Protest Archives - Public Seminar

North America

One Battle After Another

With ICE in Minneapolis: An eyewitness account

January 21, 2026 • by Emily Condon

On Tuesday morning, January 13, I was driving home after dropping my 9-year-old son off at school. There were ICE vehicles everywhere, I was surrounded by them on Park Ave. After a block or two of this, I parked and got out of my car. I saw that there were many ...

Activism

The Revolutionary Street Art of Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising

In Dhaka, layers of graffiti offer a timeline of hope

September 29, 2025 • by Rayna Salam

Inspired by a popular insurrection against Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly autocratic 15-year tenure as prime minister of Bangladesh, in July 2024, US-based Bangladeshi artist Debashish Chakrabarty produced and circulated online more than 100 posters illustrating the symbols, martyrs, and demands of the movement. He urged protesters around the world to copy ...

The Revolutionary Street Art of Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising

Higher Ed

The Burned-Over District: The Horses of Instruction and the Tygers of Wrath

Must the university resign itself to the fact that the liberal ethos at the heart of intellectual inquiry rarely informs our political convictions?

September 11, 2025 • by Jonathan Veitch

Genocide; Zionism; antisemitism; settler colonialism; structural racism; apartheid. "Divest now!"; "Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets too!"; "Anyone who sympathizes with Hamas is an antisemite"; "Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas's fight"; "Globalize the intifada"; "Using Gazans as a human shield is a war crime"; "From the ...

The Burned-Over District: The Horses of Instruction and the Tygers of Wrath

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey

AI offers an opportunity for protest in a political environment where even seemingly innocuous content can carry risks

June 18, 2025 • by Selin Bengi Gümrükçü

The ongoing protests in Turkey, triggered by the detention of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, following the annulment of his university diploma by Istanbul University, constitute the largest cycle of political mobilization Turkey has witnessed since the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Even though the mayor was in prison, his party, ...

Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey

Activism

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

When Russian students decided to stop studying at the institutions where they get educated by the whip

May 15, 2025 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya and Leo Tolstoy

Some lines written very long ago seem to have been written for the current moment. At the University of St. Petersburg in the spring of 1899, students protested the government’s policies and their pressure on university administration. Upon learning about student unrest and being urged by student delegates who were ...

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

Activism

Serbia’s Popular Protest Movement and Why It Matters

Students have adopted the dynamics of plenums and public assemblies where collective decisions are made without centralized leadership

April 25, 2025 • by Jorge González Arocha

In recent months, Serbia has witnessed one of the most significant social movements in its entire history—and one of the most important in contemporary Europe led mainly by students. What began as a response to a tragic accident in Novi Sad that left 16 people dead quickly grew into a ...

Serbia’s Popular Protest Movement and Why It Matters

Education

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

The discursive stylings of an authoritarian campus administration

October 24, 2024 • by Jessica Storey-Nagy

Instead of grading papers and preparing final exams last April, I was at Dunn Meadow, a public gathering space on Indiana University (IU) Bloomington’s campus. My aim, and that of my colleagues, was to protect student protesters from the violence sanctioned by IU’s top administrators, another possible intrusion by the ...

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

Economy

Columbia University’s “Crisis”

A political economy sketch map

May 3, 2024 • by Adam Tooze

Questions of political economy are at the heart of the Columbia University protests....

Activism

NYC Climate Action to Stop Dirty Banks

A photo essay

March 23, 2023 • by Jo Freeman

Jo Freeman captures the protest from the streets...

Activism

“Bigger Than Roe” was Smaller Than Usual in DC

A photo essay

January 25, 2023 • by Jo Freeman

Pro-choice protestors gathered in different cities all over the country on January 22, 2023. This was exactly 50 years after the Supreme Court declared in Roe v. Wade that state laws that denied a woman the right to choose an abortion were a violation of her Constitutional right to privacy. ...

“Bigger Than Roe” was Smaller Than Usual in DC

War

Personal Reflections on War and Peace

A response to James Carroll

October 24, 2022 • by Frida Berrigan

The history of nonviolent successes is underreported, understudied, and under-understood. ...

Activism

Protests at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings

A photo essay

October 18, 2022 • by Jo Freeman

It was noisy in downtown DC as several groups protested at the annual meetings of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)....