The Stanford Review‘s petition to reinstate a two-quarter Western Civilization requirement for undergraduates has now received over 370 signatures, qualifying it for the spring ASSU elections ballot in April. This follows two weeks of initial discussion and debate on campus on the merits of humanities requirements in general, a common academic core, and a cultural focus within that core, as well as national attention from the Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, the Weekly Standard and others.
The Review‘s petition will be voted on between April 7 and 8 by the Stanford undergraduate population. There will be an open forum on the requirement on Thursday evening, to follow a panel discussion with students and faculty earlier this week. Further discussions will take place early next quarter. In the interim, we look forward to the campus discourse this petition has enabled.