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view of what is happening in washington. keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings of hearings from the u.s. congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and find scheduling information for c-span and c-span radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts -- podcasts. it is available at the apple store and google play. scan the qr code to download for free or visit c-span.org/c-span now. c-span now. your front row seat to washington, anytime, anywhere. conversation now on student protests past and present. our guest is history professor angus johnston, who studies student activism. on the scope of the protests over the war in gaza, how do

they compare to other student protests of the 21st century and how do they compare to the vietnam protests in the 1960's and 1970's? guest: we are nowhere near the level of scale of the vietnam war protests yet. the thing that is extraordinary about this wave of protests is not just the number of a protests we are seeing in the number of students who are participating in them, but the incredible pace of acceleration we have seen. these have gone from something fairly small to something sweeping the country and continuing to grow in the space of two weeks. host: why the timing of this? obviously the war in gaza has been going on since early october. why is this happening now and why have the past two weeks been such a focal point? guest: it is clear that columbia university's decision to weeks

ago thursday to send the police and shut down the encampment sparked a response among students around the country. we began to see a lot of reactions to that. as it got more media attention as people started hearing about them, they continued to snowball. we have seen that in the past, including in the 19 60's and earlier. there seems to be a particular level of intensity of the student response around the country this time. i have some theories but i don't think we fully understand it yet. host: what are your theories? guest: this is an issue a lot of students feel strongly about. we are in an era where images from war and violence across the world are things that we not only see in our living rooms on television but on our screens on social media and so on. i also think we need to start thinking about the fact that this is the post-covid

generation of american students. it just about every underground -- undergrad on campuses now arted college after the covid at lockdowns. this i the first post-pandemic or post lockdown wave of american student protests. i think that suggests inte sting -- interesting things about what is going on. host: how much did you watch of the police clearing out students from hamilton hall in overnight seeing violence between protesters and country protesters in l.a.? the l.a. police department moved into separate the two of them. guest: i was watching in new york and listening to the columbia student radio station. i found an old fm radio i found somewhere. the images and certainly the columbia images in the columbia college arrests and violence were very troublin

the thing that really struck me was what was going on at ucla, where the encampment at ucla was raided by country protesters with violence. it took hours for the police to be called in and once the police were called in according to the los angeles times, they stood and watched as country protesters were firing off some sort of tear grass -- teargas kind of thing or pepper spray and fireworks and in physical altercations with the demonstrators as well. host: in terms of what we are seeing, there was a caller in the first segment that said in the 1960's we weren't waving vietnamese flags, we were waiting piece flags. -- peace flags.

she didn't understand why they were flying palestinian flags. compared to the past, what are you finding? guest: we really do miss remember a lot about the 1960's. it is a cultural memory we have of what was going on in the 1960's is in many cases different from what happened. during the vietnam war protests, there were people waving north vietnamese flags. there were students chanting viet cong is going to win. and hey, hey, lbj, how many kids did you kill today? student organizers went to north vietnam and toured some of the sites. this is why some of the people and probably a lot of your viewers, are still angry at jane fonda. she did a photo op with an anti-aircraft.

the idea that american 1960's protests that were protesting violence and protesting the brutality of war was not critical of a mirror, and not finding common cause with the people on the other is a misremembering of what actually took place. host: angus johnston is with us from the university of new york. go ahead and start calling in with questions and comments. same lines as before, democrats (202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001, independents (202) 748-8002, students, administrators faculty at colleges and universities (202) 748-8003. as folks are calling in, saturday is the 54th anniversary

of the kent state massacre. we had a caller who was a freshman on monday on this program to talk about his experiences and how these images have brought back the experience that day. how did kent state become such an historic tragedy? guest: kent state is only one of whe police officers or other law enforcement officials deputize in one way or another, killed protesters or passersby. there were people killed at berkeley in 1960 nine, south carolina state college in 1968, and jackson state just a week and a half after kent state. kent state was significant and transformative for a few

