IOE insights

Just finished listening to Episode 29: What’s the Point of Protest (recorded early July 2024) and I was surprised that our “brave” academics and podcasters did not even elude to, in passing, the current moment of protest right here at UCL - the student encampment or the UCL staff BDS movement against UCL’s involvement with war and humanitarian criminality in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The student encampment was just recently legally shut down and evicted by UCL’s Management. Here is an example of peaceful/nonviolent protest and civil society coming together (perhaps another example of this affinity-convergence theory), and somehow Dr Benjamin Abrams and Jason Ilagan thought it not even worth mentioning. I appreciate that it’s not, in itself, mass protest but it is very much connected to the mass protest and marches happening in London almost every Saturday for 10 months. Maybe I’m being unfair and it was edited out but even that demonstrates the non-dynamism of this podcast. Makes me question both the quality and applicability of the theory and this podcast.