Universities were designed to educate rather than intimidate. Yet one does not have to look too far to appreciate that intimidation is replacing education at our centres of higher learning. An increasingly pervasive and intrusive culture of political correctness has been systematically destroying the intellectual fabric of institutions of higher education around Australia and throughout much of the world for quite some time. Intellectual freedom is an invaluable commodity and one which is too often taken for granted. But increasingly we find that this freedom is coming under direct and sustained attack from a culture of correctness which bullies us into behaving and thinking "correctly". Yet the culture of correctness is most notable not because of its alleged desire to make the intellectual world a more democratic and equal one, but rather for its attempt to silence any dissenting voice and for mobilising so-called democratic principles only when it furthers the political agenda of a given interest group. And of course it is these groups which decide what is and what is not 'correct'. It is the culture of correctness which attempts to suppress those very notions of freedom which allowed it to blossom in the first place. The trouble with all of this is that a university in which students and academics feel scared to say what they think for fear of reprisal from this new breed of bureaucratic thought police is not a university at all. Rather, it is a centre for indoctrination where the law of the absurd reigns supreme and where useless intellectual pursuits masquerading as worthy research get given the time of day simply because criticising them would offend the sensitivities of the powers that be.

I read with horror the other day a plan developed at the University of Massachusetts entitled 'Vision 2000'. Sounds innocuous enough. But rest assured it is a venal and sinister programme of academic 'streamlining'. The plan calls for a complete restructuring of all academic departments through the systematic institutionalisation of women friendly pedagogies. This transformation, it is argued, would be "best conducted with guidance from an autonomous women's studies site". One of the main aims of 'Vision 2000' is to "introduce gender into all programs of institutional research". All students and academics would, under this scheme, be forced to undergo sensitivity training and U. Mass' academics would be punished if their pedagogies were deemed not to be women-friendly. The 'Vision 2000' document bans the overrepresentation of males in any academic course. Yet the most worrying aspect of all of this is that teachers who do not comply with 'The Vision' risk being denied promotions, benefits and pay-rises. What then does one do when gender is just not relevant to an overall argument?. For instance, gender is of no consequence to an essay dealing with Israeli hydropolitics and water management schemes on the West Bank. The supporters of 'Vision 2000' would presumably argue otherwise - any essay on Israeli hydropolitics, they would claim, is fundamentally flawed without a treatment of gender. This is of course, absolute nonsense and the notion that one could be punished for not supporting this lunatic scheme is utterly stupefying. Daphne Patai, professor of literature at U. Mass, quite rightly describes 'Vision 2000' as "a stunningly imperialistic move to put in place a questionable feminist agenda, thinly disguised as a plea for equal opportunity and fairness".

The official motive behind 'Vision 2000' and schemes like it is essentially an intellectual one. Knowledge, argue some feminists and cultural theorists, is socially constructed and until recently all knowledge has been constructed by white males with little or no appreciation for the issues of gender and cultural difference. Consequently, university students have for years been spoon-fed the phallocentric propaganda of an entrenched patriarchal elite and, worst of all, they have been believing it. New knowledges must therefore be constructed (for by definition all knowledge is constructed) which deliberately privilege the histories of previously marginalised groups. After one cuts through the not-so-user-friendly lexicon of cultural and feminist theory, it becomes apparent that the underlying assumption behind these ideas is not an unfair one. There is no doubt about the fact that this approach has been useful in giving a voice to important issues which have up until recently been voiceless. Yet increasingly, as projects such as 'Vision 2000' illustrate, the enterprise has unashamedly exchanged its intellectual motives for aggressive political and financial agendas which are immune to criticism. For while these groups like to give the illusion that you have a choice the only real choice you have is to blindly support their ruthless personal ambitions. Anything less than this is labelled as being 'racist', 'sexist' or 'culturally reductionist'.

Part 2...