When Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him,” he didn’t mean that God had literally perished. He meant that society’s turn away from Christianity as the great moral authority left a vacuum where a shared value system had once lived. Without a creator of meaning, we were headed for a nihilist fate, unless we decided on a moral code for ourselves.
At Tufts, Woke occupies that vacuum. At Tufts, Woke is God.
Not in the sense that everyone believes in it with equal fervor and not in the sense that it’s beyond critique, but in the sense that it structures our moral universe. It gives us a shared language for understanding harm, justice, and responsibility. It sets expectations for how we treat one another, and even those who resist it know exactly what it asks of them.
And just like God, Woke isn’t dead—we’re just practicing our spiritual discipline in a new way.
A lot has happened since 2020, the peak of the “Dear White People” and “Bad Feminist” eras. Pronoun circles have become so commonplace at Tufts that no one, not even the lowest common denominator meathead in your class, can pretend to not know what’s going on. Gone are the days of “…uh… I’m a guy?” Awareness is baseline now. At Tufts, everyone knows the language they’re supposed to use, and everyone knows the issues they’re supposed to care about. Even if they roll their eyes, they know exactly why they’re not supposed to be rolling them.
While not everyone believes in them in the same way, the Woke commandments still structure our campus life. As Tufts has moved left, Woke’s core definition, to be aware of social issues, has stayed the same. Everyone, by virtue of the internet and a progressive campus culture, is socially aware, whether or not they choose to act accordingly.
This is where Woke gets more complicated. Namely, in its pejorative definition: “overly sensitive.” It ends up covering anything from acknowledging implicit bias to making a coffee with oat milk. The pejorative version implies some amount of action, even overaction. On the other hand, the core definition of Woke doesn’t necessitate any action at all. Simply being socially conscious is enough to qualify.
But regardless of how you define Woke, the Tufts student body fits. During my time here, I’ve seen countless socially conscious, classically Woke occurrences: protests, land acknowledgements, teach-ins, mutual aid, and genuine care and concern for one’s fellow man. Sometimes these practices feel deeply sincere. Other times, they feel a little performative. But they continue to exist because of a shared belief that we have a responsibility not only to each other, but to the world beyond our campus.
“But!” you may be shouting, “How can you say Woke is not dead? People are being killed for peacefully protesting! The Epstein files have been released and no one is doing anything about it! Reactionary politics are ascendant! Online discourse is rotting us!” And I totally get where you’re coming from. Nationally, woke might be a little dead—and it may remain dead. Maybe, in a way, we have killed it.
But maybe it’s still alive. Maybe it’s just not the spiritual discipline that our government is practicing right now. Perhaps our government has taken us hostage and is using a new moral code—one that isn’t shared by its people—to enact terrible violence at home and abroad. Maybe we’re watching the consequences of losing a common language for justice and responsibility.
The best proof that Woke is still alive nationally is that people have continued acting on its values, even when our institutions have stopped. A beacon of hope for us to look to is that, despite our government’s attempts to suppress dissent, people across the country are bravely and unrelentingly protesting what they think is unjust.
This is where universities are so important. Tufts and schools like it are places where open- minded, socially conscious individuals can come together and create a space that supports learning and growth. And I think we can do even more than that. We have a tremendous responsibility as students under an unjust government.
Throughout history, students have been a force for change. We may not always be right, but we are idealistic and hopeful enough to imagine a new set of values that explain how things could work and how we could treat each other, and then try to live by it. Let’s live by Woke.
Artwork by Hayes Stewart