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In the latest example of students shutting down views they disagree with on campus, Whitworth University’s student government denied the campus Turning Point USA chapter’s request to invite Chinese dissident Xi Van Fleet to campus because of her criticism of “woke culture.”
Last week, the Associated Students of Whitworth University voted 9-4 to deny TPUSA’s request. Students criticized Van Fleet’s comparison of the spread of “woke” ideas — which they said includes “Black Lives Matter,” “environmental justice,” “latinx,” the LGBT community, and more — to the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China.
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.
