The most obvious difficulty lies in Graff's assumption that the relevant cultural differences can be equated with theoretical and methodological differences among disciplines. It is not difficult to imagine an interdisciplinary course taught exclusively by Marxists or by fundamentalist Christians. To the extent that these beliefs are shared by people outside the academy and to the extent that people look to them in making the important decisions in their lives, they are culturally relevant. The principle difficulty with Graff's proposal, in other words, stems from his misunderstanding of culture and politics. This misunderstanding is most evident in his equation of culture with theory, his confusion of political with partisan, and his failure to distinguish between teaching students the theories and teaching them to theorize.
Culture is the expression of the identity of a community of people.
It expresses their understanding of reality, of the truth about human life generally and themselves in particular. This expression is essentially political, that is, it takes the form ofcustoms or laws that epitomize the community's judgment with respect to what is true and false about life and therefore what is right or wrong, good or evil. Custom governs the imagination and creativity of a community through the rules and limitations of its language, and thus language serves as an excellent analogy for understanding how culture works. That is why literature is such a good exemplar of culture. But because culture is about how we live, what we do and not just what we think, a culture war is also a political war.