Wikipedia Community Documents Pro-Palestinian Protests on University and College Campuses

On April 22, 2024, the Wikipedia community began building an article titled 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses. The article includes a timeline on an estimated 120 campus protests and occupations that first started at Brown University in November 2023. On May 3, 2024, the list of pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses in 2024 was created. 

As of May 6, more than 120 writers and editors have been involved in the Wikipedia project making more than 1100 edits. Editors are restricted to those who have shown a record of following with community rules. The article has received about 33,000 views so far. On May 3, the original article received a peak number of views, more than 10,000 for the day. The number of views of the second article, the list, continues to grow.  

Events Preceding the Student Protests 

Demonstrations which began in Europe and the US in October 2023 moved onto college campuses and expanded internationally.  

The protests are in response to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians being killed and a half million facing famine.  The US media has generally avoided discussing the larger picture: of  US, European, and Arab nations over the last seven decades, and their role in the forced migration and containment of Palestinians in what has been termed an "open air prison" in Gaza.  US history includes similar elements of inhumanity and oppression. 

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv was committing genocide in Gaza, ordering Israel to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians.  An order that Israel has rejected.

In March 2024, United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said of the Israeli actions that “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.” 

Outcomes During and After the Demonstrations

In an attempt to quell the university and college protests in the US, more than 2,700 people have been arrested, to include students and university professors. An unknown number of students have also been expelled with limited due process. Media have been restricted access to protest sites.

Despite the documented horrors in Gaza, the US public has generally not supported the protests. And the US government continues to send arms, and money for arms, to Israel. Pro-Palestinian protesters have been labeled as radicals and antisemitic, even though many of them are Jewish. 

Student demands for divestment from Israel and from US arms makers have been discussed, but no material changes have occurred. Israel is planning to invade the city Rafah, which is likely to end in more deaths and suffering, but the US has mentioned no consequences if civilian body counts are high. Internationally, Israel is facing greater isolation, and its leaders are being accused of war crimes. 

Time will tell whether these articles will be reflective of a short-lived situation or part a larger social movement. The 76-year genocide in Palestine, the unintended consequences of the Jewish genocide during the 1930s and 1940s, will not be going away. 

For more than a century, student protests have been a part of US history and social consciousness, sometimes forgotten, but often reflecting progressive thinking (civil rights, peace, divestment from apartheid, fighting climate change).  

Related links:

A People's History of Higher Education in the US?

One Fascism or Two?: The Reemergence of "Fascism(s)" in US Higher Education

Rutgers University Workers Waging Historic Strike For Economic Justice (Hank Kalet)

Editors note: The Higher Education Inquirer thanks Hank Kalet for allowing us to reprint his substack Channel Surfing as a record of the Rutgers strike. Hank is a lecturer at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information. We encourage you to subscribe to his substack and visit the Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union twitter pages. 

You can donate to the strike fund at https://rafup.betterworld.org/donate 

 

Post-Strike Diary: A Step Back and Some History
The Fight Here at Rutgers Is Not Over, Nor Is It an Isolated Battle

I want to get back to first principles. Put the strike at Rutgers into the broader context of higher ed and contingent worker right. Connect it to the larger currents in the labor movement.

The 40 years starting with Ronald Reagan’s election were awful ones for labor unions. Union activity had already peaked when Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers and signaled to business that the era of labor peace on the employer side was over.

I worked in a factory in Trenton that summer. There were whispers that union organizing was taking place, but it wasn’t gaining much traction. Factory jobs were leaving the state and the Northeast and there was fear that management would close shop and move to Georgia, Alabama, or another anti-union state. Reagan’s action was the final straw, dooming the efforts, and setting in motion a frenzy of union busting we are still struggling to understand. (I’m working on a play about this moment.)

The 40 years that followed were mostly dark for the union movement, with some victories. Some of this darkness was brought on by the unions themselves, many of which had calcified and were either corrupt or overly cozy with management and politicians. Grassroots energy was dismissed and reform efforts short-lived.

