Column: What we keep getting wrong about protests like those at USC, Columbia and other campuses
LA TimesThe current campus demonstrations are a reminder that of all the mossy clichés and puffed-up pieties of polite American discourse, the sanctity of protest is the hardest to question. But if I say that most protests are performative cosplay, or mass meet-ups of the angry, the radical, the lonely or the misinformed, someone is bound to point to the civil rights protests of the 1960s or the campaign for women’s suffrage, followed by a string of righteous how-dare-yous. Well-intentioned protest organizers know this better than anybody; they often struggle to keep the crowds from becoming dangerous mobs. The core message of mass protest is “strength in numbers,” a primordial feeling that can often lead to a kind of illiberal power-drunkenness. The highest form of protest is captured by Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of a lone, working-class dissenter standing up for his conscience as his neighbors listen politely, not by images of mobs shouting insults, blocking traffic, occupying buildings or worse.
History of this topic
American universities accused of attack on free speech with strict campus protest rules
The IndependentUS colleges revise rules on free speech in hopes of containing anti-war demonstrations
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