Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

BOOK REVIEWS - John C. Chalberg: Dinesh D'Souza: Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus. The Free Press, 1991. 319 pp

probing questions and telling rejoinders, but no advocate of "illiberal education" should have reason to feel that his or her views were not liberally and fairly (and fatally?) aired. The issues that D'Souza explores can be grouped as follows: the baneful effects of affirmative action admissions policies (at Berkeley), the battles over a core curriculum (at Stanford), efforts to limit on campus free speech (at Michigan), varieties of racism (at Michigan and Howard Universities), the impact of politicized faculty hiring (at Duke), and what he calls the "tyranny of the minority" (at Harvard). Each chapter opens with an episode and expands to a history of the policy under review. Included within the history is a defense of the policy (in the words of its defenders) and a critique of the same (either by D'Souza or by an inhabitant of the academy, usually an undergraduate who willing to talk honestly with him, occasionally a similarly persuaded faculty member, and infrequently an incautious administrator). For example, one Yat-pang Au was rejected for admission to the Berkeley class of 1991, despite test scores which placed him in the 98th percentile nationally and which ranked him higher than fifty percent of those freshmen who did manage to gain admission to Berkeley in the fall of 1987. What was the problem? Questionable recommendations? No. A dearth of extra-curricular activities or community service in his high school portfolio? No. The problem was race. Yat-pang Au was denied admission to the University of California-Berkeley because he is an Asian-American. Now Berkeley is the jewel of the California state system. Historically, only excellent students qualify for admission. "Merit" is an abused term in American society, but Berkeley had always taken pride in adhering to the principle of merit admission. It still claims to do so, but "merit" at Berkeley today has a slightly different meaning and a thoroughly different result. Under the leadership of Chancellor Ira Heyman the university decided to use merit criteria to measure differences in academic preparation and test scores only within racial groups. In sum, Au was a victim of an unpublicized, but nonetheless real, affirmative action quota system. Once again irony, or, in D'Souza's view, "unjust irony," intrudes. Quotas were initially established to increase the 162