ABSTRACT
Previously Stanford steered all incoming students through a core curriculum – an examination of the philosophy, literature, and history of the West, focusing on such thinkers as Plato, Dante, Machiavelli, Voltaire, Marx, and Freud; and on such events as the ascent of Greece, the fall of Rome, mediaeval Christian civilisation, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French and Scottish Enlightenment, and the founding of modern states. The new CIV [Cultures, Ideas, Values] would substitute a multiple track system, each examining an issue or field, such as Technology and Values, through a cross-cultural survey of ideas and mores. Such an approach would include Western perspectives, but also African, Japanese, Indian, and Middle Eastern ones. Since the number of texts that can be assigned and discussed in a semester is limited, the relative importance of Western thinkers would be correspondingly reduced. Some of them, such as Homer, Virgil, and Aquinas, would have to make way for new non-Western voices. A special effort was promised not to imply any superiority of western ideas or Western culture – all cultures would be sustained on a plane of equality.
