Politics of Recognition ,
Dr. AMY GUTMANN
historically informed, philosophical perspective on what is at
stake in the demand made by many people for recognition oftheir particular identities by public institutions. In the ancien
régime, when a minority could count on being honored (as
“Ladies” and “Lords”) and the majority could not realistically
aspire to public recognition, the demand for recognition
was unnecessary for the few and futile for the many. Only
with the collapse of stable social hierarchies does the demand
for public recognition become commonplace, along
with the idea of the dignity of all individuals. Everyone is an
equal—a Mr., Miss, Mrs., or Ms.—and we all expect to be
recognized as such. So far, so good.
But the claims of equal citizens in the public sphere are
more problematic and conflict-ridden than our appreciation
of the collapse of aristocratic honor would lead us to expect.
Taylor highlights the problems in the ingenious attempt by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his followers to satisfy the perceived
universal need for public recognition by converting
human equality into identity. The Rousseauean politics of
recognition, as Taylor characterizes it, is simultaneously suspicious
of all social differentiation and receptive to the homogenizing—
indeed even totalitarian—tendencies of a politics
of the common good, where the common good reflects
the universal identity of all citizens. The demand for recognition
may be satisfied on this scheme, but only after it has
been socially and politically disciplined so that people pride
themselves on being little more than equal citizens and
therefore expect to be publicly recognized only as such. Taylor
rightly argues that this is too high a price to pay for the
politics of recognition.
Liberal democracies, pace Rousseau, cannot regard citizenship
as a comprehensive universal identity because (1) people
are unique, self-creating, and creative individuals, as
John Stuart Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson famously recognized;
and (2) people are also “culture-bearing,” and the cultures
they bear differ depending on their past and present
INTRODUCT ION
identifications. The unique, self-creating, and creative conception
of human beings is not to be confused with a picture
of “atomistic” individuals creating their identities de novo and
pursuing their ends independently of each other. Part of the
uniqueness of individuals results from the ways in which
they integrate, reflect upon, and modify their own cultural
heritage and that of other people with whom they come into
contact. Human identity is created, as Taylor puts it, dialogically,
in response to our relations, including our actual dialogues,
with others. The dichotomy posed by some political
theorists between atomistic and socially constructed individuals
is therefore a false one. If human identity is dialogically
created and constituted, then public recognition of our identity
requires a politics that leaves room for us to deliberate
publicly about those aspects of our identities that we share,
or potentially share, with other citizens. A society that recognizes
individual identity will be a deliberative, democratic
society because individual identity is partly constituted by
collective dialogues.
Granting the totalitarian tendency of the Rousseauean
quest for a politics that comprehensively recognizes the
identity of citizens, Taylor argues that public institutions
should not—indeed cannot—simply refuse to respond to the
demand for recognition by citizens. The anti-Rousseauean
demand to be publicly recognized for one’s particularity is
also as understandable as it is problematic and controversial.
We disagree, for example, as to whether in the name of
human equality and treating all people as equals society
should treat women the same way that it treats men, considering
pregnancy as another form of physical disability, or differently
in recognition of those aspects of our identities that
are distinctly tied to gender, such as the social identity of
most American women as child-bearers and primary childrearers.
We disagree as to whether African-American students
are better served by public schools with a curriculum
specially designed to emphasize African-American culture or
by a curriculum that is common to all students. The demand
for recognition, animated by the ideal of human dignity,
points in at least two directions, both to the protection of the
basic rights of individuals as human beings and to the acknowledgment
of the particular needs of individuals as
members of specific cultural groups. Because Taylor takes seriously
the stakes on both sides of the controversy, he does
not jump aboard any political bandwagon, or offer simple solutions
where there are none.
