Tufts’ chapter of the American Association of University Professors called for accountability and transparency of the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education in an end-of-year report published and sent to University President Sunil Kumar on May 27.
In the report, Tufts AAUP makes three recommendations: relocate CEVIHE from the president’s office, publish bylaws that would delimit its power to review faculty syllabi without consent and disclose the names of its donors and Community Advisory Board members.
Throughout the report, Tufts AAUP takes issue with actions that they say closely follow a national “viewpoint diversity” movement aimed at bolstering conservative viewpoints, undermining faculty governance by shifting power over syllabi to administrators and the federal government and harassing faculty who do not share conservative goals.
“One of the crucial elements of the report was to try to show that the Tufts Center for Expanding Viewpoints really is, in many ways, in-line with the broader national movement for viewpoint diversity that is quite explicitly and unapologetically a right-wing project for the erosion of faculty governance,” Nathan Wolff, an associate professor of English and a member of Tufts AAUP, said.
In a September 2025 AAUP report, Eitan Hersh, CEVIHE director and professor of political science, described the Center’s aim as boosting the visibility of conservative views on polemic issues, such as immigration, gender and sexuality and global conflicts.
“To the extent that conservative perspectives — especially ones that have significant support among the mass public and political leaders — are absent from curricula that engage in public policy debates, I think it’s important to offer suggestions for readings that convey those perspectives,” he wrote in a statement to the Daily.
A “curriculum project”
According to AAUP’s report, CEVIHE’s student interns have reviewed syllabi of courses taught at Tufts and nationally on immigration, gender and policy as part of a “curriculum project.” The report claims that the project undermines previous statements that syllabi review by the Center would be optional. The AAUP takes issue with the lack of notice and review without Tufts faculty members’ consent.
“We haven’t formalized any curriculum project yet,” Hersh wrote. “A few students have sought to learn how some academic subjects are taught across the U.S. … and have made some recommendations for the kinds of topics and readings that might resonate with their peers. But we have not taken any action on their recommendations.”
While Hersh states that the Center’s syllabi review is intended to develop future resources for faculty who wish to receive them, Tufts AAUP members maintain that the practice may endanger non-tenured faculty.
“My aspiration is to offer resources to university faculty (not just at Tufts) to help teach the big questions of public life, including controversial topics, in ways that engage with a diversity of perspectives, value systems, competing evidence, etc,” Hersh wrote.
The report, however, is concerned with a potential domino effect in which Tufts begins regular “internal review” of faculty and their syllabi, expressing concern over these reviews negatively swaying tenure and promotion processes.
“It is our concern that, if not limited, this may constitute a first step in a program of assimilation of the further steps not yet taken: making reviews of syllabi part of ‘external reviews of university departments as well as evaluations for tenure and promotion,’” the report states. “It is concerning that the president’s office is providing full support to a Center … which so far unilaterally acts as if it is in a position to devise better syllabi than faculty may do themselves.”
But Hersh maintains that CEVIHE will not engage in review of faculty syllabi without their consent.
“We also have neither the ability nor interest in facilitating ‘[coercive] participation in curricular review’ nor in ‘bypass[ing] ordinary processes for curriculum review,’” he wrote.
Donor and membership transparency
The report calls for CEVIHE to name its donors and members of the Community Advisory Board in order to aid transparency concerns.
The day after the report was published, CEVIHE published a web page with the eight members of the Community Advisory Board. They include Tufts Trustees Daniel Zilberman, Jennifer Selendy and Jason Epstein; Carine Hajjar, a Washington Post editorial board member; former state representative Joe Kennedy III; Adam Lewis, head of school at Catholic Memorial; Linda Whitlock, chair of the governance committee of the Red Sox foundation; and Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute.
“We did this in May, without any knowledge that it is something the AAUP chapter recommended in its report that was circulated in June,” Hersh wrote. “We started to do several updates to our website as soon as the school year ended. And we continue to make updates, as summer is a time when we can prioritize such things.”
CEVIHE in the president’s office
Members of Tufts AAUP also take issue with the Center’s placement within the president’s office.
“We began with this question of: Why is the Center in the president’s office? What authority does that confer to it that’s unique to that center versus any other center on campus?” Kamran Rastegar, professor of International Literary and Cultural Studies and member of Tufts AAUP, said.
Hersh wrote in a December correspondence to the Tufts AAUP that the Center is “being incubated in the President’s Office and may ultimately be housed within a particular academic unit.”
“Housing the Center, at least initially, in the President’s Office may help it take root,” Hersh wrote. “I also know from discussions with President Kumar that he believes it is essential for pluralism to flourish across the university, and that this does not mean he is endorsing any viewpoint by simply fostering the conditions for its expression.”
Rastegar explained that the main purpose of the report was to elicit transparency and answer questions about the Center’s unknown practices.
“There’s a pressing need to really get some answers about what’s going on, because it’s just really unprecedented,” he said. “We’ve posed very direct questions, but the answers are somewhat elusive or evasive.”
