Our Mission
The Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education (CEVIHE) is committed to renewing the university’s intellectual mission by fostering a culture of engagement across ideological, religious, cultural, and disciplinary differences. We aim to bring innovation and excellence to teaching, research, and campus experiences.
Housed at Tufts University, the Center prepares students for mature citizenship and responsible leadership, supports faculty in teaching and researching contested public affairs and policy questions, and equips other colleges and universities with practical models they can adapt.
How We Work
CEVIHE’s approach rests on the idea that robust intellectual and civic habits develop through repeated, structured encounters with serious disagreement. Research, curriculum, student leadership, public events, and informal intellectual life reinforce one another over time.
Student formation and leadership. CEVIHE creates sustained learning pathways through courses, reading groups, the Edge Fellowship for first-year undergraduates, advising, enrichment opportunities, and student leadership bodies. Students participate as co-creators of the Center’s work and help shape a campus culture in which disagreement becomes an opportunity for learning.
Faculty-led curriculum and research. The Center supports voluntary, discipline-sensitive collaboration with faculty and academic units. Its work includes curricular innovation, teaching resources, interdisciplinary research, the Postdoctoral Fellowship in Expanding Viewpoints, scholarly convenings, and support for early-career researchers whose work broadens the range of serious questions and perspectives represented in their fields.
Public convenings and campus culture. CEVIHE’s headliner events, public forums, co-sponsored events, and student-led programs build community and inspire lively conversations. Courses, reading groups, and research symposia provide opportunities for deeper learning. The Center’s home at 97 Talbot Avenue serves as an intellectual commons for seminars, meetings, informal conversations, and collaborative work.
Our Broader Vision
CEVIHE’s long-term ambition is to become a durable intellectual hub at Tufts and a practical national model for higher education. Success will be measured by changes in practice: students who engage in disagreement with confidence and humility; faculty who have stronger tools for teaching and researching contested questions; scholars who expand the intellectual range of their disciplines; student organizations that collaborate across differences; and peer institutions that adapt CEVIHE’s materials and methods.
At its strongest, CEVIHE will demonstrate how universities can respond to polarization and declining trust through the core work of higher education: teaching students to read carefully, argue honestly, listen generously, think independently, conduct research with integrity, and learn from those with whom they disagree.