Nor do Susan Wolf, Steven C. Rockefeller, and Michael
Walzer, who in commenting on Taylor’s essay suggest new
ways of conceiving the relationship between our personal
identities and our political practices. Wolf focuses on the
challenges of feminism and multicultural education. Although
the situation of women is often compared to that of
disadvantaged cultural minorities, Wolf suggests that there
is a critical distinction between the two cases. Whereas political
recognition of the distinctive contributions and qualities
of minority cultures is most often viewed as a way of treating
members of those cultures as equals, political recognition of
the distinctiveness of women as women is typically identified
with regarding women as unequals, and expecting (or
even requiring) women to stay in distinctively “feminine”
and subordinate places in society. And yet the demand for
public recognition by women is in another significant way
similar to the demand made by many minorities. Full public
recognition as equal citizens may require two forms of respect:
(1) respect for the unique identities of each individual,
regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity, and (2) respect for
those activities, practices, and ways of viewing the world
that are particularly valued by, or associated with, members
of disadvantaged groups, including women, Asian-Americans,
African-Americans, Native Americans, and a multitude
of other groups in the United States.
Steven C. Rockefeller rightly worries about the abuse of
the second requirement, respect for individuals as they identify
with particular cultural groups. If members of groups are
publicly identified with the dominant characteristics, practices,
and values of their group, one might wonder whether
our particular identities—as English or French Canadians,
men or women, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, or
Native Americans, Christians, Jews, or Muslims—will take
public precedence over our more universal identity as persons,
deserving of mutual respect, civil and political liberties,
and decent life chances simply by virtue of our equal
humanity. Recognition of every individual’s uniqueness and
humanity lies at the core of liberal democracy, understood as
a way of political and personal life. The liberal democratic
value of diversity therefore may not be captured by the need
to preserve distinct and unique cultures over time, which
provide each separate group of people with a secure culture
and identity for themselves and their progeny. Rockefeller
follows John Dewey in connecting the democratic value of
diversity instead with the value of expanding the cultural,
intellectual, and spiritual horizons of all individuals, enriching
our world by exposing us to differing cultural and intellectual
perspectives, and thereby increasing our possibilities
for intellectual and spiritual growth, exploration, and enlightenment.
Does this liberal democratic view downplay the human
need for secure and separate cultural identities? It is probably
impossible to say with any certainty in light of the relatively
few developed democracies in our world. So for the
sake of challenging this democratic vision, we might suppose
that its ideal of individuals flourishing in a mobile, multicultural
society (or world) does indeed underestimate the
need of people as members of discrete ethnic, linguistic, and
other cultural groups for public recognition and preservation
of their particular cultural identities. Even in light of this
challenge, the liberal democratic view offers a morally significant
and politically useful antidote to the demand for cultural
recognition as it is now commonly made on behalf of
distinct groups. Liberal democracy is suspicious of the demand
to enlist politics in the preservation of separate group
identities or the survival of subcultures that otherwise would
not flourish through the free association of citizens. And yet
democratic institutions, more than any others, tend to expose
citizens to a diverse set of cultural values. Hence liberal
democracy enriches our opportunities, enables us to recognize
the value of various cultures, and thereby teaches us to
appreciate diversity not simply for its own sake but for its
enhancement of the quality of life and learning. The liberal
democratic defense of diversity draws upon a universalistic
rather than a particularistic perspective.
What exactly is the universalistic perspective with which
liberal democracy views and values multiculturalism? Building
on Taylor’s analysis, Walzer suggests that there may not
be one universalistic perspective, but two, which pull liberal
democracies in different political directions. Or, more accurately,
there is one universalistic principle, widely accepted
by people who broadly believe in human equality and incompletely
institutionalized in liberal democratic societies:
“Treat all people as free and equal beings.” But there are two
plausible and historically influential interpretations of this
principle. One perspective requires political neutrality
among the diverse and often conflicting conceptions of the
good life held by citizens of a pluralistic society. The paradigm
of this perspective is the American doctrine of separation
of church and state, where the state not only protects
the religious freedom of all citizens but also avoids as far as
possible identifying any of its own institutions with a particular
religious tradition.
The second liberal democratic perspective, also universalistic,
does not insist on neutrality for either the consequences
or the justification of public policies, but rather permits public
institutions to further particular cultural values on three
conditions: (1) the basic rights of all citizens—including freedom
of speech, thought, religion, and association—must be
protected, (2) no one is manipulated (and of course not coerced)
into accepting the cultural values that are represented
by public institutions, and (3) the public officials and institutions
that make cultural choices are democratically accountable,
not only in principle but also in practice. The paradigm
of this perspective is democratic subsidy for, and control
over, education in the United States. At the same time that
our constitution requires separation of church and state, it
grants states wide latitude in determining the cultural content
of children’s education. Educational policy in America,
far from requiring neutrality, encourages local communities
to shape schools partly in their particular cultural image, so
long as they do not violate basic rights, such as freedom of
conscience or the separation of church and state.
