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Michael I. Kotlikoff
New York Times
Excerpt: Cornell University recently hosted an event that any reputable P.R. firm would surely have advised against. On a calm campus, in a semester unroiled by protest, we chose to risk stirring the waters by organizing a panel discussion that brought together Israeli and Palestinian voices with an in-person audience open to all.
The week before, I extended a personal invitation to our student community, explaining that open inquiry “is the antidote to corrosive narratives” and is what enables us “to see and respect other views, work together across differences and conceive of solutions to intractable problems.”
There is a growth sector in American higher education. The number of “Civics Centers” has exploded in the last decade, and especially since 2021.
What are these civics centers, and what explains their proliferation now?
Heterodox Academy (HxA), the leading non-partisan higher education reform organization in the US for faculty, staff and students, championing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement, has decided to provide some answers.
In February of this year, a few colleagues and I co-founded a group called Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff (CJFS), which now has more than 200 members on more than two dozen campuses. Our group, which is predominantly made up of academics at Massachusetts colleges and universities but includes members from across New England, is one of several such efforts nationwide that have coalesced into a new National Campus Jewish Alliance.
We recognize that Jewish safety is inseparable from the safety of all people, and we work to foster academic environments that reduce antisemitism by treating educators as partners, not as suspects.
