University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, October 16, 1990
5
Western Civ. offers variety of views
Recent protests against discrimination on campus have targeted the Western Civilization program. I was acting director for the program last spring in addition to teaching in the program for three years. What is so very striking and sad about the current protest, which began last spring, is that not one of the protesters contacted me last semester to ask how and why the program operates as it does. Furthermore, my one person who is currently protesting has contacted the permanent director of the program to get any information.
We need the most robust debate about what ideas to use to challenge bigotry. But, we need informed debate and efforts by people of good will to reach out to each other. I believe that the protestors are people of good will. I know that the people involved in the Western Civilization program are, too.
More than a list
It should be noted that the Western Civilization course is more than the reading list. Lectures and discussions play major roles, and during these activities questions of racism and sexism and anti-semitism are expected to be raised. Students are free at any time to raise these issues and should be encouraged to do so. If not encouraged to do so they need to take the responsibility upon themselves to do so. Students should not be potted plants.
Furthermore, supplementary readings in the student manual and in a forthcoming textbook include discussions of these and other issues. It is perhaps worth noting that the requirements that students take a non-Western Civilization course should give students other perspectives that they can bring to this course.
How do reading lists get established? The existing practice is for the director of the program to present a suggested list to a committee of faculty and graduate students who then make their suggestions. Then, the whole teaching staff of the program - graduate teaching assistants and faculty - reviews the suggested list and the faculty student committee for final action. It is worth noting that at least half of the teaching staff is female.
What does the reading list look like and why? The reading list now includes two works by women and two works by Black men. It includes works by atheists, Catholics, Protestants, pagans, revolutionaries, conservatives and monarchists. And more obviously, it includes philosophers from a wide range of perspectives than the other philosophers are wrong. And an interesting fact is that the Black men and the women use White male philosophers to challenge the status quo. Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Mary Wolfstonecraft and Simone de
Phillip Paludan
Guest columnist
ARTFRAMES
Beauvoir thought it was important to read John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. And many of their ideas about breaking unjust laws came from the old Catholic church. In the Middle Ages, older Greeks named Plato and Sophocles and Aristotle.
Coursework already tightly squeezed
When should "minority" voices be presented? Some people object to placing women writers and Black writers in their own week, thus giving "only one week" to them. But Plato gets one week, so does Aristotle, so does every writer that is read. Is giving an entire week to a writer (such as Nirsche) or a topic (such as racism) important, is it focusing discussion and thought on an important issue, an important enough to have its own week?
But why not more minorities and women? Since the course has only a limited number of weeks, this question is really "Who should be dropped to add more minorities and women?" The people on the list have provided the major perspectives on what our culture's life and thought mean. Which perspective should we do without? Plato's *Aristotle*? *Aquinas*? *Dostoevsky*? *Which issues should we discard?* The fate of the planet (Schell)? The meaning of being human (Seneca, Aurelius, Socrates, Augustine, Freud)?
We already leave out Shakespeare, Dante, Hume, Lincoln, Emerson, Dewey, etc., who should also be tossed out? How many more arguments specifically focused on the problem of prejudice do we need? Aren't Douglass, King, Wollstonecraft and de Beauvoir eloquent enough?
We need to take prejudice seriously, as seriously as we take Plato. But we need to recognize that the two are interrelated; both are parts of the heritage of this society. That means we need to recognize (as Wollstonecraft, Douglass, de Beauvoir and King recognized) that the problems of prejudice are interconnected with the strengths and the weaknesses of western civilization. That western civilization contains intellectual and emotional resources to challenge that prejudice. We need their voices; but theirs are not the only voices we need. The bigots would love it if decent people fought them with anything less than the full arsenal of western thought.
Phillip Paludan is a professor of history
Other Voices
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Nominees
In 1959, the senior class established the H.O.P.E. Award to honor each year's outstanding progressive educator at the University of Kansas.
Today, the award remains the only honor given to an educator by the senior class.
The H.O.P.E. Award traditionally singles out the educator who best exemplifies dedication to students and the education process.
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