DECADES AGO, I clutched an official New York state examination booklet as a proctor threatened me and hundreds of my nervous schoolmates with a felony conviction if we cheated. We dutifully signed a statement that declared we would not.
Students still sign declarations on examination booklets, but the lingo has changed. Choice is now in. The official blue examination booklet at UCLA, where I teach, requires students to affix their signatures to a clause swearing that they have not committed "academic dishonesty." The penalty for transgression, it warns, is suspension or dismissal. Yet instead of dropping it there, the credo continues and the tone shifts. "There are alternatives to academic dishonesty," it suggests, and counsels that the student see a professor or dean "to discuss other choices."
"Discuss other choices"? I have pondered this wisdom -- and its plural formulation. What other choices? "There are alternatives to academic dishonesty." How many alternatives are there? Five? 10? Is honesty just one alternative among many and, depending on the season, another might be equally acceptable? What would a good professor or dean say to the student who exclaims that academic honesty is just not working and that he or she wants to pursue other "choices"?
We live in a choice-addled society. The jargon of choice, a second cousin of diversity and multiculturalism, undermines intellectual integrity and coherence. "Choice" and "diversity" are universal passwords that unlock all doors. Who can oppose them without appearing authoritarian?
These terms dazzle an academic and liberal left, which regularly uses them to disassemble a curriculum. For instance, reformers some years ago floated to great effect a proposal "to teach the conflict." If some instructors could not decide whether a classic English novel was homophobic or imperialist, they should "teach" the "conflict" and let the students decide.
The notion was seductive, but it opened the way to teach anything and everything in the name of airing a dispute. Were television situation comedies great literature? Teach the conflict. For a while, one counted on resolute conservatives to resist this intellectual guff and to remind us that not every view is worth teaching. No longer. Conservatives and even religious fundamentalists now talk the talk of diversity and choice.
