With help from National Association of Scholars, 11 colleges have begun programs using the Great Books curriculum, designed to expose students to the best of Western civilization. The programs vary in the degree to which they adhere to Western works; some faculty are including non-Western civilization. Securing campus approval for the programs has…

A Wellesley College (Massachusetts) requirement that students take at least one course on a non-European culture is being reevaluated by faculty. Some feel the requirement is vague, and both conservatives and liberals express concern over emphasis on multiculturalism. (MSE)

Widespread demonstrations at China's major universities highlight the frustration many young people feel about university conditions and their future job prospects and dramatize long-standing divisions among China's leaders on contacts with the West. (MSE)

A report by the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities urges colleges to revitalize teaching of the humanities in undergraduate curricula. College faculty and academic administrators are cited as responsible for much decline in humanities study, and increased science education, technological literacy, and study of nonwestern…

The text of a report based on the findings of the National Endowment for the Humanities' Study Group on the State of Learning in the Humanities in Higher Education is presented with a brief summary. It cites the decline of the college curriculum, particularly the humanities, and places responsibility on faculty and administrators. (MSE)

A $140,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities has allowed Heritage College (Washington) to develop a set of courses that incorporate literature and philosophy from Hispanic and American Indian traditions, as well as from Western and non-Western cultures in a thematic approach to the humanities. (DB)

A recent report of the American Comparative Literature Association urges that the college comparative literature curriculum be made less Eurocentric, less elitist, and open to study of nonliterary texts. Reforms are based on existing trends toward multiculturalism and postcolonial studies. (MSE)

In March, after two years of debate that followed complaints by minority students, Stanford's faculty voted to replace the university's year-long Western culture requirement with a new requirement called "Cultures, Ideas and Values." Courses will be required to give attention to the issues of race, gender, and class. (MLW)

Debate over the Stanford University (California) freshman humanities requirement, hailed by some as the birth of multiculturalism, by others as the death of the Western canon, has been rekindled as Stanford reconsiders its curriculum. Some consider possible changes a political, not academic, action. Reformers favor focusing on development of…