Socrates Redux: Classics in the Multicultural University?1

Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views XUll. n.s. 18.1999.85-101 SOCRATES REDUX: CLASSICS IN THE MULTICULTURAL UNIVERSITY?I JOHNHEATH "This book began from many experiences stored up from twenty years of teaching at Harvard. Brown. and the University of Chicago and from travels to dozens of American campuses. both as a visiting lecturer and as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Professor" (ix). It is hard to imagine a more ominous opening to a book on reform of higher education . Extrapolating from her "teaching" at three elite universities (one quickly infers that Professor Nussbaum has not waded through many half-baked blue books over the years). communiques with faculty she "knew and could trust." cursory visits to other campuses as weIl as the notes and tape recordings garnered by her four research assistants dispatched on similar missions. and an extremely narrow interpretation of classical antiquity. the Ernst Freund Professor of Law and Ethics sets out to restore our faith in the new developments in the liberal arts. The resulting apologia aspires to be the feel-good book the academic left and university administrators have been waiting for. After taking so many hits in the culture wars. could it be that American higher education has finally landed a counter-punch? Nussbaum proposes to answer the following questions: "What are faculty and students really doing. and how do newly fashionable issues about human diversity affect what they do? What sort of citizens are our colleges trying to produce. and how weIl are they succeeding in that task?" (2). Her answer. to summarize boldly. is that special studies programs (she limits herself to African-American. Women's. and Gender) and the study of non-Western cultures have found important places alongside more traditional fare because they shape "world citizens" steeped in Socratic argument who can empathize with difference on an increasingly multicultural. pluralistic planet. She claims that these approaches need not-and she wants us to believe that in fact most do not-embrace the most controversial tenets of the New Humanities and Social Sciences. notably interest-group identity politics. radical epistemological skepticism. and moral relativism. As [ Martha C. Nussbaum. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge MA/London: Harvard University Press. 1997. Pp. xii +328. ISBN 0-674-17948-X. 85 86 JOHNHEATH proof of the success of these innovations in liberal education. we are offered numerous anecdotes primarily in the form of sketches of classroom sessions and course syllabi. Indeed. by providing so many little vignettes. the book becomes a veritable ideological Kamasutra for multiculturalists. depicting various positions and approaches attempted bya handful of pliant instructors across the nation to encourage their students to lead more tolerant and empathetic lives. But a word of warning: don't try these contortions at horne. They may look tempting. but upon even mildly close inspection their initial attraction gives way first to incredulity. then to surfeit. boredom. and finally to revulsion. Although Nussbaum poses as a sensible. classically -based reformer. the book follows a pattern perfectly predictable by anyone familiar with its author's previous excursions into the culture wars. Partly because of a remarkable naivete about teaching and college curricula that can be possessed only by today's on-the-road. TA-dependent academic. partly because of her thinly veiled political agenda. but mostly just because of sloppy argumentation. the various strands of thought agglomerate over the 300 pages into a messy ball of contradictory and muddled assertions. and at best timid and derivative recommendations. Professors and administrators of the academic left waiting for a defense of their leadership of the academy must continue their anxious vigil. This Multiculturalism-Lite just won't do it. The first chapter. an argument for "Socratic Self-Examination." quickly reveals the weighty problems that sink the book. and so it warrants a careful review. Nussbaum begins reasonably enough by defending Socratic argument against those who see it as a male. Western device constructed to empower the oppressors. She insists that its purpose rather is the activation of each student's independent mind and the production of a community that can genuinely reason together about a problem. not simply trade claims and...