The Global Face of Student Protest

They have some fantastic college campuses these days with gorgeous buildings and manicured lawns and great libraries and lecture halls and gourmet kitchens and Olympic swimming pools and gyms with weight rooms and saunas and swell dormitories with game rooms and big screen TVs.

I’ve even seen a couple that have their own arboretums. Not all schools are fixed up like this, of course, but quite a few of them are. Naturally, the kids that attend them are scared and unhappy. They know deep down in their guts that none of them really deserve to be living like this and worry themselves sick thinking about how they are going to be able to maintain these fantastic lifestyles after they leave school. So naturally they are out there every day protesting against buildings named for dead slave owners and in favor of greater diversity and more rainforests. It’s all by way of maintaining the self-delusion that they are doing things that are really important and making major contributions to the world.

I’m not much impressed with the current crop of college kids. The first thing they do after they
leave school is begin complaining about their college loans, always forgetting the fact that somebody has to pay for those weight rooms. Things were better in my day when many of the schools were dingy places where more guys went off after class to ROTC drills than ever participated in protests and where everybody's major concern was graduating and getting a job as soon as possible.

"Zwarte Piet’s defenders argue that the figure’s origins were not racist. The protesters’ rejoinder has been: Who are you to decide?"

Is the implication here that if a person feels offended, their pains trump reality and anyone else's arguments? Are the holders of traditions simply not entitled to enter the debate because they aren't the ones feeling offended?

I think the elephant in the room with this whole debate is that you cannot argue with these protestors lest you be deemed a racist, or "disgusting" (Yale) or someone who needs to be removed from their job at the university. We are seeing this now at campuses across the country. This is simply not an equal-sided debate, or even a debate at all.

Protestors at Yale and other schools hijacked Mizzou which leveraged Ferguson and other killings of blacks by cops. Just because the killing of minorities by cops may be a problem doesn't mean you can simply lump it together with Halloween costumes.

We need to do something about race in this country, which, in my opinion, is mostly caused by socioeconomic forces. Changing curricula, hiring minority professors, and taking names off buildings will do nothing. Movements now 40 years past largely had the same goals.

You may disagree, but let's at least debate this civilly.

An excellent article, it captures well the current atmosphere in South Africa, and indeed, in this country: Unease.

The emanicipation of black segregation in South Africa under the leadership of the great leader, Nelson Mandela, was a magnification of the liberation & civil rights movement. A large majority of human rights supporters across the globe pressured South Africa to remove the particularly odious form of apartheid policy from its formerly colonial existence. The difficult part, after gaining political power for blacks under Mandela's, is proving that the African National Congress (ANC) could lead the country effectively in his footsteps. Unfortunately, South Africa now has a 25.6% unemployment rate under the current leadership of Jacob Zuma, the ANC President. He is also involved in one of the biggest corruption scandals in democratic South Africa which includes proof of him spending millions in taxpayer money on his lavish estate, Nkandla. Meanwhile, South Africa is dealing with neighboring country, Zimbabwe’s (formerly Rhodesia) economic meltdown in 2007-2008, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border. Many of the migrants from Zimbabwe had been persecuted or tortured although were quickly branded “illegal foreigners” & subject to raids, detention & deportation. The news showied native South Africans attacking these poor unfortunate war, economic migrants being beaten as a result of fear of them taking jobs or causing unrest. It is unfortunate that college students didn't protest the unfair treatment of fellow Africans in their own country.

Apartheid is/was horrid. It is over in the largest sense. What is left is in some ways culturally and racially on many levels what is seen in other countries with like issues and timing. White Flight, Urban Blight, Cultural Purpose Shift, Gentrification, Economic Shift. Like Detroit in the US. bulldozers will take much of it back in due time and a rebuilding waits in the future ...

Rhodes and Wilson were major historical figures, and their racism was not an important aspect of their renown nor exceptional for their time. I would like to see a greater variety of monuments but why not just add new ones rather than blotting out uncomfortable history?

Even if Zwarte Piet's origins were racist, so what? He's evolved into something that adds fun to the holiday, and no one associates his blackness with his antic nature anymore than the British associate Bonfire Day with hatred of Roman Catholicism or Australia Day with suppression of the aborigines.

Protest's, hey that is what students do. Who knew.

