PSC 388 - Politics of Protest

Course Units: 1

Are political protests dangerous or central to democratic politics? Can spontaneous protests ever create long lasting change? Or are they bound to dissipate? What are the acts of protest that are justifiable? Under what conditions? To address these questions, the course will cover a wide range of readings from foundational texts written by Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Henri David Thoreau, John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, and Jürgen Habermas to contemporary theorists’ interventions into conceptual debates regarding different forms of protest and their democratic value.