we need to think globally." At a time when America finds itself at a critical crossroads, The Left at War is an indispensable guide to the divisions that have created a left at war with itself.