This article is a response to “How an Anti-Racism Requirement Is Hurting Duke’s English Department,” written by Sherman Criner for this magazine.
In a recent article, Sherman Criner contends that the English department’s diversity course requirement should be eliminated. While he never explicitly condemns the requirement, preferring instead to defer to the grievances of anonymous English students, his views remain evident throughout: “anti-racist pedagogy” has led to overt “reverse discrimination,” and literature, that exclusively aesthetic and apolitical endeavour, has become far too “politicized” for his liking.
Therefore, Criner asserts, the diversity course requirement should be abolished––not because of the “instructional merit” he challenges in much of his article, but because it ostensibly exposes the University to further attacks by the current administration in its crusade against academia. He attempts to frame this conclusion as the product of “non-partisan” common sense, a choice that is misleading and intellectually dishonest. In truth, Criner’s proposed capitulation aligns quite happily with his barely disguised contempt for the diversity course requirement and the so-called “anti-racist pedagogy” it represents.
Unlike Sherman, I am an English major. As a matter of fact, I am one of the “females” who apparently populate his anonymous interviewee’s many estrogen-fuelled seminars, raving on about manicures, Marxism, and marginalized voices. I could not disagree more with the notion that the diversity course requirement is a “burden.” If anything, the requirement vitally enriches the English major, rendering it ever more meaningful, relevant, and accessible to students.
Growing up in Hong Kong, I read English texts by writers who were almost exclusively white men. The overwhelming influence of the Western canon––and the fact of living in a former British colony––hegemonized the literature we were taught to the exclusion of other writers who were, indeed, marginalized. It’s important to note that I loved many of these works, and, though a staunch atheist, hope to be buried someday with a copy of East of Eden.
Rarely was I exposed to texts by marginalized authors, much less those of an identity and milieu with which my peers and I were familiar. I had to seek them out for myself: Mary Jean Chan (a brilliant Hong Kong poet), Yiyun Li (one of the finest living novelists), Andrea Long Chu (a scathing literary critic and Duke alumna), and so on. In those moments, I was not thinking about diversity. What I sought was authenticity and the meaningful literary examination of thoughts and experiences which resonated with my own; the understanding that I fundamentally understood the particularities of these writers’ experiences in ways that other readers might not. In the reading of their works I was more than moved––I was seen. And I would like for every English major at Duke, no matter their identity or racial background, to have that same revelatory experience.
Here at Duke, we have an opportunity to get the study of English literature right. As it stands, the requirements for the English major at Duke involve an introductory seminar course (English 101S), four Area Study courses (two under “Medieval and Early Modern”; one under “18th and 19th Century”; one under “Modern and Contemporary”), a Criticism, Theory or Methodology course, and the Diversity course. You then have considerable latitude in taking three additional courses of your choosing. The backbone of the English major is functionally Eurocentric, as evidenced by the Chaucer/Shakespeare/Milton-heavy two-course Area I “Medieval and Early Modern” requirement and the Area II requirement, which is mostly dominated by white authors. This is not a problem. English originated in––surprise, surprise!––England, and the people who were empowered to read and write throughout most of the language’s history were white. But that no longer reflects the current state of the language and its literature, an issue that the Diversity Requirement successfully remedies by integrating writers of color into the major.
Now, some may argue that teaching a geographically diverse array of literature falls under the purview of the Literature department and not the English department. This is an issue that Criner raises in an effort to delegitimize the relevance of the Diversity Requirement in the context of the English major. While the English department teaches literature written in English, the Literature department focuses equally on works in English and in translation, with an emphasis on their interdisciplinary nature, integrating film, philosophy, and media, among other fields into their consideration of what constitutes “literature.” Recognizing and teaching racially diverse Anglophone literature, then, is very much the responsibility of the English department.
When I think of English literature, I think of it not solely with regard to the British and American texts by white, male, and generally wealthy authors parochially considered “classics,” but as a broad and varied corpus that extends across peoples and identities and borders. I think of British or American writers of colour alongside writers from Nigeria to India, Vietnam to China, the vast gamut of countries still recovering from the vestiges of imperial rule. I think of queer writers, poor writers, writers for whom English was their second language. I think of writers who worked courageously in a tradition without precedent, writers who had the language foisted upon them––just as I did, in post-colonial Hong Kong––and with it forged beauty out of what was once tongue-tied silence.
