A Political Scientist on How Protests Can Change Minds or Backfire

Plain English with Derek Thompson

In the last week, hundreds of protests across college campuses and American cities have taken place in response to the war in Gaza. Campus life has shut down at Columbia University in NYC. The news is strewn with images of police confrontations on campuses, from Texas to California. Hundreds of demonstrators across the country have been taken into police custody. And many people now anticipate that, without a major course correction in the war in Gaza, demonstrators will converge on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in a replay of the infamous 1968 anti-war protests and police riots that defined that national convention. Next week, we’re going to have a full episode on the war itself. Today, I want to talk about the nature of protest itself. Omar Wasow, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley, is the author of an influential paper about the history of 1960s protests. Today we talk about what made the 1960s protests different, how protests succeed, how protests backfire, and how his research applies to today.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Omar Wasow

Producer: Devon Baroldi

LINKS: "Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion, and Voting" [link]

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