reasons. one is that kent state happened in the middle of a hugrge of a protest in response to mixon's decision to invade odia. -- nixon's decio invade cambodia. ma campuses stepped back from the kind of confrontation that happened at kent state. but the governor of ohio was running for the united states senate and he did not want to appear weak so he sent the national guard onto campus. four students were killed, all well over several 100 yards away from the national guard troops. crucially, two of those were just passersby. there was a journalist for the student newspaper who had a camera and took a bunch of photos which were then able to be delivered to the ap and ran on the front page of newspapers all over the country the next

morning, including the famous one of the woman wailing in front -- behind a dead body of a fallen student that is so well-known today. then, as now, images are very powerful in shaping national coverage and national memory. host: talking with angus johnston this morning and taking your phone calls about the student protests, past and present. matt is out of falls church, virginia, democrat. caller: good morning, professor johnston. my comment is, i'm not really well-versed in the palestinian -israeli conflict long-term, and i don't really have an opinion on what would be best for them. i really look at the right to

protest in this country that seems crazy to me, the overreaction of the protesters on the college campuses. just small groups of kids being surrounded by giant cords of police seems crazy to me. my question is, do you think more college campuses are going to have protests now that this overreaction will probably lead to another reaction? guest: i think there are two parts to the answer. one is clearly the crackdowns are prompting more protests. we are seeing that spiral happening. it is important to remember that police have been called and arrests have been made in only a minority of the campuses where these protests are happening right now. there are a lot of campuses where the administrators have chosen either to let the protesters be and allow them to continue their encampments or to

negotiate with them. add brown just yesterday, it was announced they had negotiated a settlement and students were going to step away and there was going to be a discussion on campus about israeli divestment. my own daughter is a student at m.i.t. and there the encampment the last i heard have been allowed to go on peacefully for more than a week. the crackdowns we are seeing are not inevitable and not something that is happening at every campus and many campuses that are not experiencing these crackdowns are finding that they are able to continue their business continue the semester peacefully. host: returning to kent state, you mentioned a photograph, was it howard rocker the photographer? guest: yes. host: he spoke about taking those photographs and was releasing a book about the photographs from 1970.

we are going to air it's on saturday on american history tv so viewers can watch that program on saturday. when it comes to kent state, what lessons did universities take from kansas state and how to deal these protests in the years and decades to come, and do you think students took lessons? are any of these students today at the colleges and universities looking back and saying, these of the lessons we need to learn from that day? guest: the immediate response to kent state and the united states was largely, where they supportive of the national guard troops. polling showed overwhelmingly they blamed the students rather than blaming the national guard. there was clearly a sense that things were spiraling out of

control. president nixon appointed a national commission on student unrest and protests after kent state and jackson state. and the report is worth reading a half-century later and concluded federal government policies needed to change, specifically local police policies needed to change. they said a nation that is driven to use the weapons of war on their youth is a nation on the edge of chaos. americans pulled back from that after 1970 eight. campuses not only reevaluated their policies on campus protests in terms of willingness to bring in the police but began negotiating with students around questions of governance, curriculum, of how the campus would run, bringing students into the governance process. student governments on campuses

gained new authority. in 1971, the 26th amendment gave 19 to 20-year-olds the authority to vote for the first time and they could now engage in electoral organizing and lobbying for the first time. all of this leads to a transformation in the way that student protests and organizing works in the 1970's and 1980's, where students are working much more inside the system. the gains that were won and those tears would have been largely rolled back in the last couple of -- those years have been largely rolled back in the last couple of years. many in response to crackdowns or attempts to dissolve by state governments. student governments have lost a lot of the power they used to have. faculty as well has had powers

stripped from them. students have been reduced to the role of a consumer on the campus in many cases, rather than a member of a campus community or citizen of a campus community. that is part of the reason why students are turning to protests in these ways that reflect the protests of the 1960's. host: damien in maryland, republican, you are next. caller: the reason why these protests are devolving into hate speech and violence is because the pro-palestinian students are following their idols, hamas. palestine is hamas and hamas is a palestine and you can't say it's not because the palestinians, one of their virtues is killing the jews. they teach their children they should kill jews and that is what palestine is today. they had gaza and turned it into

an absolute you know what hole.all they did was build tunnels and teach hate. the protesters of today, the students, don't even know what vietnam is. there were protests in the 1960's because men from america were dying in vietnam, a whole big difference. host: professor johnston? guest: in vietnam, it was important to remember the vietnam's were not just against the draft and americans being sent over to fight, they were protests about america's involvement -- campuses involvement in the military-industrial complex, the relationships with war contractors, relationships with government agencies as well. there was a critique of american policy that spread far beyond the draft in the 1960's.

