Rick Shweder on Multiculturalism and Diversity: Half Hour of Heterodoxy #9

Apologies for the audio and video problems in this episode.

In this episode, Chris Martin interviews Rick (Richard) Shweder, cultural anthropologist at University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development. He is author and editor of numerous books including Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology and Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology. His recent research examines the scopes and limits of pluralism, the tension between diversity and equality, and the multicultural challenge in Western liberal democracies.

You can learn more Rick Shweder at his website.

A new paper by Rick, entitled “The End of the Modern Academy: At The University of Chicago, For Example” will be published in Social Research this fall.

0:00 Introduction

2:15 The undergraduate curriculum and multiculturalism: inclusion vs. sovereignty

6:50 Intersectionality is not consistent with solidarity

9:30 The fracture within cultural anthropology

17:30 America allows a lot of cultural diversity

22:00 Confusionism

24:45 Do international students help viewpoint diversity?

29:00 Opposing perspectives on academic subculture

Selected Quote:
"Once you start all of a sudden emphasizing status or seeing yourself as a tribal institution with different groups and different tribes, each of whom is really an interest group promoting their picture of the world and really is not interested in challenges to it; or challenges get perceived as offensive attacks or as harms, then you’ve changed the nature of the [academic] subculture. Too what extent that subculture has already changed is one of the things I know that people at Heterodox Academy are concerned with. I certainly am concerned about it. And whether or not the picture of the modern academy that I just gave is sustainable, how many people are prepared to defend it, these are all issues of the day."
 

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