On February 6, the Tufts Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education (CEVIHE) hosted its “most sinister event yet.” At least, that’s what the flyers that were handed out at the entrance to the Cabot Intercultural Center’s Hall of Flags read. Haviv Rettig Gur, that night’s speaker, called the protestors “pathetic losers” in response. It was a charged night.
Billed as a “public forum,” the program was a conversation and Q&A with Rettig Gur, an Israeli journalist for The Free Press and The Times of Israel. The Medford Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, one of the organizations handing out flyers, claimed in an Instagram post that under the guise of “academic neutrality,” CEVIHE invited a speaker whose “so-called journalism is soaked in blood” as it “supports, masks, and justifies Zionist genocide and occupation in Palestine.” Rettig Gur responded to these speakers at the beginning of his discussion by calling them “profoundly silly” and “white and privileged [individuals] speaking on a refugee nation.” He clarified thereafter that “fierce and brutal” criticism was necessary to an issue as contentious as this, but that their total disregard for the pro-Israel position was “childish.”
Since its inception last September, CEVIHE has swept across campus. Eitan Hersh, the center’s inaugural director and a political science professor at Tufts, said that he has exceeded his goal to create “an open intellectual space.” CEVIHE has hosted a weekly lunch series, a reading group on the critics of liberalism, and film screenings, all of which students can enroll in for one credit, with a pass/fail grade. The center’s board has already hired a program manager and is in the process of hiring two postdoctoral faculty to teach full-credit courses in different departments, building a curriculum around hot-button topics such as gender and immigration. CEVIHE has also sponsored several headline events, inviting speakers including sociologist Musa al-Gharbi last fall and most recently, Haviv Rettig Gur.
Some have argued that CEVIHE functions solely as a hub for right-wing ideas. A Tufts student with pro-Palestinian views who asked to remain anonymous told The Tufts Tribune, “It’s clear that Hersh’s underlying message is not expanding viewpoints, but expanding conservative viewpoints, especially with the array and pattern of guests that he’s been bringing in. He’s not trying to diversify the viewpoints of the student body, but rather push them further right.”
CEVIHE leaders deny that the center aims to propagate an ideological agenda. “If you look at the topics that we have covered in the Center, you would quickly realize that this is not about one political side or another, but it’s drawing attention to the essential questions in life related to politics, culture, and religion,” Hersh said. “We are reading some perspectives that are left-wing and some that are right-wing, and a lot of them don’t even map onto left/right politics.”
Arik Burakovsky, the Associate Director of the Center, elaborated on this idea. “The ethos of the center is, for any students who are skeptical of the center’s work, to show up, ask difficult questions, and push back,” he explained. “If you don’t agree with a particular speaker, then there’s all the more reason to come and engage with them and participate in the argument.”
Burakovsky hopes that Rettig Gur’s perspective will not be the only one that CEVIHE showcases regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “You can never get all perspectives to be represented in a single event,” he clarified. “The event yesterday was one conversation in what will hopefully be a broader and ongoing series. In fact, we are working to bring Palestinian voices and other viewpoints to future public forums, so that commitment is not going away.”
However, some believe that Rettig Gur’s perspective should never have been granted a forum. Another pro-Palestinian student activist who chose to remain anonymous believes hosting such a speaker promotes harmful ideas. “The event operates with the intention of normalizing the genocide and denying what is actually genocide,” they said. “I am disappointed that our university would platform that kind of language.”
It is challenging to incorporate all perspectives when some community members argue that not all viewpoints should be amplified. An article published in the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) flagship magazine Academe reflects this belief. The author outlined “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” arguing that certain viewpoints are not factual and therefore do not deserve a platform. The article claims that “viewpoint diversity does not have the pursuit of truth as its highest value.”
Because of objections to the content of CEVIHE’s programming and fundamental ideological disagreements with the program’s mission, some community members may refuse to engage, which complicates the center’s effort to fulfill its goals. “If people on the other side of the aisle don’t like what we’re doing or don’t want to help be involved in the Center, then it can only go so far,” said Elle Cutler, a planning assistant for CEVIHE student events and CEVIHE student board member. “The center works if people are willing to step up to the plate and give us that input in terms of which sides are underrepresented.”
This challenge became apparent in the preparation for the Rettig Gur event. “We did significant outreach to campus experts on the Middle East, including and especially to those who would be critical of the arguments articulated by the guest speaker. We offered to have these scholars decide on the topic of the event . . . and serve as discussants,” Hersh explained. “Since these colleagues declined, I decided to serve as discussant. My goal as discussant was to ask questions that signaled to our students that they could ask about whatever they wanted to, including challenging the guest.”
Some students feel that Tufts’s student culture may make it difficult to capture all perspectives in conversations facilitated by CEVIHE. “I think the center is doing the right thing by wanting to have these conversations. I don’t think it’s the fault of the center, but I think students can sometimes have a difficult time bringing in new ideas and perspectives into a conversation,” said Mika Margalit, a student who attended CEVIHE’s lunch series last semester. “We go to Tufts, one of the most wealthy private schools in the country. Our student body is quite similar . . . and I don’t think it’s the center’s fault that they can’t get every single perspective because I don’t think Tufts has every single perspective in any way, shape, or form.”
As an institution created to embrace a wider range of perspectives and break out of ideological bubbles, diverse student engagement is essential to help CEVIHE achieve its mission. Professor Hersh explained that students who participate in CEVIHE programming are “entrepreneurial,” using their ideas to shape future events and discussion topics. “We use student input to understand where students are, what they care about, and where they see gaps in their learning,” Hersh said.
Ultimately, the question is how to create open inquiry and space where individuals feel comfortable sharing their perspective with a room full of people who hold opposing perspectives. “Our goal is to model civil disagreement and what that looks like in practice,” said Burakovsky. “So we’re not trying to suppress anyone’s views or emotions, but we want to kind of channel that into open inquiry as opposed to interruption.”
Burakovsky frames the demonstration at the Rettig Gur event as consistent with CEVIHE’s mission. “We value critical questions and even non-disruptive forms of protest,” he said. “The ethos of the center is very much about promoting free expression on campus, and so the protest that we saw last night—even though Rettig Gur mentioned he thought it was juvenile—was not disruptive. It was peaceful.”
Photo by Jack Smart, February 4 2026