Woe to those who seek to erase history because it is offensive or causes discomfort, for their history may one day also be erased.

"It was listening that made the difference. Why is this painting important to me? Why is that ritual valuable to you? What roots and dreams do we share?"

For me, this closing statement undermines the idea that the South African movement fundamentally has much in common with the movement in the United States. While both movements have tremendous newfound energy and potential, only one seems to be channelling it in a positive and constructive manner.

In the latter movement there seems be sparse dialogue and even less listening. It takes an absolutist approach; it issues demands; it calls this statue offensive or that lecture unsafe; and it expects results. There never seems to be any reasoning that follows its claims. To ask for any is to challenge the new orthodoxy at your peril, for it will brand such a heretical response and those who dare utter it will all sorts of unsavoury epithets.

My biggest takeaway from this piece is that the movement in the United States, and in Canada for that matter, should start taking its cues from the South Africans at the centre of this exercise in the final paragraph.

"We wanted to believe we could have a society without power struggles. This was naïve."

Does this portend war? Over time, one would expect that as cultures rub against one another, inroads are made here and there in both directions, not merely one direction. This more fusion than merger or tit for tat normally associated with bargaining. Something perhaps more akin to a listening, a consensus building and moving along, day by day tasting of the newness of the convergence.

Researchers have found one fundamental principle underlying how to live productively in diverse populations.: Inclusiveness. That means that all the people in the population are included when decisions are made, whether about whom to honor, what to teach, or how to think about "ourselves." In my younger days, those of us who became "included" in white male organizations and activities were told we had to "meet" their "standards." We did (I remember my little bow ties), but we had not been included in setting those standards.

"But how could helicopter parenting explain the same phenomenon occurring halfway across the world in a society known for its absent parents, not its overprotective ones?"

Helicopter parenting is symptomatic of a larger trend, that of the supremely empowered individual, whose every desire must be fulfilled--whether for a physical environment free of anything remotely unsettling or contrary to the individual's views, to be addressed and regarded as something he or she is patently not, in the case of transgenderism, or to quash diversity when it means religiously-oriented colleges seeking Title IX exemptions to sustain a campus culture at odds with the relativism and permissiveness of contemporary culture. Such empowerment, divorced from concerns of context, history, tradition or community, can only lead to hubris of an inevitably destructive nature. Kricket Nimmons: I'll be a whole other creature. It doesn't seem to me outlandish to suggest that we are all what we are by dint of nature or even divine intent and that to seek to defy our existential boundaries is to tread the path of Icarus. I don't lack sympathy for students' concerns in the specific scenario cited here, but imagine the upshot: Will we eventually be obliged to rename or tear down the Washington Monument because Washington owned slaves? Will the Jefferson Memorial suffer the same fate? History is contextual, and marked by nuance, and some element of good grace and common sense pragmatism seems called for.

"university students around the country boycotted their classes, saying that ... their campuses still prioritized the history, the literature and the emotional needs of white students rather than black ones."

Do we need a different history for whites, blacks, asians, and other ethnic groups. A unique history for each group which meets their unique emotional needs? Does each racial and other group need their own literature? Does knowledge change its nature to accommodate skin tone?

In the author's worldview, it seems that people don't so much as have a heart, mind, soul, and intellect, but a skin color. It is hard to imagine anything more different that what Martin Luther King fought for.

* * * * * *

Of course students should be free to question names on building, statues, and memorials. Historical leaders whose contributions were primarily racist deserve to have their monuments relegated to the dust bin. This is quite different from making the classroom safe so that no student is exposed to ideas that they might find offensive, and each has a course of study tailored to the unique sensitivities of their skin color.

I have often felt that students protests are driven by how idealistic we are at a young age, the amount of free time students have available, how little students have invested in their country and the humility that only comes through experience. I recall those days but I also thought at the time that history should be learned not cleaned up. By learning the ugly part of history we understand what we don't want to repeat.

Now when I see flawed people of the past memorialized it reminds me humanity is imperfect, none of us should be so confident that we will not one day be the object of scrutiny and history that shows these people with flaws is an honest representation. If all those "flawed" people are removed then where is that "perfect" person that will replace them? Good luck finding that person. How is history communicated if we erase people we don't like?

