The View from Women's Studies

Abstract

ROM THE PERSPECTIVE of a women's studies program director, debate over political correctness (PC) has been puzzling. The media suggest that those who advocate campuses free of racism, sexism, and homophobia are guilty of tactics of intimidation and coercion, of imposing a new code of curricular content and campus values on unwilling students and teachers. We/they collectively are accused of advocating multiculturalism-an idea to which, in its simplest form, nobody objects. As one of critics of politically correct admits, multiculturalism merely acknowledges and attempts to incorporate into curriculum and campus environment the wide range of cultures that cohabit U.S. ... It represents discovery on part of minority groups that they can play a part in molding larger culture even as they are molded by it.1 The trouble, according to critics, is that as a movement, multiculturalism is rarely benign. These critics fear that multicultural courses will displace traditional subjects, depriving students of what they call heritage of Western culture. They argue that codes of conduct and attempts at curricular reform designed to promote tolerance instead inhibit free speech. I have two responses to this argument: first, that women's studies is, with cause, sometimes cast as a villain by its critics in PC debates, as it naturally casts its lot on side of multiculturalism. And, second, that some of accusations about inhibiting and divisive nature of defining behavior as politically correct are disturbingly familiar to those of us in women's studies programs. This double identity-of perpetrator and victim, of accuser and accused-derives from our attention to commonalities and differences in both our theory and practice. It also creates something of a conundrum in women's studies programs, one we need to understand and work through if our common enterprise is to flourish.