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Courses that explore these questions are increasingly popular among students in general, but the primary audience for minority-oriented curriculums is usually the minorities themselves. Typically, they seek courses that reassure as much as instruct them. At San Francisco State College and also in that city's two-year City College, students can minor in gay and lesbian studies, with such offerings as Gay Male Relationships and Sexual Well-Being. The City College department was founded in 1989, says chairman Jack Collins, because "it will raise the self-esteem of lesbian and gay students who will realize that they are complete people, that we do have recognizable and describable cultures."
The chief risk in any ideologically based curriculum is that it can promote tribalism and downplay the value of discovering common cultural ground. The very idea of the melting pot, of assimilation, indeed of a common American identity, is under fire in some academic circles. Warns Diane Ravitch, adjunct professor of history and education at Columbia: "If we teach kids to connect themselves to one group defined by race or language or religion, then we have no basis for public education. We need to retain a sense of the common venture."
Colleges are as subject to fad and fashion as the rest of society -- perhaps more, for the client base of students turns over quickly. But few scholars believe the current intellectual battles will end soon -- particularly as the confrontation permeates other levels of education. In the process, the American tradition of tolerance in diversity, an uneven tradition at best, may be strained as rarely before.