The Economics of Student Protests

Capitalisn't

University of Chicago Podcast Network

Stigler Center, Chicago Booth, Socialism, Antitrust, University Of Chicago Podcast Network, Growth, 087667, Policy, Monopoly, Professors, Distortion, Research, Competition, Capitalisnt, Inequality, Promarket, Politics, Policymaking, Special Interest, Economics, Efficiency, Regulations, Chicago, Business, Markets, University Of Chicago, Kate Waldock, Capitalism, Friction, Bethany Mclean, Government, Macroeconomics, News, Education, Waldock, Georgetown, Microeconomics, Luigi Zingales, Zingales, Finance, Ucpn

4.5 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over the last few weeks, university politics has captured headlines as students across the country occupy sections of their campuses and demand that their schools divest from Israel in protest of its contentious war in Gaza. Last week for Compact Magazine, Luigi and Nobel Laureate Oliver Hart stressed that one lesson from these protests is that universities need to make transparent their investment strategies and how they contribute to the school’s financial operations, including financial aid. Increased transparency can inform ethical debates about divestment, but can it solve them? Even if students get what they want, will it matter? Or should they be focusing their efforts elsewhere to maximize impact? Who gets to make the decisions about the ethics of college endowment investments, and how should votes be divided between different stakeholders — students, faculty, alumni, and donors? This week on Capitalisn’t, Bethany and Luigi record a late-breaking episode tackling these foundational questions that underlie the governance of today's universities.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This morning I woke up at the sound of the helicopters overing over my house,
0:05.0	which is on the University of Chicago campus.
0:08.0	So I reached quickly for my iPad because I knew what that meant,
0:12.0	and meant that police was moving on the campus and campment in the main quadrangle of the university.
0:17.0	The pro-Palestinian campment at the University of Chicago has been taken down.
0:21.6	The school sending in campus police to dismantle the tents just before dawn today.
0:26.6	The good news is that the helicopter was not the police. It was TV. And most importantly, nobody
0:32.6	got hurt. In fact, nobody got arrested. The University of Chicago police simply removed the encampment.
0:39.0	The outcome at the University of Chicago should not make us ignore
0:41.8	that the massive amount of arrest throughout the country
0:44.6	and the historical importance of the student protest.
0:48.0	These latest flashpoints following weeks of clashes
0:51.0	at roughly 75 campuses nationwide, according to a count by NBC News.
0:55.8	Arrests now topping 2,400 as demonstrators demand schools divest from Israel.
1:01.4	Since this is an economic podcast and not a political one, we're going to focus on the economic side of students' protests, not on the political side.
1:10.0	But this economic question is a really important
1:12.7	one. A guy named Adam Tews just wrote today. Indeed, he wrote to a surprising degree,
1:18.1	questions of political economy are at the heart of the protest. I'm Bethany McLean. Did you ever
1:25.6	have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea?
1:30.1	And I'm Luigi Zengalis.
1:31.4	We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
1:36.9	And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.
	...

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