Word: paradigm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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PUCC sought a new paradigm for student government at Harvard. It called on the council to use its capacity to speak for the student body and exploit its unique relationship with the administration to advance a number of liberal political causes...
...second tenet which disturbs us. What the AAC seems to be saying here is that racism is so firmly built into the system that non-white minorities cannot be truly empowered in America without a paradigm shift. This shift would take us away from an emphasis on universal truths to a view of knowledge as simply a conglomeration of different perspectives. This is problematic for a number of reasons...
...second problem is that, as the AAC describes it, this paradigm shift will come about mostly (though not entirely) through the study of non-white ethnic groups. This seems to imply that racism in America against non-whites is somehow inherently different from the prejudice faced by white ethnicities throughout this nation's history. This is not necessarily true--anyone who studies the problems of, say, the immigrant Irish and Jews at the turn of the century will realize that these groups faced discrimination that was much stronger and more destructive than that leveled against, say, Asians and Hispanics today...
Therefore, we believe that ethnic studies should be strengthened insofar as its goal is to change the racist attitudes that have prevented non-white minorities from enjoying equity in our society, but not to the extent that a paradigm shift is sought. While this pursuit definitely requires the study of immigrant cultures, literature, etc., it does so as a means to an end. That end is a uniquely American culture which is not a bland homogenization but rather a synergistic whole that is greater than the sum of its ethnic components. In other words, the contemporary experiences of non-white...
...tradition of viewing freedom as a value. Alexander Yakovlev, who was a top adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet President, once put it this way: "We're not just trying to establish a reformed system. We're trying to dismantle the 1,000-year-old Russian paradigm of unfreedom." Trying--and perhaps failing once more. The words Ivan Turgenev wrote in The Dream more than a century ago, some years after Alexander II's decision to free the serfs, could apply today: "And once again after years I traverse your roads, And once again I find you, the same...