The Covid pandemic shifted the terrain. Donna Murch, a union colleague and associate professor of history at Rutgers, has been making the case that Covid laid bare the vulnerabilities of all faculty members and all workers at Rutgers. Covid forced classes online with little assistance and no compensation for the work needed to make that happen. It put clinicians and lab workers in peril, requiring them to work through the pandemic often without proper PPE. It disrupted grad students’ research, even as their funding clock continued to tick.

This precarity was evident throughout society, a realization that led to union drives at Amazon, Starbucks, and other companies that relied on short-term and/or low-paid workers. Warehouse workers — many immigrants, some undocumented— often faced the worst conditions.

Those of us with a level of economic privilege were able to pay folks in the gig economy to do our grocery shopping and provide needed services, allowing Im us to stay home.

Unemployment shot up, wages stagnated with the economy, and the fascistic wing of the Republican Party — those most aligned with then-President Trump and opposed to vaccines, masks, and those who violently responded to the Black Lives Matter protests that spread after the state murder of George Floyd — cracked down and continue to crackdown on efforts to expand opportunity and inclusion.

This is the backdrop against which we have to judge the current wave of organizing and strikes — a movement that is gaining traction in ways we have not seen in a long time.

Gallup reports:

Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions. Although statistically similar to last year's 68%, it is up from 64% before the pandemic and is the highest Gallup has recorded on this measure since 1965.

Union density remains an issue, though this is likely because of the legal impediments erected over 40-plus years of aggressive anti-union activity from both parties, abetted by a media infrastructure that has lost its connections to workers.

News coverage of labor is lagging badly behind this surge of organizing. The loss of labor as a beat has created a structural coverage deficit that, in practical terms, means reporters are reporting and writing stories with at best a limited background on labor issues and dynamics, including how labor law works and just how much power the bosses have accumulated over the years. The upshot is a series of stories throughout the press that boils nearly every labor dispute down to money, or that filters these disputes through an earlier lens in which each dispute is a singular event unrelated to the larger American economy.

The reality, as we discussed in my class today, is that the current wave of organizing is about more than money. It is about life conditions, workplace conditions, about safety and scheduling, and long-term job security. Starbucks workers want more control of their schedules, more regularity, so they can plan their lives. Amazon workers and others working in the new mostly unregulated warehouse industry want safety rules, regular breaks, sick time. The rail workers, who were thrown onto the tracks by President Joe Biden, want an end to the kind of scheduling that results in exhaustion and dangerous conditions — one of the many factors that resulted in the deadly East Palestine crash.

Adjuncts and grads at Rutgers and other institutions of higher education want raises. But we also want respect. We want job security — big raises mean little if we can be fired or laid off easily. We want a shift in values in higher ed away from the current model, which is more focused on creating a profit (big reserve accounts and endowments that can be invested to generate bigger reserves and endowments), on building sports empires, on turning faculty into grant chasers or replaceable cogs.

The framework in place at Rutgers is a start, but this contract fight is far from over. And even when this one ends, we know there will be more work to be done. This is the beginning of the transformation of higher ed, not the conclusion.

Post-Strike Diary: Rutgers Unions Fight On Historic Gains But Work To Be Done.

The strike is off, for now. But the efforts to remake Rutgers continues.

As I wrote Saturday, the unions representing striking workers voted to accept a contract framework in exchange for pausing the strike before it entered its second week. We paused to let students get back to classes. To let them finish their semester, their careers at Rutgers.

The framework includes a 14% raise over four years for full-time faculty, a 33% pay increase for grads over four years, a 25.5% bump for post-docs, and a 48% increase for adjuncts; multi-semester contracts for adjuncts, presumptive renewal of contracts, recognition of graduate fellows as grad workers, changes in grievance and evaluations procedures, and five-year funding for grads. The framework also includes elements of the “Bargaining for the Common Good” agenda: a $600,000 recurring Community Fund and the end of the university policy that prevents students from registering for classes or getting transcripts or diplomas due to unpaid fines and fees, and a Union-University-Community table.

