On Thursday last week, campus leadership dismissed UC Berkeley lecturer Peyrin Kao — the latest casualty in the administration’s war on Berkeley’s free speech foundations. Kao’s censuring proves yet again that free speech at UC Berkeley is no more than administrative marketing. It’s a principle invoked when convenient and easily discarded when costly. This semester, […]
Tag: protest
Bob Dylan’s Model Political Art
“I have never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world.” – Bob Dylan In 1961, Bob Dylan arrived in New York City to meet his idol. Woody Guthrie, by then dying of Huntington’s, had been the prototypical hero of early 20th-century folk music, authoring celebrated pro-labor and anti-fascist classics. Dylan settled in New […]
No Kings Day Demonstrates that the Modern Era of Protest Culture Needs to be Revamped
On October 18, 2025, cheers and shouts echoed across the United States as a collective movement ensued among Americans nationwide. The news of more than 2,700 planned protests made headlines, all brandishing the same unifying slogan: “No Kings.” To criticize the Trump Administration for its already controversial policies in just less than a quarter of […]
Turning Point USA, November 10th, 2025
On Monday November 10, Turning Point USA had its final stop of a 2025 tour on campus at UC Berkeley. Whilst attendees sat inside Zellerbach Hall, furious students, staff, and community members protested outside, declaring that conservative and instigative media were not welcome on campus. Outraged that the progressive campus would host TPUSA’s “American Comeback […]
Caught in the Crossfire: UC Berkeley and the Federal War on Higher Education
At the crossroads of politics and pedagogy, the Department of Education has become a focal point of national controversy under the Trump Administration. Since 1867, the Department of Education has widely administered and funded state-run education in the United States. Along with this function, it also operates investigations on the grounds of racial preferences, and […]
On Happyend, Duty, and Justice
Neo Sora’s 2024 film, Happyend, brings to life a verisimilar portrayal of a country in decline: a right-wing, authoritarian, surveillance state slowly in construction. In a process replicated throughout the world, basic rights — to privacy, to refuge, to anonymity — are stripped away, ostensibly in the name of group-safety. High school students in Sora’s […]
The Lockean protests of D.C. juries
Despite what national authorities may tell you, Washington, D.C. is not a dangerous city. On August 22nd, this fact was apparently not of great concern to the nation’s commander-in-chief, who federalized the D.C. National Guard and sent 2,200 National Guard members to the city. This was carried out on erroneous grounds that the nation’s capital […]
Indonesia and the Chronically Online Political Voice of Gen Z
Searching Indonesia on TikTok once yielded viral videos of an 11-year-old kid racing boats and “aura-farming”. Now, the same search is instead met with clips of burning buildings, demands to the government, and the “Jolly Roger” flag from the 1997 Japanese manga and anime One Piece. These two jarringly different snapshots have one thing in […]
Uncivil Unrest from Nepal to the United States
With their Parliament building still warm from the blaze of the day before, tens of thousands of Nepalis gathered for an impromptu election. The burning of Parliament was only one part of a fiery two-day protest in Nepal’s capital, which toppled the former system, setting up an interim government in less than a week. In […]
Medals and Meddling: Unraveling the Olympic Paradox
This year’s Olympic games were one for the books. The world watched, enamored, as Simone Biles won gold after gold, as Turkish Yusuf Dikec nonchalantly walked to the stand and fired bullseye after bullseye, as Australian Rachael Gunn did her best interpretation of a kangaroo interpreting the movement of a dying fish. For a few […]