University President Lee C. Bollinger: the Core Curriculum is not the University of Michigan. A "barrage of multiculturalism" and sham diversity cannot improve Western civilization. Yet, as we speak, committees and pundits alike push ahead in their attempts to "diversify" the Core. More often than not, their warped thinking holds that any canon composed of "dead white men" is as irrelevant as it is illegitimate. True to their progressive moniker, they seek constant, destabilizing change in a curriculum designed to represent an institution some 4,000 years old.

In the late 1980s, the brilliant and lucid de Bary Report concerned with the "haphazard or arbitrary insertion of non-Western material" affirmed "the primary focus on Western civilization." The Standing Committee on the Core, a product of this report, according to Columbia scholar Timothy Cross, established the "Extended Core," better known today as the Major Cultures requirement. Although the expectation to learn about another civilization before graduation is quite reasonable, it was not enough for progressive voices; it never is. While some criticized white students for selecting certain cultures over others, still more championed smaller classes to mirror the older Core classes. Apparently, personal choice and economic considerations don't matter much. Mandatory classes of intimate sizes place a burden on already limited resources: space and teachers with specialization. With little success on these fronts, progressives quickly realized the most efficient way to counter "misogynist," "Eurocentric," and "White Civ," as it has been called, was to transform the most fundamental classes themselves: Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization.

Change came in 1987 with the addition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Considering that women first entered Columbia in 1984, it's no surprise that the curriculum changed only three years later. Here, however, the issue is not whether the text should be considered part of Western civilization, for Austen is one of many European authors. Rather, we must ask, "What was the impetus behind the addition?" The answer is clear: diversity. Does this mean, however, that the text isn't worthy of study? No. Personally, I believe it would make a fine text for a more specialized English literature class. What, then, is the problem?

The goal of Lit Hum and CC is to introduce the student to those magnificent texts representative of history's greatest intellects-more specifically, those who had a role in shaping our world. We know this as the Western Canon. Those revolutionary texts, however, span a great epoch that begins with Homer and stretches up to today. This leaves professors and curriculum designers a mere four semesters to provide students with a sound historical grounding. Thus, the great conflict with these new "additions" is not the worth or the value of the text-although that may be debated-but what we must sacrifice in return. Since Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Virginia Woolf were added, the list keeps expanding.

To make room for a new text, or in this case, texts, classics must either be dropped, shortened, or combined. Take, for example, The Federalist Papers. Putting aside the simple fact that two of the three authors were Columbians, only one, Federalist 10, has lasted until today. To further denigrate the classic texts of American history, Federalist 10 is clumped together with the Constitution and Bill of Rights (note that the Declaration of Independence is conspicuously absent) as part of a "Revolution Day." These formative texts are essentially allotted the same amount of time for discussion and study as Thomas Jefferson's and Frederick Douglass' notes on slavery, as well as declarations from the French Revolution and the Haitian Constitution.

Worse, only 15 years ago, Sigmund Freud marked the chronological end of CC. Today, the selections spiral further into the 20th century, up to the 1980s with Catharine MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. These latest texts mark an era of radicalism and progressive doctrine, including, but not limited to, Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. In response, we're told that the Core is topical, not simply a survey of the Western culture. CC presents the inclusion of such points of view as a "response" to a historical dialogue. If we buy this argument, and a case may be made for it, we're forced to conclude that the curriculum is biased toward a certain ideology. If feminist and black scholars criticize the faulty thinking of Aristotle or Jefferson and get included in the curriculum, why is there no text from this modern era critical of Karl Marx or secular progressivism? Why no Friedrich Hayek? Why no Ayn Rand (a woman, no less)? What of William James' classic, Varieties of Religious Experience?

It would seem that these advocates for "change" seek nothing more than a canonical affirmative action program. Not only have their latest picks been motivated by such overt considerations as gender and race (I'll neglect the ideological bent), but there is no talk of opening the Canon to excluded authors (read: dead white men) of the past: Boethius, Erasmus, Thomas More, Thomas Paine, and Carl von Clausewitz come to mind. The same critique applies to Lit Hum; why read Woolf as an example of stream of consciousness, but not William Faulkner? All of these authors are talented-that's a given-but should race and gender really play a role in deciding Columbia's Canon?

Contemporary whims are slowly eroding the foundations of our history. Somewhere, Jacques Barzun is crying.

Chris Kulawik is a Columbia College sophomore. Chris Shrugged runs alternate Wednesdays.