Much of this is historic, but it’s still a work in progress. The clinicians, researchers, and professors represented by BHSNJ-AAUP have nothing from administration, and more needs to be done for grads, for students and the community, and for adjuncts.

That was the message Monday afternoon as about 100 picketers gathered and chanted, reminding the community and the press that the battle to end the corporatization on higher ed continues — both here in New Jersey and nationally — continues.

Picketers carried strike signs with the word “suspended” stapled above “On Strike.” We marched intro of Scott Hall on College Avenue chanting, “The strike may be suspended. The struggle hasn’t ended.” We did his despite the cold win blowing own College Avenue as students looked on. We have more actions planned this week, part of a rolling set of protests designed to keep our issues in front of the public and to maintain pressure on an administration that failed to take us seriously until we walked and the governor got involved.

I told NBC New York that we could reinstate the strike if management fails to play ball. A threat? Idle talk? I’ll leave it at that. But we’re not going away. We’re not backing down.

RU Strike Diary, Day 5 Ends With a 'Framework'

We have a framework for a deal and are pausing the strike that has shut down Rutgers University for the last five days. I’m being careful of the language. We don’t have a deal and we have not ended the strike. We have a framework. There remain a lot issues to address, but most of the big ones are settled. The framework takes us a long way toward our demands of equal pay, job security, better pay for grads, and making Rutgers a better neighbor. It is not a perfect deal. We wanted more. But I think we moved the ball far down the field. This is not the final battle, but part of a larger movement.

Cliches. Platitudes. Bromides.

But still accurate.

I think the deal is good for the workers and students involved, but I can’t say much about the details. The journalist in me bristles at this, but my role as a member of the adjunct faculty union executive board prohibits me from saying much more. This is in line with the week for me, a week in which I found myself on the other side of the reporter’s notebook. I’ve talked with more reporters this week than in my entire adult life.

I teach journalism at Rutgers as an adjunct. I became involved in the union effort in 2021 and have become more and more active. The more active I became, the more I learned about the inequities of higher ed. The more I learned about these inequities, the more I became involved.

This was the same for just about everyone I talked with all week. I spent five days on the lines in New Brunswick. It was hot. It was exhausting. It was thrilling. Turnout fluctuated and the size of the pickets on College Avenue varied from day to day. We probably hit 1,000 picketers on Tuesday afternoon, when the folks from Cook/Douglass and Livingston and Busch joined in a march up George Street to the administration building on the Old Queens campus (a small subsection of the College Avenue campus) and joined the College Avenue contingent in an emotional and forceful show of solidarity. Wednesday featured a wake-up tour of campus, while Friday offered a festive feel, even as talks were heating up in Trenton.

The larger experience was one of joy and unity. That does not mean everyone is happy, but we made massive gains and I think we need to acknowledge that.

The message I would offer to the public at this point is that academic workers are tired of being pushed around. We are tired of the corporate bent of higher ed, angry that universities have been coopted by big-time athletics, corporate-style governance and funding models, and that what should be their primary missions — education and research — have been sold off to funders who only care about how they can monetize their scientific discoveries.

We have watched as more and more teaching and research jobs have been remade as contingent, easily replaceable labor. We have watched as the humanities are decimated in favor of incredibly important STEM courses and programs, not because of academic need, but because STEM generates grant revenue.

Rutgers, like most American universities, operates as a corporation. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated while thousands of poorly paid educators and staff are denied job security and benefits. Adjunct faculty and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid. They frequently take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa. This inversion of values is destroying the nation’s educational system.

This is why we have seen academic workers strike across the country, from California to Illinois to New York. The strike at Rutgers is part of this movement and, because of the university’s size and the fact that all three of its faculty unions walked out of class, might be the most important of these efforts. The University of California strike was larger, but as with all other walkouts it only featured mainly graduate students. The strike at The New School was about adjunct wages. At Temple, it was just grads. At Rutgers, I walked along side non-tenure-track professors, full professors, graduate students, undergraduates and allies from the area.