Walzer sees the two universalistic perspectives as defining
two different conceptions of liberalism, the second more
democratic than the first. What Walzer calls “Liberalism 2,”
inasmuch as it authorizes democratic communities to determine
public policy within the broad limits of respect for individual
rights, also authorizes them to choose policies that
are, more or less, neutral among the particular cultural identities
of groups. Because Liberalism 2 is democratic, it can
choose Liberalism 1, state neutrality, through a democratic
consensus. Walzer thinks this is what the United States has
democratically chosen. And Liberalism 1 chosen within Liberalism
2 is what Walzer would choose, because it is in keeping
with the dominant social understanding of the United
States as a society of immigrants, where each cultural group
is free to fend for itself, but not to enlist the state in support
or recognition of its particular cultural projects.
When I listen to the discordant voices raised in recent debates
over multiculturalism, I find it hard to say what we as
a society have chosen, at least at this level of abstraction.
Apart from the difficult, perhaps inescapable, problem of figuring
out what “we” have chosen, perhaps it is a mistake to
think that we have chosen, or need to choose, one liberalism
or the other for all of our public institutions and policies. Perhaps
the two universalisms are better interpreted not as two
distinct and politically comprehensive conceptions of liberalism
but as two strands of a single conception of liberal democracy
that recommends—indeed occasionally even requires—
state neutrality in certain realms such as religion,
but not in others, such as education, where democratically
accountable institutions are free to reflect the values of one
or more cultural communities as long as they also respect the
basic rights of all citizens. The dignity of free and equal beings
requires liberal democratic institutions to be nonrepressive,
nondiscriminatory, and deliberative. These principled
constraints leave room for public institutions to recognize the
particular cultural identities of those they represent. This
conclusion identifies liberal democracy at its best with both
the protection of universal rights and public recognition of
particular cultures, although for significantly different reasons
from those that Taylor recommends. The results of
democratic deliberations consistent with respect for individuals’
rights (freedom of speech, religion, press, association,
and so on), not the survival of subcultures, come to the defense
of multiculturalism.
Along with Taylor’s essay, the comments of Wolf, Rockefeller,
and Walzer are intended to stimulate more constructive
discussions of the issues surrounding multiculturalism
than those that now dominate public discourse. In that same
spirit, we might also consider here the debate over multiculturalism
closer to home, the public controversy over multiculturalism
that has hit the campuses of American colleges
and universities, where we have witnessed some of the most
acrimonious arguments. Even though life and death do not
hang on the outcome, the political identity of Americans, the
quality of our collective intellectual life, and the nature and
value of higher education are all at issue. So the stakes are
rightly perceived as high. Consider the opening lines of an
op-ed piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal in the midst of
the controversy that raged over Stanford University’s core
curriculum: “The intellectual heritage of the West goes on
trial at Stanford University today. Most predict it will lose.”
The controversy referred to by the author of the piece, Isaac
Barchas, a Stanford classics major, revolved around the content
of Stanford’s only year-long requirement in “Western
Culture.” Students were required to choose one of eight
courses, all of which shared a core reading list of fifteen
works by classical thinkers such as Plato, Homer, Dante, and
Darwin.
If Barchas’s characterization is correct, the intellectual
heritage of the West lost at Stanford three years ago, with
remarkably little opposition from the faculty. The faculty
voted, 39 to 4, to replace the requirement in Western Culture
with one called “Culture, Ideas, and Values” that
adds works of some non-European cultures and works by
women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native
Americans to a contracted core of the classics. The Old and
New Testament, Plato, Saint Augustine, Machiavelli, Rousseau,
and Marx remain in the new core.
