Here is a somewhat different way of analyzing the campus battles over

"great books" versus "multiculturalism" or "diversity."

Participants can be sorted into groups depending on what kind of works

they think should be available or required in schools, colleges, and other

venues. "Canonical classicists" want everyone to read great

works from Plato to NATO. "Diversity proponents" want everyone

to be exposed to works written (or composed, or painted) by people

of multiple ethnic, cultural, religious, sexual, and racial identities—in

order to promote empathy, respect, tolerance, etc. And true "multiculturalists"

want people of different cultural backgrounds to be able to study intensively

works created by people like them, so that a campus will be home to multiple

cultural communities.

This is one dimension that we can use to categorize the antagonists in

the campus culture wars. But there is also another dimension. At one end

of this second spectrum are those who emphasize that students should experience,

appreciate, understand, or at least be exposed to works created in the

past or in other places. Somewhat contentiously, I’ll call this the "consumerist"

approach. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who stress that

we should create new cultural products, including stories and paintings,

performances, critical interpretations, and historical narratives.

Putting the two dimensions together, we see that there are at least six

possible positions in the debate:

	canonical classicism	diversity	multiculturalism
consumerism	a	b	c
creativity	d	e	f

The standard conservative view is (a)—there is a fixed supply of

great works from the past that students should experience and appreciate.

The standard diversity view is (b)—everyone should experience works

by authors of color. And the standard multiculturalism view is (c)—people

should be encouraged to study works by members of their own groups, using

their own cultures’ criteria of excellence. These positions are "zero-sum":

adding a text to the curriculum may require taking another text out. In

contrast, options (d)-(f) are potentially "win-win," and I think

they are underdeveloped. There is a fair amount of (e)—i.e., people

of all colors and creeds should collaborate because this will create the

most interesting new works of art. But I think conservatives should work

on developing (d), if indeed it is a viable position. And multiculturalists

should develop (f), which would amount to the view that people of various

cultures should be assisted in producing new works, thereby contributing

to the global commons.