Mortimer Sellers Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law and Associate Professor of Law,University of Baltimore

'Some of the essays are very good indeed in exploring precisely what pluralism means within the context of higher education, and they demonstrate that this is a difficult notion to fit into the liberal notion of the university ... British readers will find much of relevance both to them and to their own institutions, and there is some stimulating analysis in this collection.'The Lecturer - NATFEAn Anthropology of the European Union: Building, Imagining and Experiencing the New Europe, Irene Bellier and Thomas M. Wilson, eds. Berg: Oxford, New York, 2000.Adopting an anthropological approach, this book explores the quest to construct a sense of common identity at institutional level in the European Union (EU), and is particularly useful in identifying current research on the EU as project and object. The introductory essay by Irene Bellier and Thomas M. Wilson laments the marginalization of culture and identity in the EU and offers a useful overview of different appro

• Part 1 The aims of the university: ethics and the aims of the universities in historical perspective, N.H. Steneck; the aims of the university and the challenge of diversity - bridging the traditionalist/multiculturalist divide, J.L.A. Garcia; pragmatism, cultural criticism and the idea of the postmodern university, R. Lipkin. Part 2 Creating the curriculum: neutrality, politicization and the curriculum, R. Simon; the ethical implications of curricular reform, K. Mohrman. Part 3 Campus speech: speech acts and hate speech, A. Altman; free speech and the aims of the university - some modest proposals, K. Anthony Appiah; reinventing the first amendment in the university, R.E. Barnett; fighting racism - hate speech detours, T. Simon. Part 4 Affirmative action: affirmative action and the ethics of pedagogy, M. Tushnet; understanding affirmative action - one feminist's perspective, E. Rush; indefensible defenses of affirmative action, R. Fullinwider.