Unrest on campus

Also: Grade inflation is a thing. But it’s not the real problem [Donate ❤️]( [View in Browser](  May 5, 2024 Dear Cog reader, Protests on college campuses dominated news coverage this week. What began as a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University a couple of weeks ago inspired thousands of students on other college campuses to similar action. At Brown and UCLA. Tulane, Tufts, Arizona State, Texas, Emory, UNC. There are far too many to list, but here’s a [map]( that plots the protests where people have been arrested. Many of these demonstrations have been peaceful; some have turned violent. Others have included openly antisemitic [incidents](. As of this writing, more than 2,000 protesters have been arrested, though there seems to be no uniform response to student demonstrators by college and university administrators. (My colleague Berto Scalese wrote [this helpful piece]( describing how the presidents of several Boston-area schools are engaging with the protests on their campuses.) Cog hasn’t yet published an essay on the demonstrations, but I know our contributors are thinking about it, and trying to make sense of what they’re seeing. One of our writers, Alysia Abbott, teaches creative nonfiction at Emerson College. In a Facebook post, she wrote about feeling beside herself with worry for her students: “They have been battered – physically, emotionally and spiritually.” She described how a pair of students led their classmates through an exercise of drawing a memory from childhood, while listening to music. “Imagine this class of 18 undergrads, each drawing scenes of playing on the beach, jumping on trampolines, and playing with neighbors,” she explains. “All the while Billy Joel sings: Slow down you crazy child /You're so ambitious for a juvenile / But then if you're so smart tell me / Why are you still so afraid?” In that quiet moment, she saw her students taking care of each other. That felt hopeful to me. Another contributor, Alastair Moock, wrote about the long presence of protest in his own life. His parents were graduate students at [Columbia in 1968](. A decade later, when student activists were calling for divestment from apartheid South Africa, Moock was a toddler, living with his parents in Columbia housing. Alastair is sympathetic to the protestors calling for solidarity with Palestinians: “You young people out there standing up to power are part of a long, proud tradition. You are strong and you are right,” he [wrote in an Instagram post](. But he also wants students to be mindful that their actions exist in a larger narrative. Here’s more from his post: “The news gets twisted today more than ever. It's so easy to pick out one-off examples of bad behavior that can taint a whole movement. The man standing outside the Columbia gates this week chanting ‘[Go back to Poland]( does not speak for the students holed up on that campus. But those students also need to know that he, and others like him, are out there trying to speak for them.” In this way, he’s urging students to take care of each other, too. As an editor, it’s not really my place to have an opinion on the events playing out before us, but it is my job to pay attention. Hamas’ violent attack on Oct. 7, killing over 1,200 people, was horrific. The situation in Gaza is dire – more than [30,000 dead]( a million soon at [risk of famine]( no end to the fighting in sight. Violence between police and students, protesters and counterprotesters, is deeply troubling. Concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise. And I know that the unrest we’re seeing on campuses is also reflective of [issues]( unrelated to the Middle East – debates over free speech, university politics and our toxic partisan soup. So much anger and heartache is difficult to absorb and understand. We don’t know yet if recent student activism is the beginning of a larger movement (as was the [case in 1968]( when students were galvanized against the war in Vietnam) or if it will lose steam as young people retreat from their campuses for the summer months. But almost regardless of how it plays out, it’s unsettling to digest this upset against the backdrop of a looming presidential election, and a brittleness in the way we sometimes engage with one another. I don’t have many answers, but I do think we have to keep paying attention – and keep taking care of each other. Until soon, Cloe Axelson Senior Editor, Cognoscenti [Follow]( Support the news  Must Reads [Yes, grade inflation is a thing. But it’s not the real problem]( For more than 50 years, administrators, school officials, policymakers and fellow teachers have wrung their hands about grade inflation, writes Seth Czarnecki. It’s hard to see a realistic way out, but we must. [Read more.]( [Yes, grade inflation is a thing. 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