Hear Me Out: Student Protests Can Backfire (Badly)

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out: solidarity? College campuses across the country are grappling with protests and occupations in the name of a free Palestine. Many hundreds of students, faculty, and outside community members have been arrested in tense clashes with police — called onto campuses by the universities themselves. Student protestors have shaped public discourse on matters like war and the environment for many decades. But without a clear, sympathetic goal, they can also lead to political backlash that far outlasts a four-year degree. So are today’s student protestors instigating change in Gaza… or teeing up a crackdown on speech and protest here at home? Prof. Steven Mintz of UT Austin joins us, and urges a cautionary look at the history books. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: hearmeout@slate.com Podcast production by Maura Currie. Want more Hear Me Out? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/hearmeoutplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. It's the end of the spring semester on college campuses across the country.
0:07.5	It's final season and commencement season, but many universities are preoccupied at the moment by sweeping protests against the war in Gaza.
0:17.0	Students are forming encampments, occupying buildings, and being arrested in droves. So are professors and administrators and
0:25.2	yes protesters from outside these university communities. Campus
0:29.6	protests have polarized Americans for a very long time.
0:33.0	They've also spurred change, both in public sentiment and in policy.
0:38.0	Think of the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War.
0:40.0	But in a time when higher education is already in a precarious position in this country,
0:45.6	are these protesters tipping the first domino in a chain of unintended consequences?
0:51.8	You, but certainly I, lived for 40 years of backlash that was precipitated in part by the protests on campuses in the late 1960s and 40 years was an awful high price to pay.
1:10.0	Stephen Minch joins Hear Me Out in just a moment.
1:13.0	Stay with us.
1:14.0	This episode is brought to you by Disney Plus.
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1:46.1	Sean Bean as Thomas Cromwell.
1:48.9	Shard Lake streaming now exclusively on Disney Plus, 18 plus subscription required.
1:56.0	Welcome back to Hear Me Out.
1:57.6	I'm Celeste Hedley.
	...

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