The CCAA will lead a virtual series of short lectures on a variety of topics related to current affairs and texts from the Columbia curriculum. Alumni will have the opportunity to learn and discuss one's perspective on the world in relation to enduring topics such as morality, humanity, and justice.
Upcoming Lectures
On Civil Disobedience: The Radical Protest Tradition at Columbia University
Wednesday, September 25 | 12:00 p.m. EDT
Led by: Dr. Thai Jones, Herbert H. Lehman Curator for American History, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University
Sometimes referred to as the "Activist Ivy," Columbia University has a unique tradition of student, faculty, and staff protest that stretches back for more than a century. Highlighted by the campus revolution of 1968, the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, and the struggles for diversified curricula in the 1990s and 2000s, university affiliates have employed the full arsenal of civil disobedience on campus -- cajoling, demonstrating, leafleting, confronting, vandalizing, boycotting, picketing, hunger-striking, and occupying -- in pursuit of their diverse visions of equity and justice. In this first presentation in a three-part conversation, Thai Jones will present an overview of this lineage, focusing on how protests develop, what tactics students have used, how administrators have responded, and how these decisions have come together to create an active and dynamic tradition of radical protest at Columbia University.
Read More on Thai Jones
Jones teaches the history of radicalism and social movements at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York’s Year of Anarchy (Bloomsbury, 2014) and A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family’s Century of Conscience (Free Press, 2004). He served as historical consultant and co-writer on the award-winning podcast Mother Country Radicals (2022). His writing has appeared in a variety of national publications, including The New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Nation, and the Occupied Wall Street Journal.