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In Title U of the arts and cultural affairs law, Article 57-B, the New York legislature just passed a bill to create an “Armistad Commission.” This group, to be appointed by legislative leaders and the secretary of state, will operate under the premise that “it is the policy of the state of New York that the history of the African slave trade, slavery in America, the depth of their impact in our society, and the triumphs of African-Americans and their significant contributions to the development of this country is the proper concern of all people, particularly students enrolled in the schools of the state of New York.”

I can’t imagine that there’s any historian in the country who would disagree with this statement. Nor can I imagine that such themes are not extensively covered in every high school (and college) US history course in New York State. So, what will the commission—whose purview includes “teacher training activities,” and therefore involves both high school and college-level matters, do? Among other things, it will make “suggestions for revisions to the curricula and textbooks used to educate the students of New York state to reflect a more adequate inclusion of issues identified by the commission.”

Whoa. Isn’t that exactly what the Kansas board of Education is doing with intelligent design? Where is the AAUP, or the CUNY faculty union, denouncing the threat to academic freedom inherent in a politically-appointed board making “suggestions for revisions to the curricula and textbooks”? I’m not holding my breath waiting for either group to act.

This week's New Republic looks at the similarity between the radical left and radical right in another forum, with an article by Empire State professor Ian Reifowitz noting the similar rationales behind the Philadelphia plan to require a one-year high school course in African and African-American history and that of a rural PA school district to require that ninth grade biology students learn "intelligent design." (A few weeks ago, my colleague Tim Burke critiqued the plan as well.)

In Reifowitz's words,

Despite the apparent differences on the surface between the decisions taken by these two Pennsylvania school boards, they share a similar logic. The proponents of each justify its new requirement because it reflects (and by extension reinforces) the culture or religion of one particular group that happens to be the majority community in its school district. The decisions exemplify the parallels between the theocratic Christian right and radical multiculturalism, both of which reject the notion that Americans form a pluralistic yet unified nation. The Christian right is anti-pluralist; radical multiculturalism is hyper-pluralist.

Seems as if we have the same type of convergence in New York.

Posted on Thursday, August 11, 2005 at 1:00 PM | Comments (19) | Return

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