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The Cops Are Real

Indignity Vol. 4, No. 78

Tom Scocca

Tom Scocca

— 7 min read
The Cops Are Real
LOS ANGELES, CA - MAY 02: The police officers detain a pro-Palestinian protestor as they clear a pro-Palestinian encampment after a dispersal order was given at an encampment at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on May 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Police had cleared UCLA's student encampment in a late-night operation, and arrested more than 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators early on Thursday morning, according to multiple sources. (Photo by Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)

IAN BOGOST, A professor at Washington University in St. Louis, had some notions about the state of campus protests in the Atlantic. Other professors at other schools were getting battered and arrested by the cops. How could this be squared with the essential editorial line of the Atlantic that the kids and their protests are not only wrong, but trivial?

Easy: the professors were, Bogost wrote, "watching over students as their guardians, instead of marching as their peers. This is helicopter protesting, fit for the helicopter-parent generation."

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