Protests erupted in spring 2024 in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel’s military response. On university campuses, students shocked by the scale and intensity of Israel’s response took to the quad, organizing rallies and creating encampments. Some critics of the demonstrations called the denouncements of Israeli military action antisemitic, the equivalent of hate speech, leaving little intellectual space for criticism or protest. At UIUC, faced with campus unrest, the university administration tried to draw a line between, on one side, the acceptable expression of political opinion and freedom of speech and, on the other, civil disobedience and disruption.
In considering the stakes of civil disobedience nationally, one might think of the Civil Rights movement’s struggles for justice staged through boycotts and marches and in the public spaces of buses, lunch counters, and bridges, and the Stonewall riot against police raids of a gay bar in New York City. Whether waged in peaceful solidarity or as a form of turbulent and deliberately disruptive resistance, these forms of protest went beyond words, the bodily presence of the protesters making a powerful demand for political change. But civil disobedience can come at a high cost as protesters endure forced removal, violence, criminalization and even incarceration. Thus, it is often the last resort of people for whom the conventional methods of affecting change (though voting or litigation) have failed.
The conference speakers will address the history, mechanism, and goals of political protest, looking at it from the various perspectives of ethics, efficacy, communication, strategy, solidarity, public policy, parliamentary channels, and law.
Organized by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, Protest in a Post-Political Era will take place on Friday March 7, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, at the Spurlock Museum's Knight Auditorium.