In the ensuing public debate over whether to change the
content of such core courses, one side—call them “essentialists”—
argued that to dilute the core with new works for the
sake of including previously unheard voices would be to forsake
the values of Western civilization for the standardlessness
of relativism, the tyranny of the social sciences,
lightweight trendiness, and a host of related intellectual
and political evils. Another, diametrically opposed side—call
them “deconstructionists”—argued that to preserve the core
by excluding contributions to civilization by women, African-
Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans as
if the classical canon were sacred, unchanging, and unchangeable
would be to denigrate the identities of members
of these previously excluded groups and to close off Western
civilization from the influences of unorthodox and challenging
ideas for the sake of perpetuating sexism, racism, Euro-
centrism, closed-mindedness, the tyranny of Truth (with a
capital “T”), and a host of related intellectual and political
evils.
Much more is at issue, and of value, here than meets the
ear in the public debate between essentialists and deconstructionists.
If the intellectual heritage of the West went on
trial at Stanford and other campuses that have considered
changing their core curricula, then the intellectual heritage of
the West lost before the trials began. Neither the intellectual
heritage of the West nor the liberal democratic ideal of higher
education can be preserved by a decision to require or not to
require of every university student several courses in fifteen,
thirty, or even a hundred great books. Nor can our heritage
be eradicated by a decision to decrease the number of canonical
books to make room for newer, less established, less
widely esteemed or even less lasting works that speak more
explicitly to the experiences or better express the sense of social
alienation of women and minorities. The reason is not
that Western civilization will not stand or fall on such small
decisions. A long train of seemingly small abuses can create
a large revolution, as we Americans, of all people, should
know.
There is another reason, which has been lost in the public
debate. Liberal education, an education adequate to serve
the life of a free and equal citizen in any modern democracy,
requires far more than the reading of great books, although
great books are an indispensable aid. We also need to read
and think about books, and therefore to teach them, in a
spirit of free and open inquiry, the spirit of both democratic
citizenship and individual freedom. The cultivation of that
spirit is aided by immersion in profound and influential
books, like Plato’s Republic, which expose us to eloquently
original, systematically well-reasoned, intimidating, and unfamiliar
visions of the good life and good society. But liberal
education fails if intimidation leads to blind acceptance of
those visions or if unfamiliarity leads us to blind rejection.
These two signs of failure are too often reflected in the
public debate over multiculturalism on college and university
campuses. In resisting the substitution of new works for
old ones, essentialists suggest that the insights and truths of
the old will be lost by even partial substitution, which is typically
what is at stake in controversies like the one at Stanford.
But preservation of tried-and-true verities is not among
the best reasons for including the classics in any list of required
reading at the university level. Why not say that great
books like Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Politics are among the
most challenging to anyone who wants to think carefully,
systematically, and critically about politics? It is intellectual
idolatry, and not philosophical openness and acuity, that
supports the claim, frequently articulated but rarely defended,
that the greatest philosophical works—judged by
such standards as originality and eloquence, systematic reasoning,
depth of moral, psychological, or political understanding,
and influence on our inherited social understandings—
contain the greatest wisdom now available to us on all
significant subjects.
Is Aristotle’s understanding of slavery more enlightening
than Frederick Douglass’s? Is Aquinas’s argument about civil
disobedience more defensible than Martin Luther King’s or
John Rawls’s? If not, then why not assign students The Autobiography
of Frederick Douglass, “Letter from Birmingham City
Jail,” and A Theory of Justice alongside the Politics and Summa
Theologiae? Although Rousseau’s understanding of women
challenges contemporary feminism, it is far less credible or
compelling on intellectual grounds than Virginia Woolf’s, Simone
de Beauvoir’s, or Toni Morrison’s insights on women.
Similarly, Hannah Arendt offers a perspective on political
evil that goes beyond that of any canonical political philosopher.
Were essentialists explicitly to open their public argument
to the possibility that the classics do not contain comprehensive
or timeless truths on all significant subjects, they
could moderate their critique and recognize the reasonableness
of some proposed reforms that create more multicultural
curricula.