the second thing is, the question whether campus protesters today are engaging in hate speech, setting aside the way the colleges characterize palestinians as a group which is a separate issue, but the question is whether these students are engaging in hate speech is an empirical, factual question. one of the things we know it is as the protests have grown, a number of eyes on these protests and cameras on these protests is huge. what we are seeing overwhelmingly in the course of the last week as they have grown is not that the students are engaging for the most part and hateful chance or yelling or anything like that. we are seeing very little evidence of that. the conflicts we are seeing are when protesters encounter protesters and coming into contact with each other. that is a whole other question that i could spend 10 minutes

discussing the ethics and norms around protesting and counter protesting right now. the claim that these campus protests are full of hate speech, full of people calling for jews to be killed, full of overt, aggressive support for,, none of that is borne out by the evidence i've seen so far. host: halfway through our conversation with angus johnston , history professor in new york. taking your phone calls. folks are seeing in your id on screen, student activism.net, the founding -- and founder of studentactivism.net. that is a blog that i started in 2008-2 thousand nine, which was

very active during devious waves of a protest. since then, i have been spending a lot less time on blogging, as frankly most people who blogged 10 years ago have. right now the work i am doing around student protests right now is mostly in public education like this, where i am talking to media outlets and talking to campus groups. but if you go to studentactivism.net, i hope to put something up for you soon but there is not much up there right now. host: when you talk to student activist groups, what are you telling them? guest: i get invited by activist troops or campus administrators a lot. these days i am in conversation with the student activists about what they are doing, answering their questions about history of

student activism, tactics and strategies that have been used in the past, or, frankly, i'm trying to get a better grasp on what's going on right now. i gave a talk and participated in a panel at a college in new jersey last fall, and i was on a panel with six students, all of whom had entered college during covid. and talking with them about their experience with student activism was tremendously enlightening. frankly, most of the people, and i count myself in this company, most of the people who are going on television talking about student protests are very far removed from the campus themselves. host: what are one or two examples of common questions a student will have for you? guest: it varies a lot. if i would speak now, we would be getting questions about protests. one of the questions i always

get asked is, how do we grow our movement? we are trying to build something on this campus and how do we build it and get two people to come to our events? the events i give is in two parts. the first is find something you can win and win it. people like winning like they said in the old movie "bull durham." winning makes people feel their power and feel like they are doing something meaningful. if you can find even a small thing you can win, you will gain positive attention and find that people like you. the second thing i say is that you should look at the way you're conducting what you're doing and the way you are trying to build this organization and see whether it is something that if you weren't already involved you would want to be involved with. i have sat through as a student in the olden days a lot of very

long, very boring meetings and when somebody came to one, they often would come back to another -- wouldn't come back to another. what connects this to today's moment is that there is an excitement around these encampments. there is a passion for the cause but also for a generation of the who have been told that they never want to talk to each other, but they never want to leave their screens, that they never want to leave their house, they are socially isolated, not building the bonds of friendships and previous generations did, i think it is very interesting that the first wave of a mass protests in the united states since covid has taken the form of encampments, where people are just getting together, spending time together, hours and hours just

sitting and talking and hanging out. host: do you see any of these tests having a win? you talk about people liking a win. one university said they would hold a vote on divesting from israel, not committing to do that but holding a vote. is that a win in terms of what the students are looking for? guest: the brown student saw it as a win. if we look at the things people are demanding in these protests, there is a lot of variation but four big things keep coming up again and again. one is divestment from israel. that was the issue at brown and the second is disentanglement of relationships with israeli government, military institutions in terms of projects that are being done by the individual campus. the third is transparency, where they just are looking to have exactly the nature of these relationships be made public so they can be assessed by the

students and public at large. ended forth in many cases as they are looking for amnesty -- and the fourth in many cases is they are looking for amnesty. the last two are winnable in many cases. the first two are in most cases going to be a heavier lift for the student to win. the idea that this is an all or nothing thing and students are asking for the moon and never going to get anything they ask for doesn't really reflect, to me, what i am seeing in the demands being made. host: forest, ohio, miriam, langford democrats. caller: can you hear me? host: yes ma'am. caller: i think too that the people make their kids do this. think of the calls you get in your program where the people

are hateful, i mean hateful to each other and when you put these two groups together on college, you know they are going to interface with each other. i just think the hate needs to stop in our country. i think that would help the college students too. i've seen vietnam protests and this protests. that is all i have to say. thank you. host: david is in wesley chapel, florida, independent. caller: hello. i just want to say that the social media had indicated months ago that the increasing volatility of this issue and colleges and universities should has taken steps with the possibility of controlled

protests and administration failed in bring proactive. yes, you should be able to protest but also the outside agitators should have been identified and prevented from intermingling with the students and the protests. i have nothing against the protests. this country is based on protests in college campuses and universities, but it has to be done in a very big way and i think people are not proactively cultivating proper protesting environment. host: professor johnston? guest: the charge that there are outside agitators behind protests is one that we see over and over again in american history. to a large extent, it is false in most cases. every indication that i have

suggests that these protests are springing up on campus in response to local students' leadership to a large extent. to the extent claims of outside agitators are not false, it is important to impact with the -- unpack with the claim is. is it that students are talking to other students in campuses and reaching out to national organizations working in the field they are interested in, that they have perhaps had contacts in the past which they are reaching back to? students don't live in a bubble. nobody organizes politically in isolation from other political organizers. so i don't think there is anything particularly sinister about the idea that students are reaching out beyond the campus. host: to charles in omaha, nebraska, republican. you are next. caller: i have a question from

the people talking in the previous segment. they said something about the teachers in new york and those colleges, that they are not even american citizens. i think they are the ones that are spreading all the problems between the students and everything. the students when they interview them, they don't even really know what is going on over there. and i also heard on the west coast stanford in those schools, they won't even run republican speakers into have a change in view. they just shoot them down and run them out. i just would like to have the professor talk on that. host: we had a touch on the role of college professors in these protests. guest: my experience as a

college professor is that indoctrinating students, even if it were something i was interesting in doing would not be something i would be particularly successful at. the idea that faculty are behind these protests, again, it is an empirical question and there is very little evidence for it. when we see a group of students arrested at the university of utah yesterday, 17 arrests, are we thinking they were radical protesters and radical faculty at the university of utah that were somehow inducing these students to protest? it just doesn't feel plausible to me. on the question of speakers on campus, i think it is really important to note that even an organization like fire, which is often regarded as not particularly friendly to the left, has found consistently that pro-palestinian speakers,

speakers critical of israel, have been very likely to be suppressed on american campuses and that students who protested israeli officials or pro-israeli speakers were likely to have a more intense consequences than the students protesting a lot of other kinds of speakers. pro-palestinian speech is not dominant on american campuses and has not ever been dominant on american campuses and in fact is often selectively suppressed. host: there was a viral video yesterday and before the police removed students from hamilton hall at columbia university, we probably would be talking more if that had happened last night, but one of the student leaders at columbia talking about hamilton hall and she was talking about trying to get a commitment from the university and nodding -- not blocking food and water.

what was your reaction? that video got a lot of reaction online. what was your reaction? guest: i think one of the things you need to have if you are going to be engaging in student organizing is a willingness to get up in public and forcibly present your view. student movements are extraordinary and american hosiery -- culture and history and you can rise to prominence very quickly. if you are working in politics or labor unions, if you are working in the nonprofit sector, you are going to be toiling in anonymity for a very long time before anyone puts a microphone in front of your face. i always found, and i've always said to students, that you will make mistakes and in some instances. you will say things that you go on to regret, and how you

