The E-Journal of Intercultural Relations, Summer 1998, Vol. 1(3)  
Originally Posted: 8/3/98
 

Interviews: On The Past and Future of Intercultural Relations Study

 

An Interview with Jaime S. Wurzel

 

Interviewed by Abby Yanow
Associate Editor, The Edge
(The interview with Dr. Wurzel was conducted in early July, 1998.)

 

THE PAST: WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?

Yanow: Could you tell me about your academic background. Where did you do your training? Your Ph.D.?

Wurzel: After a B.A. at Brandeis, I went to Columbia to get a doctorate in history. I completed all my studies, and I had an existential moment in which I was doing research in Argentina, because it was the Latin American history of ideas that I was doing. I was working on my doctoral dissertation in Buenos Aires, in the archives, and up in the street I could hear the horses and the tanks. It was the time that Eva Perón was coming back - there was big turmoil in Argentina. So everybody advised me to leave, and it was really scary times - it was the beginning of the whole process of the Dirty War, where people were being kidnapped and disappeared. So I was advised to leave - I left my research incomplete, and I went back to the States. And I had this existential moment of whether I wanted to be a historian or not, and I decided I wanted to be a teacher instead. They gave me a master's, and I did some certification courses, and I became a high school and junior high school history teacher in New York. Which was an experience in itself, because it was my first time in an American school. I never went to an American school, but then suddenly I was teaching in NYC.

So after that, I still had this inclination for academics, but I decided on a doctorate in education. Then the government was giving out a lot of money to people like me, who were bilingual. So I appeared at Boston University. They gave me this wonderful scholarship to get a doctorate, and I created my own - there was nobody there to help me with intercultural topics, so I floundered and read books, and created my own program. I did a dissertation on value orientations. I looked at Puerto Rican kids' orientation to nature, the supernatural and time compared to American kids. Then when I finished and there was nobody at BU to do it, they asked me to stay. Then I had my own doctoral students, wonderful students. In the beginning I had wonderful people that I from time to time I run into.

Yanow: So you were invited to stay to create this program in intercultural studies?

Wurzel: Well, really to teach courses in intercultural studies, the program came a few years later.

Yanow: Did somebody ask you to create the program or did you propose that to them?

Wurzel: No, I created everything that was intercultural at the School of Education. There was nothing.

Yanow: And the proposal that you made to them was readily accepted?

Wurzel: It was accepted by the faculty, but there was always resistance by those who didn't feel comfortable or didn't really understand the purpose of what I was proposing. See, to the more conservative types at BU, I had to sell it as different from multicultural education.

Yanow: And you were selling what, intercultural studies?

Wurzel: Intercultural studies was accepted because it was seen as a way of improving relations with people from other cultures. Multicultural education was not perceived very well because it was perceived as creating or promoting separation between cultures.

Yanow: Specifically within this country?

Wurzel: Within this country. So the whole thing was very silly from that perspective. So they kept talking about tribalism, and separatism, and that's what multiculturalism promoted. I tried to explain always that in every field of study there are people who are dogmatic, but I certainly wasn't dogmatic. And that the whole idea was to help people understand their own perspective about these things and to improve all cultural relations, not just international but domestic.

Yanow: Did the field per so exist when you were doing your grad work?

Wurzel: The field existed in different ways - the field of intercultural communication in the States appeared as a result of the Peace Corps, in the sense that they were training people for the Peace Corps, and the volunteers who were returning were contributing to the field. But that was very different from multicultural education, and the whole Civil Rights movement in the states that was creating a parallel field. First you had bilingual education and then you have ethnic studies, then you had multicultural education. So it evolved that way, and parallel to that, in the armed forces in the U.S., and in the diplomatic corps and in industry you have the gradual globalization of the economy, creating the field of intercultural communication. So multicultural education was domestic and intercultural communication was international.

And I don't think you can separate the two of them, but people have and continue to do that. And multicultural education is perceived as more political, and intercultural communication because of its roots, is perceived as more neutral. As neutral as anything in this field can be. The Europeans always resent that the Americans are neutral when it comes down to intercultural communication. They feel that the Americans don't want to deal with power issues. While Europeans and certainly Latin Americans, and Africans are more aware of the need to deal with power and the history of imperialism. The imperialists don't want to have to deal with power, but -

Yanow: Those who were oppressed by them want to deal with power! And also the influence of power, not just on human relations, but in relation to education?

Wurzel: Yes, that's another thing, to what extent can you really truly deal with the nature of power when you know that the educational system and school system perpetuate it? And perpetuates the stratification of society and the power distinctions. We know that the kids in the honor track of high school come from the middle and upper classes, so there is a relationship between class and achievement, between SAT scores and economic background.

So when people talk about school reform, it boggles my mind - they think that the key to making people better educated is to make them all upper class. It comes from the old idea of how people look at intelligence. When IQ tests were developed it showed that poor people were stupid; there's an assumption about intelligence and it's related to class. You look at SAT scores - again, it's the obsession with cause and effect and objectivisation and trying to see things holistically and more globally.

The title of the first edition of my book was Towards Multiculturalism. I think the title of my new edition is going to be Towards Reflective Multiculturalism. Because reflective to me means looking at the whole context of the concept. You can't separate, fragment these things - the context of emotion has to be there. The context of history and the notion of power, pain and perception are part of the context of human relations and intercultural relations. It has to be analyzed. We have to teach people to reflect about their emotional perspectives.

Yanow: Did you think those things were not included in the first edition of the book?

Wurzel: No, I think, even then I'm amazed, at the whole notion of process, I think - when I named that book, multiculturalism wasn't a bad word.

Yanow: Which it is now?

Wurzel: Now, they're together with political correctness. And people are writing all these books, and there's all these debates. But in those days, when we came out with the term, it never occurred to me. On the other hand, that's what happens, people use words for different things.

Yanow: Were you at any time accused that your book, or multicultural education, was promoting separatism.