CIVIC at UC Riverside will hold its first event of winter term on Wednesday, January 28.  Prof. Yuval Avnur (Department of Philosophy, Scripps College) will be presenting a paper he co-authored with Jon A. Shields and Stephanie Muravchik, “The Closed Classroom? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues.” Drawing on the tens of thousands of syllabi in the Open Syllabus database, the paper examines texts assigned for discussions of three contentious issues: (1) racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system, (2) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and (3) the abortion issue.