respond to those moments and what you take away from those moments is absolutely essential to your development as a person and an activist. nobody ever gets to be really good at anything without making some mistakes. i think that in that case with that video, i think there were probably parts of the way she phrased what she was paying that she probably regret now, and that is ok. host: on twitter following along, one tweets that protesting the draft in vietnam was protesting something real and tangible. u.s. citizs d a very directly to u.s. citen getting drafted or your kid getting drafted can really ruin your day. today's protests seem performative. what would you say? guest: i have already said there were very similar kinds of protests against the military industrial complex we are seeing in regard to the divestment and

disentanglement stuff we are seeing now. i would also say there were a lot of northern america students who spent a lot of time in the 1960's protesting against racism and jim crow, which was not tangible to them. so the idea that self interested protest has always been the norm in the united states is not accurate and the idea that self interest in protest is somehow preferable to protest that is motivated by other causes is one that i don't really resonate with either. host: richmond, virginia, independent, you are on with history professor angus johnston . caller: i have two questions. the first one is, universities have marked obligation to divest from endowments that fund genocide and the

military-industrial complex? and the second is, how is the federal government part of education posting their agenda toward free speech? will that affect teacher activism? guest: i think the department of education has very little direct role in what kind of speech is taking place on campuses. there are some ways in which federal government policies influence that but it is largely indirectly and on a broad scale than individual campuses. in terms of the question of whether there is a moral obligation to divest from israel , my take on this as on most things is that i've come as a historian, and and less interested in my own perspective on the content of the protests and the things the students are protesting for, my opinion on that would be on my opinion is

just a random person. my opinion on how the protests are taking place, what they are doing, the ethics of protest, all that is stuff i have a professional opinion on. host: do we see college professors -- didn't see college professors being called before congress in hearings in the 1960's? guest: yes, he feels that the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's, there were a tremendous amount of college professors being hauled before state legislatures and congress because of complaints they were communists who were, again, to echo something we discussed earlier, indoctrinating students. we saw a lot of that in the 1950's. in the 1960's, i think that the perception was -- was, i would have to look at the question of whether professors were being

called. host: i should clarify, administrators too. guest: yes, that was certainly the case. there was certainly a lot of heat on the administrators of these campuses and some became household names because they were perceived to be they were handling the protests very well or badly. yes, there is a tremendous amount of pressure on campus administrators right now. one thing we haven't talked about yet is the fact that right now the question of israel and palestine is one politically that tends to unite the republican party and divide the democratic party, so that republicans are generally fairly unified on their views on israel and palestine, where as democrats increasingly are not, which is a change from 20 years or so ago. one of the things that means is there as partisan advantage to be gained by playing up these

protests on the part of the republican party and we are certainly seeing some of that. host: kingwood texas, republican. this is bob. caller: good morning. i would like to challenge many of the things this professor has said. i have a lived experience in campus riots. i was at the university of california in the late 1960's, early 1970's, and my access to campus was blocked by protesters. it soured in my view of college. i was ready to get out because of the lunacy of the protesters. what i want to challenge this professor about is, he says things like, there is very little, if any, hate speech or violence in these current protests. i would like to know his opinion, does the river to the sea, does that not constitute hate speech to jewish people? how about intifada, death to

america and israel? these are vile things, yet people on campus put in safe spaces if you want to miss gender or say there is no such thing as transgender, things like that. these riots, these protests that are going on now are primarily funded by people like george soros and people from overseas. what does this professor think about that? guest: on the question of hate speech specifically, i absolutely did not say there is no hate speech taking place in any of these protests. i didn't say that and i don't believe that. certainly we have seen evidence of hate speech that was coming out of these protests. what i did say is as these protests have expanded, have gone from half a dozen encampments two weeks ago to dozens and dozens, probably over

100 now. we have not seen a corresponding increase in the direct visual evidence for the kinds of chance in -- chants and slogans the caller was talking about. if we saw those at every protest, we would be seeing this all over media. i am going to the social media accounts most critical of the protests and looking at what they are putting forward and looking at what they are getting attention to. and we are just not seeing that the kind of rhetoric the sky was describing is a standard or common in the protests. there is just very little evidence for that. host: who are the social media accounts most critical? guest: i would have to go back. i have a list on twitter and i go back and scroll through it. i don't remember usernames.