The framework — again, not a tentative agreement or a contract — goes some of the way toward addressing these issues at Rutgers and, if it is ratified, could stand as a model and the largest victory so far in the battle for the soul of the American university system.

RU Strike Diary, Day 4

Day four was a tougher haul. The heat had a draining effect on many of us, but we were out on the lines and we are committed to remaining out for as long as it takes to win the transformation we are demanding.

There are three unions on strike — AAUP-AFT, the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and BHSNJ-AFT. We are negotiating together. Fighting together.

Our demands:

*Equal pay for equal work and job security for adjuncts like me;
*A living wage and longer guaranteed funding for grad workers;
*Recognition of grad fellows as workers who should be part of the union;
*Job security for non-tenure-track professors;
*Protections for academic freedom;
*Control of schedules;
*Wages that keep up with inflation;
*An end to onerous fines on students and the practices of withholding class registration and transcripts and the sale of student debt to collection agencies;
*A rent freeze on Rutgers-owned properties;
*A community hardship fund;
*Health care for all workers;
*And numerous other changes in the way Rutgers operates.

Thursday featured numerous targeted pickets, which may have left the impression on College Ave that there were fewer people out. But we made joyful noise on Voorhees Mall and in front of Scott Hall, marched through the streets of the city to show solidarity with the community, marched on President Jonathan Holloway’s mansion in Piscataway, and on the homes of several members of the university Board of Governors.

Our pressure has had an effect. As our bargaining team has reported, the administration has been pushed significantly — by us and because of pressure for Gov. Phil Murphy. I’ve been critical of his public statements, but it’s clear he has contributed to at least some of the progress.

Make no mistake, however. We are winning this because we’ve out organized management, showed our commitment, and made the public case that we are engaged in a moral cause to bring equity to high ed, a message that is resonating beyond our campuses.

Bernie Sanders issued this video this week:

And I’ve talked to state and National reporters, including small labor and lefty print and video sites  and a student TV station at James Madison in Virginia.

Power of the People Evident on the Pickets

Day 3 went much like Day 2, with massive pickets and a powerful rally in front of Winants Hall —  home to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway offices. There were drag queens, music, and a festive atmosphere — but hanging over it all was the specter of negotiations.

On Sunday night, Gov. Phil Murphy summoned both sides to Trenton, using his office to try to avert the strike — didn’t happened — and possibly get the dispute settled quickly. We walked, knowing this was the backdrop and brought hundreds upon hundreds of people into the streets — faculty, staff, community members, and students.

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It is now Wednesday at about 8 p.m. and our negotiators are still at the table. And we are still on strike and will be at least through tomorrow. There has been progress, according to people inside the room, but there remains a lot of work to be done.

The rest of this post will be filled with photos, which should remind everyone how much energy and unity there is and to help keep our spirits high as this stretches into the fourth day.

Channel Surfing

RU Strike Diary, Day 2 Postmortem: 

A Good Exhaustion Prevented Me From Getting This Out Yesterday

The word from the table is progress. It’s slow, but it’s happening, driven by the power we’ve assembled on the streets of New Brunswick, Piscataway, Camden, and Newark.

More than a thousand strikers across the campuses is not something you ignore.  And we’re planning to grow our already robust pickets every day until this strike ends.

Several images stood out for me from Day 2:

The massive picket that marched up College Avenue and circled the campus, led by students and faculty carrying a banner declaring “Equal Pay for Equal Work” — which has been the central fight of the adjunct union. Our demands were centered in this amazing march, as was a push for equity — for adjuncts, grad workers, students, and the community.

