Leftist Thanksgiving event asked students 'what America should do in place of this celebration'

The Intercultural and Diversity Center (IDC) at the University at Buffalo recently hosted an event to discuss alternatives to celebrating Thanksgiving. 

Last week, the IDC hosted a Zoom talk on the holiday’s purported “whitewashed history” titled “The Real History of Thanksgiving,” which is part of the office’s “Tough Topics” discussion series. 

The description for the Nov. 8 event stated, “Come out to the IDC to discuss the real history of Thanksgiving and what America should do in place of this celebration.”

“Students were surprised and concerned that the university was trying to cancel Thanksgiving. Even some students who expressed that they are not conservative remarked that the left has gone too far with cancel culture, Therese Purcell, a student at UB and chair of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, told Campus Reform.  

[RELATED: ‘Redefine it for yourself’: Editorial claims Thanksgiving is ‘forced upon’ students]

“This was the first event I have been to at the Intercultural and Diversity Center,” Purcell told Campus Reform.  

“The essence of the event was fundamentally anti-American and full of inaccurate history to further their agenda,” she added. “The event only showed leftist arguments, and when I asked them to back up their historical claims with facts, they continued to make faulty historical claims.” 

UB’s Intercultural and Diversity Center states that its mission is to “designed to increase a student’s sense of belonging by providing a comfortable place to meet, socialize, study, and interact with our professional staff and peer educators (Diversity Advocates), and other students.”

[RELATED: Students stunned by Thanksgiving inflation, say Americans were better off under Trump.] 

The office’s “Tough Topics” series routinely focuses on leftist arguments. Past topics this semester include “LGBTQ+ and Latinx,” “Colorism,” and “Vaccine Nationalism.” 

When asked for comment, the IDC referred Campus Reform to the university’s News Center. 

The News Center provided the following statement to Campus Reform: 

This student-led event provides a forum for examining the historical context of Thanksgiving. According to the student organizers, the event will include discussion on such topics as the historical basis of Thanksgiving, the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous people and acknowledgement of the perspectives of Indigenous people. 

Purcell told Campus Reform that the University at Buffalo often “hosts very liberal events and speakers.”