http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/lawbooks/revaug98.htm#Threat
Multiculturalism -- A Threat to the Republic? 
Schlegel: I am particularly bewildered by the notion that the writings of a group of scholars that cannot account for substantially more than two hundred people -- a tenfold increase from the number of authors regularly cited in your book -- can be so threatening to the Republic that all the heavy artillery that you deploy is necessary or appropriate to the topic. It is in this spirit that I ask my questions.
If the beliefs of the radical multiculturalists are so obviously untrue, what makes the existence of such beliefs any more serious than the existence of persons espousing atheism to a liberal Presbyterian? Why shouldn't a liberal American simply shrug off the challenge and go about his or her merry way, confident that radical multiculturalism, like atheism, is an empty threat?
Farber & Sherry: Influence isn't measured by numbers. (Consider, for instance, the number of "law and economics" professors twenty years ago.) The radical multiculturalists are being hired by the top law schools and published in the top law reviews. Their arguments about affirmative action, hate speech, the meaning of discrimination, and so forth, are taken seriously at faculty meetings -- and in university policy-making committees. They also sway the views of students. Indeed, a forthcoming review of Beyond All Reason by Professor Kathryn Abrams, entitled "How to Have a Culture War," 65 University of Chicago Law Review 1091 (1998), argues that radical multiculturalist ideas have taken such a stronghold in the legal academy that we ourselves unconsciously write in the very radical multiculturalist mode we attack.
We wrote Beyond All Reason primarily for our fellow liberal law professors who might have been unaware of exactly how misguided the radical multiculturalist ideas are. We were concerned that many of them were embracing radical multiculturalism without examining it closely. Forewarned is forearmed, and perhaps the legal academy will now be able to shrug off the challenge.
Schlegel: Academic philosophy departments tolerate such incommensurable moral theories such as neo-kantianism and utilitarianism; academic social science departments tolerate such incommensurable methodological approaches such as behaviorism and ethnography. Why is it that law cannot tolerate the incommensurable theories of liberalism and multiculturalism? If the answer turns on the effect of these theories in the world, explain what evidence there is that policy makers, who by definition are outside the academy, are actually listening to the theories of the multiculturalists.
Farber & Sherry: We think that the difference between liberalism and radical multiculturalism is far more than fundamental than the academic divisions you mention. For instance, only among radical multiculturalists can one find any defense whatsoever for the position that deliberately misrepresenting factual matters in scholarship could ever be defensible. In any event, in most areas there is vigorous, often heated debate between proponents of different schools. No one thinks that proponents of Kantianism should merely politely ignore the existence of utilitarianism; much of the work of philosophers is devoted to conflicts between contesting schools. Our book is an argument that radical multiculturalist ideas are wrong on their own terms, and if we are right, the advocates of those ideas should take heed and modify their positions. Or, perhaps more realistically, those who are not committed in advance to their views should reject those views and look elsewhere.
The second portion of your question raises another issue: is radical multiculturalism significant enough, in societal terms, to be worth worrying about? In informal conversations we have had with law professors and others, the most common criticism of the book seems to be that the radical multiculturalists are an insignificant fringe whose views are not worth serious discussion. We continue to believe, however, that ideas do matter, and that radical multiculturalist ideas are sufficiently widespread in the legal academy to deserve serious attention.