Multiculturalism: Battleground or Meeting Ground?

Abstract

Is multiculturalism a battleground or a meeting ground? To answer this question, Ronald Takaki identifies two emerging perspectives—particularism and pluralism. The culture war over the content of the curriculum is presented as a debate, a clash of ideas: Allan Bloom, Diane Ravitch, and Arthur Schlesinger versus Gerald Graff, Henry Louis Gates, and Takaki himself. The university should be a stimulating contested terrain where scholars of different viewpoints engage each other over the meaning and content of culture, but whether it can become such a place of intellectual encounters may be in doubt. © 1993, SAGE Periodicals Press. All rights reserved.