Stanford Stories From the Archives

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[DallasBiff]

Jesse Jackson and students protest Western Culture program on Palm Drive, photograph, 1987

By the mid-1980s, increasing dissatisfaction with the introductory humanities program known as “Western Culture” that had begun in 1980 came to the fore. The program was criticized for its lack of diversity and its predominantly Eurocentric readings. Students advocated for a curriculum that included ethnic minority and women authors. On January 15, 1987, as many as 500 students, along with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, rallied down Palm Drive chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go." The curriculum debate drew national attention, and in 1989 Western Culture was formally replaced with the Cultures, Ideas, & Values (CIV) program that included more inclusive works on race, class, and gender.

[DallasBiff]

The assault against western culture began long ago.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

African Civ: 1) Bantu colonize most of Africa
2) Supposed Africa diversity is lots of small remaining tribes not decimated by the Bantu
3) African slave trade participated in by Africans
4) Colonization and Decolonization
5) Tyranny and Grift

[Dilbert San Diego]

They need more imaginative chants.

That one has been used so many times, when protesters say, “Hey hey, ho ho, (fill in the blank) has got to go.”

[Honorary Serb]

If you don’t learn Western culture, you aren’t educated!

If you “learn” “Cultures, Ideas, & Values (CIV)...that includes more inclusive works on race, class, and gender”, you’re miseducated!

Even if you have a good STEM education, but you are ignorant of Western culture, you may well misuse your education. And you may be taken in by the propaganda of the Democrat party and other malefactors!

[Honorary Serb]

The Orthodox Christian civilization of Ethiopia is worth learning about!

But one’s Western Civ education helps one do so.

[DallasBiff]

You knows what is ironic? If Jesse Jackson had not grown up in Western Culture he would be peddling a bicycle in Africa, of course his wealth, was brought about by the liberal abomination of Western Culture.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I bought my first house in Palo Alto in 1978 close to the Stanford campus. I worked in Palo Alto for over 25 years. When this first attack on Western Civ began in 1989 I thought to myself “What a bunch of malcontent crackpot losers. This is going nowhere. Western Civ is the bedrock of our society.”

At the time, I didn’t have a clue I was at Ground Zero for the destruction of the Republic and witnessing an early salvo.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Dividing up people by land mass is so amateurish, I wonder why we still do it. Northern and Eastern Africa are so much different than Sub-Saharan Africa. India and the various Indochinese nations are so much different than China, Japan, and Korea.

The Afro-Americans, who mostly descend from Sub-Saharan Africans like to take credit for stuff that was invented/done by the Northern or Eastern Africans who were more in touch with the Middle East than the bulk of the African continent.

All very middle-schoolish.

"Asians" are to be feared in the UK because they are the ones raping the schoolgirls, but by "Asian" they really should be saying Pakastani.

So silly, very silly.

[rdcbn1]

Yup. Stanford in the mid to late 80s was ground zero for the deconstruction of America

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yup. And all I saw was a bunch of dopey kids trying to end Western Civ courses. I was right there at Ground Zero and didn’t even conceive they would succeed.