Longtime readers know that while I think campus activism is a good thing (and was a campus activist myself), I think college politics suck up too much attention within the left. Structurally college students are not well suited to being activists: activism requires continuity of practice, and college students leave every four months for vacation and never stay longer than four or five years. This is why, for example, Oberlin activists could go from national attention and radical demands to silence in a year. The students who drove that activism left to go get jobs and start lives, which is inevitable.
the object of your appeal
the object of your appeal
the object of your appeal
Longtime readers know that while I think campus activism is a good thing (and was a campus activist myself), I think college politics suck up too much attention within the left. Structurally college students are not well suited to being activists: activism requires continuity of practice, and college students leave every four months for vacation and never stay longer than four or five years. This is why, for example, Oberlin activists could go from national attention and radical demands to silence in a year. The students who drove that activism left to go get jobs and start lives, which is inevitable.