This exercise has a parallel to a radical group like ISIS. They are young, Islamic idealists, focused on purging the world of what they believe is wrong including erasing history and memorials, they have done very little to build anything in this world and they are definitely not humble.

The chase for glory and power can end pretty badly no matter where it originates.

Donald Trump, campus protests, these are cultural battles. Humanist and liberal beliefs seem to prefer that culture doesn't matter, just individual freedom matters. Yet an article like this, that exposes cultural struggles and how power in having a voice matter almost more. In a way, removing Cecil Rhodes is an aggressive act against a complex history, and culture. Removing that statue seems sophomoric, forgive the pun, the way modernists and communists of the early 20th century wanted to erase difficult pasts that didn't suit them. Who's statue should go in its place, only one these particular students agree with? And then, if so, when there is a backlash against this sort of erasure of history, should the new statue then be replaced?

I understand the power of landscape symbols, and I too liked the author's observation made in the last paragraph of this peace, but this all has its limits. How many boulevards renamed for MLK still run through terrible neighborhoods? If these changes occur as part of a wide spread conversation, great (the move toward marriage equality was like this). If the changes come from above, they tend to remain instantiations of a dull bureaucracy, the power of which quickly fades.

Also, and this point is more critical, do two data points, the United States and South Africa, provide enough evidence to call this a global movement?

Not all campus protests are created equal. Some reflect the coming of age of a recently freed nation like South Africa others reflect the dictates of a group of angry privileged kids who have found that they can wield power without almost any criticism or push back because they have "grievances" and as a result they are demanding more and more. Some of their demands are unreasonable and petty; some of their behavior has been agreesive and appalling. Asking for tolerance and inclusiveness, some protesters stood in front of a library and verbally abused their colleagues because they were white. Some seek to silence critics and essentially end free speech by setting themselves up as arbiters of what can be said or, in some cases, must be said.

I judge these movements by their behavior not their claim of grievance or offense.

I can see how a university's curriculum might include special studies on diverse ethnic or cultural backgrounds of its people, regarding and/ or regardless of race. In the former Soviet Union special attention was given to elevating student enrolment to quotas according to nationalities within the Union. In the United Kingdom a movement emerged to embrace the rich Celtic past of some of its people. In the United States a special science, of history, developed, studying the African-American reality.

But some areas of study have never been altered on the Universtity level. Hard-core physical sciences still don't teach voodoo or Xala, or Magic. White culture's similar methods are not allowed, such as seances, or other spiritual ways to investigate the physical world of reality. Because science has its rigour, in its investigational methodology, ethnic ways, with a long ad rich past of looking at the world, get squeezed out because they do not comply with the scientific method.

I think this is how it should remain. We must not let, in our youthful enthusiasm of seeing a brighter, more inclusive future to mankind's diverse participants, ourselves lose sight of what must, and what can not be altered in academic expressions.

I love this column...I think how smart that they renamed a dorm, Karee after the desert tree...how astute, and profound, just as we need to shift to a world that must be concerned about our ecological present and future.

Taking down Cecil Rhodes, makes me think of statues of Lenin going down. I cannot mourn the loss of images of "great men" in public spaces, I do mourn the loss of whole civilizations, nations at the hands of those "great men". It is right to eliminate the images and statues in public spaces that celebrate dominance and oppression, especially of cultures that had no respect for people other than themselves. At the end of the day we are human, and that will be a mixed bag indeed, but let's hope for beauty and mutual celebration.

Students assume that there is a vast trove of intellectual work that has been produced by Blacks and hidden by Whites. Sadly, colleges and scholars have been searching for this lost treasure, for decades. It does not seem to exist. Colleges seem to now be encouraging black students to reject the profound insights of the European Intellectuals and of our own American forefathers, without having an adequate cultural base of their own with which to replace this knowledge. Their sense of estrangement from the white world has led to an alienation from the world's great scholars. It is sad and distressing to see this occur.
Great ideas should transcend the individual and speak to our shared humanity. If one assumes that every thing that a European Intellectual said was intended merely to hurt you, that lack of trust will only hold you back. You can not stand on the shoulders of great men, if you fear those men. Few of people can develop great insights into human nature and human history, on their own. We need the dialogue with great thinkers.
I look forward to hearing today's black scholars propose new ways of viewing race and of tolerating cultural legacies that were developed by "others". I look forward to their embrace of a society that allowed tolerance to flourish. Further alienating young Blacks by beating the drum of racism, is only holding them back. Whites have changed, it is time for Blacks intellectuals to step up, embrace the change and lead.