The reading of one author need not come at the expense of another. I promise, honest to God, that I have no desire to remove T. S. Eliot from the syllabus, even if I do find him stodgy and exasperating (Prufrock can only forgive so much). I just want to see Zadie Smith and Jhumpa Lahiri right there with him, too. The study of “classic” white works need not detract from that of non-white or -traditional works, and vice versa. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness becomes infinitely more interesting when you have read Achebe’s response, An Image of Africa, regardless of whether or not you agree with him. Diversity—of people, of perspectives––does matter. English literature and its readers are better for it.
To be represented in literature might be something that people like Criner take for granted and thus have come to expect. Not so for the rest of us, who are often structurally denied and systematically othered from the literary canon. (Of course, not all white people necessarily feel “seen” in the existing literary canon; the inclusion in our coursework of more Jewish, Irish, or white Latin American writers, for instance, would be a worthy pursuit.) That literature by people like me––and, crucially, people unlike me––is codified into the requirements for the English major at Duke strikes me as both a privilege and a delight. That people like Criner would like to strip it away is devastating, absurd, and not in the least bit surprising.
Contrary to the various baffling claims made by Criner’s interviewees, the study of English is not at all a purely aesthetic endeavour. Were any English major to read texts simply as “aesthetic objects,” I’d venture to guess that they think Jay Gatsby is just, like, a cool, driven guy, or that Wilde actually endorses the sacrifices Dorian Gray makes in his pursuit of everlasting youth.
Literature is and always will be inherently political, informed by issues of gender, race, class, etc––none of which conservatives, despite their best efforts, can scrub away by sheer force of will. Notice, in Criner’s article, the language of “racial resentment” and the blanket designation of social movements as “protests”: this, and the rest of the article, is profoundly political, though dressed in a contrived form of apolitical, “common sense” rhetoric. At its core, the study of English is an exercise in empathy. What greater test of empathy is there than to read works by authors not remotely like oneself? To be immersed in new or unfamiliar narratives, and hence to acknowledge the lived realities that exist beyond one’s own?
According to Criner, the decline in English majors at Duke “correlate[s] precisely with the department’s intensification of its focus on diversity and anti-racist pedagogy.” But correlation does not, as he clearly implies, equal causation. What the decline in English majors at colleges across the nation really reveals is a culture that has grown obsessively pre-professional and systematically devalued the humanities as a result. No sane person saddled with student debt would pursue an English major if constantly told, however erroneously, that they would wind up unemployed. My point being: these decreasing numbers have very little, if anything, to do with the limited engagement that the English major at Duke requires with authors outside of the Western canon.
The history of Duke University is also integral to understanding the diversity course requirement as not only critically necessary but long overdue. Only in 1961 did the University begin to admit non-white students––but, even then, restrooms and lecture halls remained segregated for years. Five years later, Black students at Duke peacefully occupied the Allen Building, where the English department is now housed, advocating for the proper recognition of their civil rights through a series of demands. Over half a century after his death, Julian Abele, the Black architect who designed much of Duke’s campus, was formally recognized with the renaming of West Campus’ main quad to “Abele Quad” in 2016.
Just last year, however, Duke discontinued the Reginaldo Howard Memorial Scholarship Program, a merit scholarship for “top applicants of African descent,” following the Supreme Court decision to strike down affirmative action. Then, in September, the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke renamed its Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Community to the “Office of Culture and Belonging.” One step forward, two steps back. So goes the unrelenting assault on the diversity that––dare I say it––has made this country great.
Criner’s proposal, in my view, is racist. What he is suggesting would de-center engagement with courses that embrace the beauty, breadth, and diversity of English literature and its authors, returning only white authors to the forefront of our major requirements. It would, in other words, effectively discriminate against non-white authors, readers, and students. (To be clear: I am not accusing Criner of being a racist. I don’t know the guy. But good people can make bad, inadvertently racist arguments, and I am of the belief that this is one of them.)
Let’s say we get rid of the diversity course requirement for fear of the hypothetical federal funding cuts coming our way. What then? Should we also eradicate those courses, along with the terribly “Marxist” critical theory they espouse? Why not go a step further and get rid of those pesky students of color while we’re at it, in case their presence too strongly attracts the ire of certain political officials? This may be hyperbole, but I say it to interrogate the implications of the argument that universities should assiduously reshape their academic and co-curricular structures in line with the ideology of the current administration.
Far from a failure on the English department’s part, then, the Diversity Requirement represents their lasting commitment to the study of great English literature. It is not a liability but an asset. Criner’s racist proposal is an insult to the Duke students who fought so fiercely for their rights in the 1960s, an insult to the immense value of diversity on this campus, and an insult to the power and promise of literature itself. And this our English department cannot, and should not, abide.
by Tanya Wan