Rutgers functions like a corporation in too many ways, chewing up and spitting out vulnerable workers and the community in which it’s situated. It’s real estate practices — buying up properties across the city and either raising rents or gentrifying— are making New Brunswick unaffordable. It’s why we’re calling for a rent freeze on Rutgers’ properties, an end to predatory student fees and punitive actions when those fees and fines go unpaid, and a community fund to help our neighbors.

We’ve been saying that this strike is about faculty and students and the university’s largely poor and immigrant neighbors, and we mean it.

Later in the day came the mass convergence, when all of the New Brunswick picketing marched to the entrance gates of Old Queens, the origin point of Rutgers. Picketers from Cook and Douglass were joined by their colleagues from Busch and Livingston and marched down George Street through the center of town. They were joined by the Mason Gross School of the Arts and Edward Bloustein school and marched to meet the College Ave crew, creating a sea of picketers as we marched to Voorhees Mall and a not-quite impromptu party/rally.

I’m not one for hyperbole or sentimentality, so when I say it gave me chills the reader should understand I mean it.

More important, though, was the impact on the bargaining table. Our colleagues there were buoyed by our show of strength, our joy, outer commitment. And they are using it to their advantage. Management appears to be buckling, and we plan to keep this up until we win a better Rutgers, a kinder less corporate Rutgers.

RU Strike Diary, Day 1: The Inevitable Happens

This is where it’s been leading since the beginning. A historic strike at my alma mater. A school where I’ve taught journalism for 10 years. That I think is one of the best and most underrated institutions of higher learning in the country. From the beginning.

This is not what anyone wanted, but it’s what had to happen. Higher ed is in crisis. Rutgers is in crisis. We’ve been taken over by the corporate power structure. Had a change in mission crammed down our throats. Higher ed has become just another cog in the American oligarchy and Rutgers, despite its proclamations to the contrary, has been doing its part.

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I was at UBS Arena last night watching Bruce Springsteen when we — our union’s executive boards — voted. I voted by proxy. It was unanimous. I listened and shouted and sang as the man known as The Boss tore through a catalogue of songs about working people. And the irony was not lost on me. Springsteen singing of working class dreams as he allowed Ticketmaster to drive up prices and BMW to offer exclusive parking.

Still, as my phone was blowing up with texts about the now very real strike, he broke into “Wrecking Ball” and the lines “So hold tight on your anger, you hold tight on your anger / Hold tight to your anger, don't fall to your fears” hit me like a truck.

We are angry. Tired of being disrespected. Tired of the neoliberal model of higher ed reducing everything to profit.

We’ll hold tight and fight. We’re going to win this.

Modeling civil unrest in the United States: some historical cases (Bryan Alexander*)

[Editor's note: This essay first appeared at BryanAlexander.org on September 6, 2022]

I’ve been modeling potential civil unrest in the US for a while, as some of you know (in terms of polycrisis, neonationalism, recent polls, after Trump, the 2020 election, 2018-2019, the 2016 election, egging on fears, and Sinclair Lewis). One way of doing this futuring work is by drawing on historical examples. History does not repeat, but some relevant  historical events can give us some rough ideas of how insurrections/civil war/rebellions/secession/etc. might play out.  At the least they give us examples to think with.

Today I wanted to offer a group of these examples, drawn from the past few generations, which might be useful.  For each one I’ll offer a very brief introduction, then explore how something similar might play out in the modern American setting.

One caveat: what follows are sketches of history, not serious historiography. Each one is way too short, and you should really dive into each on your own, including in comments. They are samples and summaries to stir your imaginations and investigations.

Another caveat. For these examples/models I assume a few details:

1. Trump (and DeSantis, the most likely Trump successor now) live and keep doing their thing for at least a few years.
2. Civil unrest happens, to some degree.
3. Time horizon: medium term, the next 5 years, or so.

The future can easily invalidate #s 1 and 2.  While Trump often appears in rude health and, in American style, is rich enough to pay for top notch medical care, he also has poor health habits and is nearing 80.  He or DeSantis could, of course, be killed, either in accidents or by the time-honored American tradition of assassination.  As for my second assumption, we haven’t seen much unrest over the past five years, despite my forecasts.  We might not experience anything of the kind – and should hope to be so fortunate.

