ACCUTE

NEWSLETTER
Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E5

Supplement on the "Political Correctness" Controversy At the May 1991 Annual General Meeting of ACCUTE, which took place shortly after the Maclean's i s s u e on "political correctness" appeared, a motion from the oor called upon ACCUTE to "consider responding to Maclean's *The Silencers' with an article rather than simply a letter to the editor." That motion was passed by a majority of members present at the meeting. The Executive delegated VicePresident Professor Michael Keefer to respond to Maclean's and to a s i m i l a r, i f b r i e f e r, p i e c e , i n t h e

Globe and Mall, Neither agreed to

print Professor Reefer's response but an extended version did appear in the Bulletin of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, which is sent to about 12,000 people in universities, granting agencies, ministries of education and parliaments across the c o u n t r y. The so-called "pc" debate is not, of course, a black-and-white, us-and-them issue. The range of the criticisms levelled under the accusation of "political correctness" is sufciently broad that many thinking people can nd

themselves on different sides of the issue depending on what the specic object of the accusation is on any given occasion. Nor are ACCUTE members all of a mind on this issue. A majority of the members attending the AGM did ask us to take it on; others have since written to complain about our having done so. What is certain is that much of the discussion on the issue is being conducted in terms of polemic and not argument, opinion and not information. This is particularly true of discussion in the press. What is also certain is that the discussion is one which draws on, and divides, our discipline so thoroughly that it is one we all should be informed about. To that end, the ACCUTE executive decided to prepare and distribute this Supplement to the Newsletter. The Supplement contains four documents. The rst is an annotated list of books, essays, and occasional pieces by journalists and scholars about "political correctness." The second begins to address the fact that material realities such as funding are at stake in this debate; it gives a brief account of recent interventions in the American university system. Both these sections have been prepared by Michael Keefer. The last two documents are reprints of the "Statement on the Curriculum Debate" issued by the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association in May 1991 and the "Statement on the Political Correctness' Controversy" issued in July 1991 by a special committee of the American Association of University Professors. The inclusion of these last two documents is in no sense an attempt to "americanize" the debate in Canada. Rather it reects the fact that the "political correctness" debate is