host: karl, brooklyn, democrat. caller: i have two quick commentaries to make. the commentary is to say that, to talk about the media and how they protect the idea that the people who are protesters are kids. they are not kill its -- kids, and when you go to college campuses, like your daughter as you said, it is a product that advertises itself. if you buy the start up and whatever it college or university or whatever it is, just like any other product you buy in a democracy and it is defective, right, and you can get compensation. we know there is something

defective in the colleges and universities of this country. this is a democracy and they bought a product and the product is that if someone is doing something wrong in a democracy, whether they be jewish, whatever race they are, the people that bought the product have the right to say that and that the tactics they are using now against those people that bought the product is fascism. host: that is carl in brooklyn. guest: i absolutely agree that college students aren't kids. i would encourage people who support these protests to not refer to them as kids. i think they deserve the respect they have earned. they are grown-ups, adults. in terms of the question of the product, i am not sure i understood everything that was being said. but one thing i would like to turn back to is the idea of the student as a consumer of a product.

a lot of people are critical of students saying, students think they are just buying the grade and they feel like they can order professors around because professors have a responsibility to give them the grade that they paid for. the ideology, the analogy of students as being consumers is not one that ever came from students. it came from something administrators in colleges developed over the course of the 1970's in response to students' demand in more of a say in the university. i go to campus and i work and i come back home. faculty who work at four-year colleges, residential colleges typically do the same. when i was an undergrad at suny, college was the place i lived for a period of time and the place that i worked and studied and place that i hung out with my friends and the place i

played pool and video games, the place i made really important friendships, the place i met the woman would become the mother of my two children. college isn't just a place you go to shop for an education. for an american student, college is in many cases their home, the community in which they live. i think it is entirely legitimate for students to want to have a say and how those communities are run. host: you talk about the students should be treated like adults. what do you think about the adult punishments they may face some of their actions, specifically at columbia university? the wall street journal -- the washington post had the run down they could bearn -- charged with burglary and criminal trespassing and the outdoor ones could be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

guest: one of the things that is clear about these charges is that they largely depend on what the university's preferences are. the university chooses to charge these students with these kinds of crimes. i suspect they will be able to. i would draw a little bit of a distinction between the two categories you were just describing. i think there are a lot of students on campuses who have a moral intuition, and this goes back to what i was saying a moment ago, a moral intuition that the idea can be arrested for trespassing on the campus of which you are a student in the middle of the afternoon, just because you are sitting on the lawn as a registered student and declining to leave that lawn. i think a lot of students feel that is morally wrong and even morally incomprehensible. i think this is one of the reasons why colleges need to figure out a language of dealing

with these protests and a set of tactics for dealing with these protests which is not currently based on legal rights -- purely based on legal rights but an image of the university community is and what their rights within the community is. that is going to be tricky, hard as protest tactics developed and conditions continue to evolve but i think it is essential. host: this is susan in caldwell, idaho, dependent. caller: i would just like to suggest for anyone who would like to know how the students are being -- what other people are saying indoctrinated, just google their campus paper, like the columbia spectator or the ucla paper, and you can see what is actually happening through students on each campus and you can pick any campus in the world and do that.

there is no pay wall on the student papers. guest: thank you for that. that is a great place for us to end. the student journalism coming out of these protests is absolutely essential. i absolutely agree that even in times when we are not seeing these kinds of protests, the student journalists are a great way to get an insight as to what is going on in the campus. i was listening to w kcra, the columbia station last night and that was essential to following what was going on in campus. this morning i was reading the twitter feed of the ucla paper and they were talking about the fact that again, counter protests had been allowed to come onto campus and brutalize the encampments and that the police were four hours, first

not even called and then doing nothing. that was an analysis of the situation which i saw in real time early this morning, which was later picked up by the los angeles times and frankly the new york times in its coverage this morning hadn't quite reached that level of analysis yet. host: professor angus johnston, a history professor ♪ announcer: c-span's "washington journal," our live for him to discuss so it is issues in government, politics, and public policy from washington d.c. and across the country. thursday morning, kevin said that -siddett and another guest discuss dea plans to reclassify marijuana as a lower risk of drug.

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