One last bit of throat-clearing: there are other historical examples we can draw from, especially on the global stage.  I have been working on others, but wanted to get some out there now. I’d love to hear your own historical ideas.

Onward:

THE YEARS OF LEAD Italy endured a low grade civil conflict starting in the 1960s. Various extreme right and left groups targeted each other, the government, civil society, and civilians with bombings, kidnapping, robberies, and assassinations. The extreme right’s goal was the notorious “strategy of tension“: to scare people with terror enough that they would accept a reactionary government. The left’s strategy: to mobilize the population enough to kick off a left-wing revolution. Both used violence and terror as risky but sometimes successful recruiting tools, as well as for resource-gathering (cf bank robberies). Violence and terror also kept the cycle going by instilling the desire for revenge in survivors, friends, family, and witnesses.

The 1980 Bologna railway massacre.

How might this apply to the United States? It is not difficult to foresee some extreme right-wing groups (3%ers, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, etc) increasing their violent acts and becoming more ambitious. One established American precedent is The Order, a hard-right racist fringe outfit which conducted bank robberies and at least one assassination in the mid-1980s.  Following the Italian example, not to mention the action of some Republicans around the January 6th event, we would envision some politicians allying themselves with these fringe activists to varying degrees of secrecy or openness, for a shared cause and/or mutual benefit.

I’m not sure if there will be any such corresponding action on the extreme left, since so many are wedded to nonviolent action. But we could see such organizing happen if a group feels right-wing dangers are dire enough and if they are willing to obtain the necessary tools.  Perhaps right wing attacks will spur retaliation. Or maybe some will see their struggle as so fundamental to humanity that they must risk extreme action (cf the classic “if you had a time machine, would you travel to the 1920s and murder Hitler?” prompt).

Recall that in the Italian case the activists were very small in number. The Red Brigades numbered a few hundred out of a nation with circa 50 million people. The United States, in contrast, numbers nearly 330 million and is very well supplied with weaponry.

Recall, too, that in Italy’s Years of Lead neither side succeeded in taking over the government, even after kidnapping and killing a former prime minister.

CHINA’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION From 1966 to 1976 political chaos engulfed the People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao, having lost a great deal of power due to the horrific failure of his Great Leap Forward, launched a political gamble to rebuild his leadership. The story is complex and not easy to summarize, but it took the broad form of a revolution from above, which developed into widespread unrest to the level of civil war.  Mao used national, regional, local, and cultural supporters to provoke political instability while building up a Stalin-level cult of personality.  To do this Mao and his allies ran huge propaganda campaigns, created new political-military units out of teenagers, spurred endless rounds of local political fighting (hence struggle sessions and escalating local violence), and purged leaders across the system, along with preparing the nation for war with the Soviet Union, and more.

(I recommend Frank Dikötter’s The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962—1976. The complexity of this story is immense, and its recency means it’s difficult to get perspective and documents.)

How might this play out in the United States?  Obviously the American situation is very different.  Contemporary America is a world leader and is neoliberal in ideology, as opposed to China’s developing nation status during these events, not to mention being a communist state. However, we could imagine a right wing American leader, such as Trump, applying some of Mao’s practices if he wins the 2024 presidential election. Imagine him authorizing various local groups (militias, friendly state governments, local or state police) and federal agencies to go after people he doesn’t like (liberal school boards, tech companies, whatever Trump thinks Antifa is). Trump (or DeSantis) could use federal powers to crack down on anyone he doesn’t like, such as sending troops to deep blue cities, increasing digital surveillance, or denying resources. Trump (or DeSantis) could also follow Mao in urging repeatedly updated political opinions, talking up foreign war to scare people at home, calling out domestic enemies, and generally building up a cult of personality.

