by Benjamin R. Barber

About the author: Benjamin R. Barber is the Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science and director of the Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is the author of Strong Democracy and An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America.

Escalating internecine warfare in a Europe that was supposedly undergoing an uneventful process of “democratization” in the east and forging a single European political and economic entity has brought a predominantly American debate into global relief. Multiculturalism has become a haunting specter for Europe and the world beyond. Hence, although political correctness, a preoccupation with race and gender, and controversies over the academic canon—along with the generic focus on multiculturalism that gives rise to...