When these cultural features were first constructed there was no need to reflect on how and why "cultural features" were constructed. People wanted to mold others' minds with symbols, they wanted to praise their heroes, deflect others from alternative ways of thinking, almost in a mindless zombie-like ritual. Now there is another level -- not only are people promoting their symbols and honoring their heroes, they are at the same time having a discussion about what they are doing. This is a far more complicated development, leading to charges of political correctness, when in fact we have all been politically correct enforcers all along. It is only now that we are confronting this head on.

What a great piece! "These student protests are about space and who wields power within it." Yes, that's what's behind what's going on in the US, as well. And a new, hybrid culture will emerge. We can see that in nascent form in the Karee dormitory. The next student movement will be truly world-wide and not limited by national frontiers.

The protests in Cape Town seem largely to have been fueled by the economic uncertainty facing the youth. Uncertainty that has, for the most part, not improved in the 20 years of democracy. It is telling that after a brief period of protests at the university, they re-focused their protests on parliament. Equally telling that the government quickly gave in to their demands, for fear of widening protests. Economic insecurity appears to be at the root of many of the worldwide student protests.

The question is complex: Thomas Jefferson was a rapist: It is legally impossible to have consensual sex with someone who is considered to be your personal property. Sally Hemings' own opinion does not even matter. Do we remove the Jefferson Memorial from Washington, D.C. and chisel his face off of Mt. Rushmore? The dark arcs of American history are far too many: the largest and longest sustained act of ethnic cleansing in the history of the world rid the vast spaces of America of its native inhabitants; the building of a national economy on a foundation of black slavery, the after effects of which still affect all of us; racial and religious bigotry that put 100,000 or more American citizens in internment camps solely because they were Japanese, and that condemned thousands of Jews to the gas chambers because many in the State Department allowed their country club anti-Semitism to extrapolate that some of the Jews could somehow be German spies (sound familiar?). The issue then is not what to do about Jefferson statuary or buildings named after out and out racists such as Woodrow Wilson, or even whole colleges such as Washington and Lee University. The issue is what we as a society pledge ourselves to be and how to act going forward. The past cannot be ever erased, not even by changing names. The past should sit among us as a reminder of all the good and bad we have wrought and how we constantly try to move our moral compass forward for all of us.

The world is completely imperfect. Since the beginning of time the has been inequality, the haves and havenots. India has the caste system its a simple truth that only in God's eyes are people created equal.
Whats the advantage to rejecting history or destroying the past good or bad of the human endeavor?
Its those who profess to know this path and that reject the human past are ones tokeep an eye on.

These protests are a mixture of justified outrage and self-destructive naivete.

A statue of Cecil Rhodes or a civil war general stands for nothing good, and we should not honor such men. But Woodrow Wilson was no Cecil Rhodes; a flawed man who shared the virulent racism of the South of the time, he had nevertheless many magnificent accomplishments, from the first attempt at world government to child labor laws.

And what of the demand for safe spaces? That seems precisely the kind of segregation that excluded black Americans from schools and businesses. Similarly, it doesn't seem to have occurred to those who attack freedom of speech that the first victim of tyranny would be not the white majority, but the black minority.

Saddest of all, I think, is the demand that South African universities shift their focus from the cultural accomplishments of Europe. The nations that are most successful today are those that have adopted the innovations that allowed Europe to vault ahead of the rest of the world. Sadly, these advances conferred upon European cultures technological prowess and military might that allowed European countries to conquer and exploit much of the world. But the days of empire are gone, and it would be tragic if, owing to that taint or to feelings of inadequacy, South Africa's students were to turn away from the sophisticated, scientifically astute culture that has created the most successful societies in human history

The last paragraph is the best. It points up our common humanity..if we just listen and learn about each other because we WANT to know..we are curious. Then it's not a power struggle anymore, but more of how we become friends as we learn about each other. I think our children are in this phase. Races (I'm often reminded they truly don't exist) are learning exactly that.