A significant internal obstacle that stands in the way of
moderation is the belief held in reserve by some essentialists
that the classics, especially the works of Plato and Aristotle,
are the key to timeless moral and political truths, the truths
of human nature. In the spirit of Robert Maynard Hutchins,
essentialists often invoke Plato, Aristotle, and “nature” as
critical standards. The argument, explicitly made by Hutchins
but only intimated by Allan Bloom and other contemporary
critics, goes roughly as follows: The highest form of
human nature is the same in America as in Athens, as
should be the content of higher education, if it is to be true
to the highest in human nature, the intellectual virtues cultivated
to their greatest perfection. Here is Hutchins’ succinct
formulation: “Education implies teaching. Teaching implies
knowledge. Knowledge is truth. The truth is everywhere the
same. Hence education should be everywhere the same. I do
not overlook the possibilities of differences in organization,
in administration, in local habits and customs. These are details.”
1 Essentialists honor and invoke the great books as the
critical standard for judging both “lesser” works and societies
that inevitably fail to live up to Platonic or Aristotelian
standards.
One need not in any way denigrate the great books or defend
a standardless relativism to worry about the way in
which the essentialist critique of multiculturalism partakes of
intellectual idol worship. Compare the essentialist defense of
the canon to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s approach to books, as
argued in “The American Scholar.” Emerson’s perspective
serves as an important challenge to essentialism, and yet no
contemporary critic takes up this challenge: “The theory of
books is noble. . . . But none is quite perfect. As no air-
pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither
can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local,
the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure
thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote
posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second
age.”2 Emerson is not saying that because even the best
books are to some significant extent conventional and rooted
in a particular social context, we should read them primarily
for what they reflect about their own times rather than what
they can say to us and our times. We can still learn a lot
about the human condition from Plato’s Republic, or about
our obligation to the state from the Crito. But we cannot learn
everything profound about obligation, let alone everything
worth knowing about the human condition, from reading
Plato, Aristotle, or the entire corpus of canonical works.
“Each age,” Emerson concludes, “must write its own
books.”3 Why? Because well-educated, open-minded people
and liberal democratic citizens must think for themselves. In
liberal democracies, a primary aim of liberal arts universities
is not to create bookworms, but to cultivate people who are
willing and able to be self-governing in both their political
and personal lives. “Books are the best of things, well used,”
Emerson argues, “abused, among the worst. What is the
right use? . . . They are for nothing but to inspire.”4
It would also be a form of intellectual idolatry to take
Emerson’s words as gospel. Books do more than inspire.
They also unite us in a community, or communities, of learning.
They teach us about our intellectual heritage, our culture,
as well as about foreign cultures. American universities
may aspire to be more international, but to the extent that
our liberal arts curriculum along with our student body is
still primarily American, it is crucial, as Wolf suggests in her
comments, that universities recognize who “we” are when
they defend a core curriculum that speaks to “our” circumstances,
culture, and intellectual heritage. Not because students
can identify only with works written by authors of the
same race, ethnicity, or gender, but because there are books
by and about women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans,
and Native Americans that speak to neglected parts of our
heritage and human condition, and speak more wisely than
do some of the canonical works. Although social injustices
concern us all, neglect of noncanonical literature is more
acutely perceived by people who identify themselves with
the neglected, and the exclusion of such works is not unreasonably
thought to reflect lack of respect for members of
these groups, or disregard for part of their cultural identities.
Criticism of the canon per se should not therefore be equated
with tribalism or particularism. Emerson was guilty of neither
when he argued that each age must write, and presumably
also read, its own books.
Radically opposed to essentialism, deconstructionists erect
a different obstacle to liberal democratic education when
they deny the desirability of shared intellectual standards,
which scholars and students of diverse cultural backgrounds
might use to evaluate our common education. Although deconstructionists
do not deny the possibility of shared standards,
they view common standards as masks for the will to
political power of dominant, hegemonic groups. This reductionist
argument about intellectual standards is often made
on behalf of groups that are underrepresented in the university
and disadvantaged in society, but it is hard to see how it
can come to the aid of anyone. The argument is self-undermining,
both logically and practically. By its internal logic,
deconstructionism has nothing more to say for the view that
intellectual standards are masks for the will to political
power than that it too reflects the will to power of deconstructionists.
But why then bother with intellectual life at all,
which is not the fastest, surest, or even most satisfying path
to political power, if it is political power that one is really
after?
