Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education

This study will provide a summary of Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, with a major focus on Chapter 8, "Illiberal Education." The book is the author's argument against the tendency of American universities to bend their policies and practices to fit the "politically correct" pressures of minority groups. D'Souza argues that such pressure groups and university officials who bend to that pressure are destroying the very foundation on which the liberal principles of higher learning depend. He is pessimistic about any meaningful change in the near-future which would alter this "illiberal" trend.

Chapter 1, "The Victim's Revolution on Campus," the author declares that he is sympathetic to the struggle of minority students for equality and justice, being a first-generation immigrant from India himself. However, he argues that the policies such students are forcing the universities to adopt will not advance the cause of justice or equality.

D'Souza lists examples of such protests and the changes brought about to appease minority students. These changes have been in admissions policy, paying for college, learning and teaching, campus life, student behavior and language. It is meant to transform the university "in the name of multiculturalism and diversity" (133). It is

a revolution on behalf of minority students. Its mission is to put an end to bigoted attitudes which permit perceived social injustice to continue, to rectify past

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nts desire for justice, but he feels their methods are counter-productive: "After the takeovers ended, the black community remained as troubled and fragmented as ever" (122). Chapter 5, "The New Censorship," covers efforts to censor racist speech at the University of Michigan. The author does not condone such overt racist behavior, but he argues that censorship is not the answer. Such efforts to "regulate and enforce a social etiquette have created an enormous artificiality of discourse among peers, and thus have become an obstacle to that true openness that seems to be the only sure footing for equality" (156). Chapter 6, "The Last Shall Be First," covers the efforts by Duke University to change curricula and faculty hiring policy to conform to multicultural demands. The curricula changes have been designed to reflect the view that all values and cultures are relative, that there is no absolute truth. The hiring policy changed to fit a minority quota system. In both cases, D'Souza argues that the result is negative: "Courting the latest intellectual fashions," Duke has "adopted strategies which have sorely depreciated traditional academic standards to the detriment of its students' academic prospects" (193). Chapter 7, "Tyr

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