Turning academia into a cafeteria - Los Angeles Times DECADES AGO, I clutched an official New York state examination booklet as a proctor threatened me and hundreds of my nervous schoolmates with a felony conviction if we cheated. We dutifully signed a statement that declared we would not. Students still sign declarations on examination booklets, but the lingo has changed. Choice is now in. The official blue examination booklet at UCLA, where I teach, requires students to affix their signatures to a clause swearing that they have not committed "academic dishonesty." The penalty for transgression, it warns, is suspension or dismissal. Yet instead of dropping it there, the credo continues and the tone shifts. "There are alternatives to academic dishonesty," it suggests, and counsels that the student see a professor or dean "to discuss other choices."

This seems to be a nice example of how discourse might impact on actions (which of course includes other discourse). The concept of choice is part of the market metaphor in education but it seems to have found its way into a seemingly unrelated part of discourse.

Of course, the author uses it to make a broader point about the ills of left-wing jargon, which while not unfounded, seem just too easy a mark to be as consequential as he seems to imply.

 We live in a choice-addled society. The jargon of choice, a second cousin of diversity and multiculturalism, undermines intellectual integrity and coherence. "Choice" and "diversity" are universal passwords that unlock all doors. Who can oppose them without appearing authoritarian?

Statements like these are just as seductive and lack intellectual integrity just as much as the easy mark which multiculturalism seems to have become. But the author's concluding words are certainly worth pondering (Feyrabend and some of the early pragmatists certainly spring to mind): "Mesmerized by the jargon of choice, we forget a basic principle: Truth itself is partisan."