Deconstructionism is also impractical. If intellectual standards
are political in the sense of reflecting the antagonistic
interests and will to power of particular groups, then disadvantaged
groups have no choice but to accept the hegemonic
standards that society imposes on the academy and the academy
in turn imposes on them. The less powerful cannot possibly
hope to have their standards win out, especially if their
academic spokespersons publicize the view that intellectual
standards are nothing more than assertions or reflections of
the will to power.
The deconstructionist outlook on the academy not only
deconstructs itself, it does so in a dangerous way. Deconstructionists
do not act as if they believed that common standards
are impossible. They act, and often speak, as if they
believed that the university curriculum should include works
by and about disadvantaged groups. And some version of
this position, as we have seen, is defensible on universalistic
grounds. But the reduction of all intellectual disagreements
to conflicts of group interests is not. It does not stand up to
evidence or reasoned argument. Anyone who doubts this
conclusion might try to demonstrate in a nontautological
way that the strongest arguments for and against legalizing
abortion, not the arguments offered by politicians but the
most careful and compelling philosophical arguments, simply
reflect the will to power, class and gender interests of
their proponents.
Reductionism of intellect and argument to political interest
threatens to politicize the university more profoundly and
destructively than ever before. I say “threatens” because deconstructionism
has not actually “taken over” the academy,
as some critics claim. But the anti-intellectual, politicizing
threat it poses is nonetheless real. A great deal of intellectual
life, especially in the humanities and the “soft” social sci-
ences, depends upon dialogue among reasonable people
who disagree on the answers to some fundamental questions
about the value of various literary, political, economic,
religious, educational, scientific, and aesthetic understandings
and achievements. Colleges and universities are the
only major social institutions dedicated to fostering knowledge,
understanding, intellectual dialogue, and the pursuit
of reasoned argument in the many directions that it may
lead. The threat of deconstructionism to intellectual life in
the academy is twofold: (1) it denies a priori that there are any
reasonable answers to fundamental questions, and (2) it reduces
every answer to an exercise of political power.
Taken seriously, on its own terms, the deconstructionist
defense of a more multicultural curriculum itself appears as
an assertion of political power in the name of the exploited
and oppressed, rather than as an intellectually defensible reform.
And deconstructionism represents critics and criticisms
of multiculturalism, however reasonable, as politically
retrograde and unworthy of intellectual respect. Whereas
essentialists react to reasonable uncertainty and disagreement
by invoking rather than defending timeless truths,
deconstructionists react by explaining away our different
viewpoints, presuming they are equally indefensible on intellectual
grounds. Intellectual life is deconstructed into a political
battlefield of class, gender, and racial interests, an
analogy that does not do justice to democratic politics at its
best, which is not merely a contest of competing interest
groups. But the image conveyed of academic life, the real
arena of deconstructionist activity, is more dangerous still
because it can create its own reality, converting universities
into political battlefields rather than mutually respectful
communities of substantial, sometimes even fundamental,
intellectual disagreement.
Deconstructionists and essentialists disagree about the
value and content of a multicultural curriculum. The disagreement
is exacerbated by the zero-sum nature of the
choice between canonical and newer works, when a few required
core courses become the focus in academic and public
discussions of what constitutes a good education. But disagreement
about what books should be required and how
they should be read is not in itself terribly troubling. No university
curriculum can possibly include all the books or represent
all the cultures worthy of recognition in a liberal democratic
education. Nor can any free society, let alone any
university of independent scholars and teachers, expect to
agree on hard choices between competing goods. The cause
for concern about the ongoing controversies over multiculturalism
and the curriculum is rather that the most vocal parties
to these disputes appear unwilling to defend their views
before people with whom they disagree, and to entertain seriously
the possibility of change in the face of well-reasoned
criticism. Instead, in an equal and opposite reaction, essentialists
and deconstructionists express mutual disdain rather
than respect for their differences. And so they create two
mutually exclusive and disrespecting intellectual cultures in
academic life, evincing an attitude of unwillingness to learn
anything from the other or recognize any value in the other.
In political life writ large, there is a parallel problem of disrespect
and lack of constructive communication among the
spokespersons for ethnic, religious, and racial groups, a
problem that all too often leads to violence.
The survival of many mutually exclusive and disrespecting
cultures is not the moral promise of multiculturalism, in politics
or in education. Nor is it a realistic vision: neither universities
nor polities can effectively pursue their valued ends
without mutual respect among the various cultures they contain.
