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The Review of Higher Education 26.4 (2003) 539-540



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David Yamane. Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 216 pp. Paper: $17.95. ISBN 0-8018-7099-2.

In Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education, David Yamane addresses a vital concern: How do we transform higher education curricula to reflect the diverse society in which we live? Yamane argues that issues related to multiculturalism, especially in the area of curricular reform, have touched off "culture wars" within the academy. Accordingly, he highlights the connection between education and politics, noting that debates over "multiculturalism in education are debates over who we Americans are and what we Americans should be" (p. 5). Yamane centers his inquiry around a particular manifestation of multiculturalism and the culture wars: "the debate over whether courses that focus on issues such as race/ethnicity, cultural diversity, cultural pluralism, and ethnic studies should be required for bachelor's degrees in American colleges and universities" (p. 6). He describes "multicultural general education requirements" as addressing the "curricular color line."

Here, Yamane borrows from W.E.B. Du Bois and his contention that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea" (1903, p. 54). More specifically, Yamane sets his exploration of the color line within the context of university curriculum reform by studying the adoption of multicultural requirements at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Berkeley. Although he explores the role of student activists in the development of multicultural requirements, Yamane also emphasizes the connection of the Madison and Berkeley cases with the broader struggle to achieve racial equality.

He first provides background about student movements and multiculturalism, then discusses the context in which a student-led movement for curricular reform developed at Madison and the conditions under which students at Berkeley organized for multicultural curricular reform. Chapter 4 describes how both universities planned and adopted new curricular policies that included an ethnic studies requirement, while the next chapter considers the institutionalization of multicultural reforms at both institutions. The final chapter situates this study within the broader debates about higher education and multiculturalism. Yamane counters critics' assertions that multiculturalism has contributed to the decline of the traditional liberal arts education, arguing instead that the true threat is the growing vocationalization of higher education. He bases his case for multicultural curriculum reform on higher education's need to prepare students for citizenship in an increasingly diverse and interdependent society.

A shortcoming of the book is its overreliance on Levine's (1980) four-step model of academic innovation: (a) recognizing the need for change, (b) planning and formulating a means of satisfying the need, (c) initiating and implementing the plan, and (d) institutionalizing or terminating the new operating plan. Such a model assumes that academic institutions operate rationally, an assumption that runs contrary to a great deal of scholarly work on academic organizations. A rationalistic perspective of the academy also contradicts the essence of student movements, which suggests that change occurs from political pressure. Consequently, adopting multicultural general education requirements may not be about recognizing a particular need as much as about responding to pressures that students and student groups can bring to bear on curriculum.

Interestingly, Yamane cites some of the social movement literature but never acknowledges that sociologists have generally shifted their analyses away from rational choice perspectives toward the roles of identity and ideology in social reform (Calhoun, 1994; Laraña, Johnston, & Gusfield, 1994). A second point of concern is the lack of student voices throughout the text. We found it odd that the author went to the considerable trouble of interviewing 58 individuals involved in multicultural curriculum reform but that only five were students. A book focusing on "student movements" would benefit from rich interviews with student organizers...

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