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The United States Student Association’s 62nd annual National Student Congress opens at the University of Colorado at Boulder in eleven days.
USSA, founded in 1947, is the nation’s oldest national student group, and its pre-eminent student government organization. I got my start in national student organizing in USSA, and I’m always thrilled to go back.
This year, I’ll be running a workshop, co-facilitating the Congress’s people of color “allies space,” and lending a hand in various other ways over the course of the week.
I’ll have more to say about the allies space later, and I’ll be blogging (and tweeting) from the Congress once I get there. In the meantime, here’s the title and description of my workshop, scheduled for Thursday, July 23rd, at two o’clock:
Media and Social Networking for Student Activism, Past and Present
Long before the creation of the internet, campus organizers were social networkers. What can their strategies teach today’s activists, and how can today’s students use new media and online networking to advance their work? This workshop, led by historian, activist, and blogger Angus Johnston, will explore the role of technology, media, and human contact in historical and contemporary student organizing.
Media and Social Networking for Student Activism, Past and Present
Long before the creation of the internet, campus organizers were social networkers. What can their strategies teach today’s activists, and how can today’s students use new media and online networking to advance their work? This workshop, led by historian, activist, and blogger Angus Johnston, will explore the role of technology, media, and human contact in historical and contemporary student organizing.
Hope to see you there!
A group of Florida teenagers has brought suit against the city of West Palm Beach, in hopes of overturning that city’s youth curfew.
The National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida (NYRA-SEFL) filed the lawsuit in federal court late last month, after their efforts to negotiate with the city were rebuffed.
According to the executive director of the national NYRA, this lawsuit is the first formal legal challenge to a curfew ordinance ever brought by a youth-led youth civil rights group.
Afternoon update: Here’s a copy of the complaint.
In reading about the book The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses, which I mentioned here last week, I stumbled upon the website of an interesting museum exhibit that’s currently up here in New York.
Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges traces the history of several dozen German Jewish professors who, after fleeing Nazi Germany, took teaching positions at segregated colleges in the American South. According to the website, the exhibit emphasizes the relationships that grew up between these professors and their students, and the effect that this unusual meeting of cultures had on both groups.
The exhibit runs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan through January. I’ll report back after my visit.
In an unexpectedly lopsided 8-1 vote, the United States Supreme Court this morning ruled that the 2003 school strip search of eighth grader Savana Redding was unconstitutional.
I wrote about oral arguments in the case, Safford v. Redding, here, here, and here. Today’s Supreme Court ruling can be found here. I’ll have more on the decision next week.
Evening update: Here’s some interesting coverage of the decision from Pandagon, Meanwhile, the Washington Post wonders whether this is Justice Souter’s last opinion.
Sunday night’s violent attack on students in a Tehran University dorm by police and religious militia members has exposed fault lines at the highest levels of Iranian government.
Yesterday, a group of parliamentarians visited the campus and spoke with students. After that visit, they called upon the government to release all those arrested and fire those responsible for the attack. In response, parliament speaker Ali Larijani, a longtime Ahmadinejad rival, announced the creation of an investigatory committee to investigate the incident.
Reports have circulated in the last 24 hours that as many as five students — three men and two women — were killed in the assault. The chancellor of the university has denied that any deaths occurred, but condemnation of the incident has been growing, as Speaker Larijani has publicly asked “What does it mean that in the middle of the night students are attacked in their dormitory?”
At the mass rally held yesterday, presidential candidate Ali Mousavi charged that the government had “attacked dormitories and brutally broken legs, heads, arms, [thrown] some of the students out of the windows, and arrested a lot of people.” Today, some eight hundred students are reported to have staged a sit-in at the university’s gates.
Iran is a young country, and its students have for decades stood at the forefront of political agitation. The Tehran University incident is not the only violent campus assault to occur since last Friday’s election, but it appears to be galvanizing — and polarizing — the country in a way that the others have not.
If the uprising now taking place in Iran does grow into a true rebellion, the Tehran University dormitory assault of June 14 will likely be seen as a turning point in the struggle.
3 pm update: The Chronicle of Higher Education has finally picked up the Tehran University story.
5 pm update: The chancellor of Shiraz University has resigned in protest over a similar attack there.
studentactivism.net 
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