It’s a question central to the commencement cancellations, protest encampments and building takeovers that have been significant features of college life across California and America this spring: Should taxpayers fund college classes in agitation and protest, which are currently offered on many campuses?
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No one knows exactly how many products of these classes have populated the protests and arrest rolls this spring, but bet on the number being significant.
Not every campus offers such classes today, and what they teach can be used anywhere in protests of almost anything, from support for Palestinians and Hamas to backing the Israeli state and organizing insurrections that invade government buildings to disrupt key proceedings.
However, since a substantial percentage of those arrested around the country this spring had no connection to the campuses where they camped out — 60% of arrestees at City University of New York, 24 of 64 (about 38%) at UC San Diego, 40% at MIT and 26 of 33 (about 79%) at the University of Pennsylvania for just four examples — that at least some of the springtime protesters were trained in agitation by public institutions is a safe bet.
Here’s what the catalogue entry says about “Communications Studies 20, Agitation and Protest,” an offering of Santa Monica College, the community college sending more transfer students than any other to the University of California system: “Agitational and protest communication includes the strategies, tactics and communication utilized by movements to resist or provide different perspectives, including those that have been excluded or silenced.
“Attention is given to theories, contexts and strategies … as well as numerous examples of diverse protest movements in modern and contemporary history.”
The class offers three transferable credits that count toward UC graduation. Did the protesters at UCLA who allegedly blocked the entrance to the main undergraduate library there this spring to all who lacked a yellow wristband learn that tactic in such a class?
Some UCLA students said they could not enter that library until and unless they obtained the wristband by signing a statement backing the Palestinian side in the current Middle East conflict. UCLA officials did not return calls and emails requesting authentication for that claim but did say some public walkways were blocked to people not wearing yellow wristbands during the five-day encampment on the grassy central quad there.
Classes akin to the Santa Monica College course are listed in catalogues of several California State University campuses, including those in San Marcos, Long Beach and Sacramento.
The Long Beach State catalogue entry describes “Communications Studies 415 — Rhetoric of Social Movements and Protest” as a three-unit course that “examines goals, strategies and effects of groups that form to advocate social, political and/or moral change. Focuses on how (agitator) groups communicate messages and how institutions of power respond in order to control or resist change.”
Descriptions are very similar at virtually all campuses offering this type of class. Similar classes are spreading to other campuses too. UCLA, for one, will inaugurate a new undergraduate seminar this fall “highlighting Asian American and Pacific Islander politics and policy advocacy” that will “allow UCLA students to put theory into practice this fall.”
A question no campus has yet addressed is whether public colleges exist in part to help unify Americans or to contribute to social unrest and racial and ethnic identity politics. Or possibly both.
This spring’s spate of campus encampments, though, have undoubtedly blocked Jews and other “Zionists” from entering some buildings and spaces, like the UCLA encampment itself. Denizens of the encampment there erected barriers to keep out anyone not in agreement with their cause. Some participants were videoed preventing Jewish students from walking to classes and accosting a student wearing a Star of David necklace.
Nicole Rosen represents the Santa Cruz-based AMCHA Initiative (“amcha” mean “ordinary people” in Hebrew), which has long tracked campus antisemitism nationally.
“When universities don’t insist on enforcing their policies and holding students accountable with consequences, outside agitators and extreme students will take over,” said Rosen.
Meanwhile, the contributions of publicly-funded classes teaching how to accomplish this have not been officially measured so far this spring.
Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
