Ideology Inevitable in College Curriculum

In “Taking Brown off the Blacklist” (November, 2002), Alex Schulman presents a wandering attack on the current state of academics at Brown. Shulman builds his critique primarily from a list of courses published late last year by the Young American’s Foundation, with the intent of deriding the included courses as “ridiculous” and “ideological”. Recognizing the flaws in YAF’s list (drawn purely from the titles of courses in the Course Announcement Bulletin) Shulman is careful to declare the difference between his theories and YAF’s, stating that “when they attack ‘ideology’ despite frequent invocations of nice things like ‘free speech’ and ‘fair play’ they simply attack one specific ideology, and behind the veil of objective criticism, maneuver to replace it with their own.” Up to this point, Shulman and I agree. Here’s the problem–despite

such nice phrases, the solutions proposed by Shulman face the same difficulty: rather than addressing “ideology” Shulman attacks only one specific ideology, and seeks to replace it with his own, the very idea he critiques. Shulman proposes a series of reforms, including the destruction of specialization, the rise of a core curriculum, and the end of affirmative action, an issue so far off topic that I shall not address it at this point.

Although I do not deny that the political views of our campus are overwhelmingly oriented towards the left, I do believe that the vision of our campus as a socialist haven has been mythologized to an extent that greatly exaggerates the political opinions and involvement of average students. I do, however, dispute Shulman’s claim that, “simply making room for conservative viewpoints, although it would be an improvement upon the status quo, provides a thin band-aid for a gaping wound, indeed. The problem is ideology itself under any guise.” As a solution, Schulman proposes a critique from “outside ideology.” However, Shulman quickly makes his own ideological position clear, declaring of “feminism and poststructuralism” that he “would not wish the reading list….upon Mohammed Atta.” This ideological bias continually resurfaces in Shulman’s analysis. For example he describes the French post-structuralist movement as “intellect divorced from any sense of spirituality or emotion, mind divorced from body, matter divorced from soul. Its currency is the linguistic parlor game, ephemeral and vacuous.”

The truth is that there is no place outside of ideology. I do not intend to declare that there is no right or wrong, up or down. Certainly there are truths, and truths should be taught in our courses. On earth, the law of gravity generally applies. The current President of the United States is George W. Bush, however much we might wish otherwise. These are facts. The rest is interpretation. How these facts affect our world, what gender means, what good means, the questions that attract much of our attention in our collegiate years, fall into the latter category. In matters of interpretation, there always will be ideology. It cannot be prevented. Justice Brennan once declared that he interpreted the Constitution the only way he could- as a man living in the 20th century. Similarly, our professors teach in the only way they can, as men and women of the 21st century. Nothing Shulman does or proposes can ever change that.