Commentary
It was some time around 2010, I think, that the nature of student protest took a new form. Young activists on campus have been with us for a long time, since the Eisenhower Era when groups started to form. They spoke and behaved quite differently from the current cohort of activists, however. Something decisive has happened to them.
The alteration is easy to observe. In the old days, protesters objected to policies and realities. Students for a Democratic Society, for instance, started out as a program against racism, then it took up the university’s connection to the military-industrial complex, and soon after the Vietnam War. In the Eighties, the list of issues raised by activist groups was led by apartheid in South Africa and the plight of the Palestinians. Throughout those decades, young protesters focused mostly on the object, the injustice of this and the depredations of that, not on themselves. They wanted to make a difference in what was happening in the United States and around the world, not to gain personal rewards or relief….