The dangers of multiculturalism: the American experience. (Peter Duignan, Senior Fellow Director of African and Middle East Programs and Western European Studies at the Hoover Institute)(Transcript)

By Peter Duignan, Senior Fellow Director of African and Middle East Programs and Western European Studies at the Hoover Institute

Delivered before the Rotary Club of San Jose, San Jose, California, March 22, 1995

Since the 1960s American schools have been "force-fed" multiculturalism. Required courses in Western civilization are being replaced by courses in non-Western culture even though they have little or no relevance to the great majority of Americans (80-85 percent) who trace their descent to European and Western culture. Colleges such as Mount Holyoke and Dartmouth, and universities such as Wisconsin and the University of California, require a non-Western study course, but not one on Western culture! Learning about other cultures is, of course, valuable; but students should first know about their own. Too often non-Western and ethnic studies are thin disguises for virulent anti-Western views and attacks on DWEMs (Dead White European Males). The claim is made that the West is the great devil, the great oppressor of women, gays and lesbians and all non-white ethnics who are perceived to be "victims." Recall the recent vicious attack on Christopher Columbus as the destroyer of Indian peoples in the New World. And how could it have been otherwise since multiculturalism grew out of the New Left movement of the 1960s - the alliance of radical students, faculty leftists, sympathetic administrators and advocates of group rights for gays, …