Obviously there are limits to this analogy. Trump is no ideologue like Mao was; I’m not sure what a Little Red Book analog might be.  Further, today’s GOP counts economic growth as a major, even leading achievement, while a Cultural Revolution level of chaos would undermine that.

One thing to keep in mind: Mao succeeded, at least in terms of his drive to rebuild his own power. He lived the last years of his life in supreme authority, albeit in declining health, after dismantling some of his support structures.

THE DESTRUCTION OF YUGOSLAVIA In the 1990s this nation tore itself apart, as a nationalist party tried to seize and expand control over the whole republic, and as different sub-nations sought to secede. A powerful national army proved a major power source for the Serb hardliners, as did militias. Republics generated their own forces, including irregular militias. Violence escalated in cycles of vengeance and deliberately inflicted terror. Republics exited the federation while the war grew in complexity and horror.  Other nations intervened, eventually establishing a shaky peace – followed by more conflicts and more unstable settlements.

Bosnia’s Stary Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva River, rebuilt after being shattered in the war.

What vision for American conflict does the destruction of Yugoslavia present?  This is a more extreme model than the first two, but it could play out in several ways. imagine if Trump or DeSantis wins the White House and cracks down much harder than in the Mao model. Such suppression, surveillance, and violence provokes resistance at the state and city level. Democrats/liberals/the left attempt to secede in some way, such as declaring local autonomy from the Republican administration. They could organize self-defense forces at scale. This could spark an escalated federal crackdown. Any violence would drive all sides to further organization and action, and the nation spirals into civil war.

Alternatively, we could imagine the reverse, with a Democratic election victory and the Trump/reactionary right treating the winner as a tyrant. The latter could attempt to secede at the city, state, and/or regional level. They could organizing violence at various levels, from lone activists to militias or suborned local police, aimed against federal forces or locals perceived as aligned with them. The White House follows Lincoln in 1861 and responds with greater force. The civil war spiral kicks off.

Once more, there are obvious differences between the United States in the 2020s and post-Tito Yugoslavia. As with the Chinese comparison, America is not a communist state.  The USA is also more powerful geopolitically, not at the point of having foreign forces intervene and force settlements.  There are not clear-cut mixtures of ethnic, religious, and linguistic divides; the American situation is more complex.  Yet ethnic cleansing, should it occur, might take different forms, such as racial mass murder.

---

Why these historical examples out of all others?

First off, I was looking for situations that were as close to the present as possible.  That makes the comparisons less removed than, say, examples from Europe in the 1600s.  These histories are still distant from our present in key ways.  The contemporary internet, for example, could prove a powerful tool in any actor’s arsenal. The experience and impact of COVID-19 might inflect any such future history in ways quite different from our examples.

Second, for each one I began by isolating present-day factors which could drive civil unrest in the United States. Looking at dueling small groups in Portland, Oregon and the group which rioted in the US Capitol brought to mind the fierce, committed extremists of modern Italy. Considering Trump’s cult of personality, I looked for contemporary examples.  North Korea offers one, as does Italy’s Berlusconi, but not with the deliberate cultivation of chaos represented by Mao’s top-down revolution. Considering secession presents several alternatives, like Czechoslovakia’s split or the Eritrean war, but former Yugoslavia has advantages: a larger number of factions, a late industrial economic base, and a mix of ideologies with other identities.

Again, these are sketches. There is a lot more to say about each of those stories. There are plenty of ways today’s American context differs from each. Plus I have a lot more research behind this, but don’t want to overwhelm in a single FB post. My goal is to get you all thinking and commenting, so have at it.

(Bologna bombing photo by Beppe Briguglio, Patrizia Pulga, Medardo Pedrini, Marco Vaccari – www.stragi.it/, CC BY-SA 3.0; Cultural Revolution photo from Wikipedia; Mostar’s Stary Most image from Wikipedia)

**Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future. He is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University. Bryan's next book is Universities on Fire, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This article was originally published at BryanAlexander.org.