Protest and the Public University

About this episode

Members of an encampment at a public university in New York City are on trial for felony charges. In 2024, students across the world launched encampments to challenge university financial ties to Israel in response to the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States, celebrates and valorizes its long and storied history of activism. However, the administration reacted differently during the 2024 police raid on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at its flagship campus in Harlem. Comparing the CUNY student movements of the mid-1990s and 2024, this episode asks: What are the conditions in which institutions like the university choose to repress struggles for social justice? At what point do stories of struggle become institutionally palatable? Thayer Hastings is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate Center in New York City. He is a scholar of political anthropology, the anthropology of colonialism, and Middle East and Palestinian studies. His dissertation focuses on how everyday modes of documentation in contemporary Jerusalem, where Palestini