Radical Protest on a University Campus

During Colombia’s internal armed conflict some forms of radical protest undermined the civil sphere through the exercise of violence and intimidation. The new post-conflict stage calls for a transition from forms of radical protest that undermine civil life to forms that boost its vibrancy. For decades on end Colombia’s public universities served as theaters of the war. Violence on university campuses, and the practices of pressure and intimidation entailed by it, endemically encouraged self-censorship among the members of university communities and all too often resulted in the breakdown of open public conversation about people’s experiences of campus violence and their involvement or participation in the war. Transitioning to civil radical protest on public university campuses demands undermining through free discussion the justification regime that sustains violent radical protests. Cracks must be opened in the wall of silence and fatalistic indifference that prevented violent radicalism from being challenged by universities communities. I will describe three interventions between 1992 and 2016 that sought to achieve just that at the National University of Colombia, the country’s largest public university.

Carlo Tognato is Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Director of the Nicanor Restrepo Santamaría Center for Civil Reconstruction, Bogotá, and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University

This lecture is hosted by Susanne Lohmann, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy.