ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter key themes in the rise of political correctness in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s were identified. A consistent message of many conservative texts was to show how the educational status quo – built on the disinterested pursuit of truth, the dissemination of canonical texts, and access to higher education through individual merit – had been disrupted by forms of political correctness. The key purpose behind this chapter is to look at the extent to which this mounting campaign against PC was manufactured by right-leaning intellectuals and commentators, and thus to ask whether PC was simply a convenient derogatory label to discredit broader left-wing political ideas. Furthermore, if PC causes are truly representative of the left, how universal is the support for it on the left itself? Put simply, is PC a straw man manufactured by the right, or has it always been a brainchild of the left? Throughout the chapter the broader question of the usefulness of the categories right and left will also be considered, as well as to ask what light can be shed on this question by a consideration of PC.
