The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education.

Abstract

In this well-written and well-researched short volume, John K. Wilson takes upon himself the task of defending all liberals and leftists in the academy against the charge that they are imposing an oppressive "political correctness" (PC) that stifles academic freedom and free expression on campus, indoctrinates students with radical ideologies, and promotes intolerance of any dissent from the right.Wilson is well equipped for his task.As the editor of Democratic Culture, the newsletter of Teachers for a Democratic Culture, and as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, he claims to have "some insight into the darker side of academic life" (p.159).To his personal experiences, Wilson adds thorough journalistic investigations of a large number of notorious cases of PC oppression, each of which is well told and documented.The result is a solid rebuttal of books like Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education (NY: Vintage, 1992).Wilson's response to the conservative criticisms has two parts.First he exposes political correctness as a "myth" built up from distortions, anecdotes, and untruths.Second, he constructs a counter-case that the real threat to academic freedom comes from the right--that a "conservative correctness" reigns instead.The notion of myth is central to Wilson's overall thesis.He does not claim that incidents of political correctness--intolerance of conservative views by liberal and leftist faculty and students--never occur.They do, and Wilson documents several clear cases.But political correctness is a myth because these and other isolated incidents, many misreported or distorted by repetition, are taken as representative evidence of a repressive campus environment."The distinguishing mark of a myth," he quotes Walter Lippmann,"is that truth and error, fact and fable, report and fantasy, are all on the same plane of credibility" (p.2).Given this standard, political correctness is indeed a myth.In his introductory chapter, Wilson outlines the key elements of the myth-creation process and the history of the PC idea.Two techniques are