The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died Feb. 17 at the age of 84, had a long and storied career as a civil rights activist. But one footnote to his legendary life intersected with academia at Stanford University—and unleashed misinformation that persisted for almost half his life and will surely continue after his death.
Just one week before Jackson died, an article in The American Conservative began, “‘Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go.’ That uninspired rhyme has been associated with left-wing multiculturalists ever since the black activist Jesse Jackson, joined by 500 student demonstrators, chanted it on the campus of Stanford University nearly 40 years ago.”
The myth of Jackson denouncing Western civ has persisted for almost four decades, even though it’s not true.
As I noted in my 1995 book, The Myth of Political Correctness, what really happened on Jan. 15, 1987, was that Jackson led a march and a rally of Stanford students who had been protesting to expand the Western Culture course beyond reading the classics of the West. During the march, some students (but not Jackson) chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go”—the name of the course they wanted to change.
Jackson hated the chant. He explained at the rally, “The issue is not that we don’t want Western culture. We’re from the West.” As he said, “There is more culture than Western culture. We are people of the world.” The Stanford Black Student Union likewise declared, “We, too, are a part of Western culture.”
But as Jackson probably realized, criticizing a course named “Western Culture” in this manner could easily be manipulated by dishonest or ignorant critics as if it were an attempt to destroy Western culture itself—which is precisely what happened.
The lies told about the Stanford chant have become legendary in conservative circles. Here are just a few examples from the National Association of Scholars’ website more than two decades after the Stanford incident:
- 2011: “Jesse Jackson led Stanford protestors in a chant of ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go.’”
- 2012: “Jesse Jackson led his infamous march at Stanford University chanting ‘Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Western Culture’s got to go’.”
- 2020: “The irony of Jesse Jackson and some 500 protestors chanting, ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go.’”
- 2020: “‘Hey, hey, ho, ho,’ Jesse Jackson and his cadre of activists chanted in 1987, ‘Western Culture’s got to go!’”
- 2024: “Jesse Jackson led a demonstration of 500 students at Stanford University chanting ‘Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.’”
Perhaps the most interesting example was this quote from a 2019 NAS report: “Jesse Jackson led some 500 student protesters at Stanford in a chant of ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go!’” That report included a footnote citing one of those 500 Stanford students, Joe Reider, who wasn’t chanting and later recounted about Jackson, “When he heard the students chant, he objected to it. He said, ‘No, we don’t want to get rid of Western Culture. We want to expand it and bring in new voices.’”
Despite this footnote, the NAS didn’t change its false account in the report about Jackson. The myth of Jackson chanting became more important than the facts.
Jackson didn’t lead this Stanford protest; he was led by it. Stanford activist Amanda Kemp launched a national campaign to persuade Jackson to come to campus and help promote their cause, reportedly offering him a $5,000 campaign contribution if he would come to Stanford.
The protest with Jackson in 1987 was not actually about eliminating the Western Culture course; it was to allow an experimental alternative track that included some different readings, which the Faculty Senate voted to approve 39 to 4 a few hours after the rally with Jackson. But a year later, in 1988, Stanford did reform the curriculum, replacing Western Culture with Cultures, Ideas and Values (CIV), which has been reconceived in the years since as IHUM—Thinking Matters, and Civic, Liberal, and Global Education. Western Culture itself was a class that had replaced the old Western Civilization sequence.
But in the eyes of many conservatives, this was a war for Western civilization. That’s why the chanting reverend became a touchstone for so many on the right, regardless of the reality. The Stanford rally was a minor victory for advocates of multiculturalism, but it inspired a vast reaction on the reactionary right. Secretary of Education William Bennett denounced the reforms as “intellectual suicide” and attacked the protest as “intimidation.” Peter Thiel and his friends were inspired to form a right-wing student newspaper, The Stanford Review, which published its first issue in June 1987. Thiel later co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth and recounted in 2023 how “Jesse Jackson led a protest at Stanford with the famous chant, Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go.”
The story about Jackson and the words he never chanted reveal how easy it is in the campus culture wars to lose sight of facts and nuance, to repeat a lie so often that everyone becomes convinced that it was always true.