But not every aspect of cultural diversity is worthy of
respect. Some differences—racism and anti-Semitism are obvious
examples—ought not to be respected, even if expressions
of racist and anti-Semitic views must be tolerated.
The controversy on college campuses over racist, ethnic,
sexist, homophobic, and other forms of offensive speech di-
rected against members of disadvantaged groups exemplifies
the need for a shared moral vocabulary that is richer than
our rights to free speech. Suppose one grants that members
of a university community should have the right to express
racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and homophobic views provided
they do not threaten anyone. What is left to say about the
racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and homophobic remarks that
have become increasingly common on college campuses?
Nothing, if our shared moral vocabulary is limited to the
right of free speech, unless one challenges racist and anti-
Semitic statements on free speech grounds. But then the
public issue will quickly shift from the pernicious content of
the speech to the speaker’s right of free speech.
Everything is left to say, however, if we can distinguish
between tolerating and respecting differences. Toleration extends
to the widest range of views, so long as they stop short
of threats and other direct and discernible harms to individuals.
Respect is far more discriminating. Although we need
not agree with a position to respect it, we must understand
it as reflecting a moral point of view. Someone with a prochoice
position on abortion, for example, should be able to
understand how a morally serious person without ulterior
motives might be opposed to legalizing abortion. There are
serious moral arguments to be made against legalization.
And vice versa. A multicultural society is bound to include a
wide range of such respectable moral disagreements, which
offers us the opportunity to defend our views before morally
serious people with whom we disagree and thereby learn
from our differences. In this way, we can make a virtue out
of the necessity of our moral disagreements.
There is no virtue in misogyny, racial and ethnic hatred, or
rationalizations of self-interest and group interest parading
as historical or scientific knowledge. Undeserving of respect
are views that flagrantly disregard the interests of others and
therefore do not take a genuine moral position at all, or that
make radically implausible empirical claims (of racial inferi-
ority, for example) that are not grounded upon publicly
shared or accessible standards of evidence. Incidents of hate
speech on college campuses fall into this category of disrespectable
speech. Racist and anti-Semitic slogans are indefensible
on moral and empirical grounds, and add nothing
valuable to democratic deliberation or intellectual life. They
reflect a refusal to treat people as equals, along with an unwillingness
or inability to provide publicly accessible evidence
for presuming other groups of people fundamentally
inferior to oneself and one’s group. Hate speech violates the
most elementary moral injunction to respect the dignity of all
human beings, and simply presumes the fundamental inferiority
of others.
As communities dedicated to intellectual inquiry, universities
should give the broadest protection to free speech. But,
having protected everyone’s right to speak, university communities
need not and should not be silent when faced with
racist, anti-Semitic, or other disrespectable speech. Members
of academic communities—faculty, students, and administrators—
can use our right to free speech to denounce disrespectable
speech by exposing it for what it is, flagrant disregard
for the interests of other people, rationalization of
self-interest or group interest, prejudice, or sheer hatred of
humanity. There is no valuable understanding to be gained
directly from the content of disrespectable speech. Even so,
incidents of hate speech challenge members of liberal democratic
communities to articulate the most fundamental moral
presuppositions that unite us. We fail ourselves and, more
importantly, the targets of hate speech if we do not respond
to the often unthinking, sometimes drunken disregard for
the most elementary standards of human decency.
Respectable moral disagreements, on the other hand, call
for deliberation, not denunciation. Colleges and universities
can serve as models for deliberation, by encouraging rigorous,
honest, open, and intense intellectual discussions, both
inside and outside the classroom. The willingness and ability
to deliberate about our respectable differences is also part of
the democratic political ideal. Multicultural societies and
communities that stand for the freedom and equality of all
people rest upon mutual respect for reasonable intellectual,
political, and cultural differences. Mutual respect requires a
widespread willingness and ability to articulate our disagreements,
to defend them before people with whom we disagree,
to discern the difference between respectable and
disrespectable disagreement, and to be open to changing
our own minds when faced with well-reasoned criticism.
The moral promise of multiculturalism depends on the exercise
of these deliberative virtues.
