Image
March 7 / Knight Auditorium of the Spurlock Museum
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.
Speakers
Asef Bayat (Sociology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Cristobal Bianchi (Art & Design, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Christina Foust (Communication Studies, Metropolitan State University at Denver)
Richard Gilman-Opalsky (Politics and International Affair's University of Illinois Springfield)
Juan González (Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois Chicago)
Sara Safransky (Human and Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University)
Ashwini Vasanthakumar (Legal & Political Philosophy, Queens’ University Ontario)
Ekow Yankah (Law & Philosophy, University of Michigan)
Program
9:00-9:10 | D. Fairchild Ruggles - Welcome
9:10-9:15 | David Wilson - “What Do We Mean by ‘Post-Political’”?
9:15-10:00 | Ashwini Vasanthakumar (Queens University) – “Forget Persuasion: Protest as Refusal and Rehearsal”
Moderator: David Wilson (UIUC)
10:00-10:45 | Richard Gilman-Opalsky - “The Post-Political is also always Pre-Political: Real Horizons of Revolt”
Moderator: Ken Salo (UIUC)
Break
11:00-11:45 | Sara Safransky (Vanderbilt University) – “What Time is it? Freedom Struggles and the Crisis of the University”
Moderator: Luvell Anderson (UIUC)
11:45-12:30 | Cristóbal Bianchi (UIUC) – “The Span of Protest: Poetic Action as Resistance"
Moderator: Sara Bartumeus
Lunch for speakers and moderators at Intermezzo Café in the KCPA
1:15-2:00 | Christina Foust (Metropolitan State University at Denver) – “Revisiting Anarchy amid the Collapse of (a) Hegemony: Tactical hopes for a second Trump presidency”
Moderator: Lena Shapiro (UIUC)
2:00-2:45 | Asef Bayat (UIUC) – “Protests in a Post-Gramscian Moment”
Moderator: Anke Pinkert
Break
3:00-3:45 | Ekow Yankah (University of Michigan) – “Black Patriotism and Protest”
Moderator: Colleen Murphy (UIUC)
3:45-4:30 | Juan González (University of Illinois Chicago) – “Mass Protest in the U.S. and Resistance to Empire in the Global South”
Moderator: J. David Cisneros (UIUC)
4:30-5:15 | Discussion
5:15-6:00 | Reception in the Spurlock Museum rotunda