Stanford Students Want Western Civilization Studies Back as the PC Backlash Begins

In 1988, the Rev. Jesse Jackson—then a contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination—joined students at Stanford in chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho Western Civ has got to go!”

With that spectacle, the university promptly dropped required courses in Western Civilization. Fifteen texts—a “core list” that included Plato, Voltaire, St. Augustine, and Marx and Engels—were replaced by a more diverse canon.

It was the beginning of a wave of protests against Western culture on college campuses in the 1990s that, today, has seen a resurgence in the form of trigger warnings on syllabi, safe spaces, and policed speech.

At Stanford, a backlash against this censorious student culture is taking shape in the form of a petition to reinstate the university’s Western Civilization curriculum.