Political Correctness And Campus War

Spurred by Civil Rights Movement, Women's Rights Movement, and Black Power Movement, American radicals and leftists in the late 20th century put forward the concept of"political correctness", attempting to help historically-suppressed and long-underprivileged groups of people to obtain their equal rights and opportunities.In the course of fights, PC movements experienced two important periods respectively in the 1960s and the 1990s, attracting much attention from all walks of life. Besides, as the U.S. entered the 21st century, PC movements again reached another peak. For example, George W. Bush has frequently used"he"or"she"instead of a simple"he"in his public speeches, trying to avoid troubles. In 2005, Lawrence Summers, the ex-president of Harvard University, implied that women lack gifted talents when he was invited to make a speech, which ultimately led to his resignation. More significantly, when the Christmas of 2005 approached, the White House and many large companies decided to use"holiday season"rather than"Christmas"in their greeting cards for fear that it might hurt the feelings of people from other religious cultures. All these examples demonstrate that the PC principle as well as PC movements has great impact on America as a whole not only in the last century but in the current one.This thesis will focus on the issues of political correctness, especially its influence and impact on American higher education. We will see in the following discussions, American universities and colleges, as the main battlefields, have been engaged in a fierce culture war.On the one side of the war, there are radicals and leftists, advocating the PC principle and demanding a series of reforms in the universities and colleges for the realization of equal rights and opportunities of the underprivileged group. These reforms include the design of curricular, the regulation of campus life, the rule of language use, the recruitment of faculty and students and so forth, through which they attempt to guarantee the rights and interests of women, blacks, gays and lesbians and other historically-suppressed people, and at the same time change the status quo of western civilization oriented American culture.On the other side of the war, conservatives and rightists have been fighting fiercely against their opponents. They hold the view that PC claims are not legitimate and justicial, and that what radicals advocate run counter to individuals'rights of free speech protected by the First Amendment. By doing that, conservatives argue that PC would bring about reverse discrimination against male whites. For them, PC claims have threatened their interests and inevitably evoked their hatred feelings.From the viewpoints of these two sides, the essence of the war lies in the controversy between multiculturalism represented by marginalized groups and mono-culturalism represented by WASP. For this reason, the cultural war pits radicals against conservatives over power and interest. Looking back to the progress of the PC movements, we can come to the conclusion that the PC principle is justifiable in the sense that it seeks equal rights and opportunities for the underprivileged groups. But on the other hand, in the course of the movements, PC advocators have often gone to extremes, denying values in the original Eurocentric culture and trying to totally replace it with non-western cultures. Thus, the war between these two camps will inevitably intensify. In this sense, the campus war is not the end of the culture war but the beginning.