by Brian Caterino

WHAT WOULD A truly cosmopolitan society look like? At the least, it would be a society based on mutual respect toward others and toward different ways of life. While it would accept notions of equal justice for all, it would also recognize and respect different approaches to a good life. We tend to imagine a cosmopolitan world as an egalitarian one, and while it's true that some people can emerge from hard times with their integrity intact, it is the exception that proves the rule. For most, a life of struggling to make ends meet isn't conducive to a cosmopolitan ideal.

A good deal of the debate going on in universities and the larger culture about diversity focuses only on one side of the equation. Because many questions are concerned primarily with acknowledging the right to speak and be heard as members of distinct group or culture, questions of inequality central to integrity are left aside. Parties to culture wars clash over the question of whether some groups and cultures are subordinated and unable to articulate their voices in the standard curriculum, or on the other hand, whether there are some universal standards that need to be maintained. These are important debates that I have engaged in myself, but they are not sufficient. We tend to exaggerate how much progress will be made toward the recognition of diversity through the culture wars alone.

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