Mainstream media’s coverage of the campus-based student protests and encampments across the globe primarily addresses the ‘need’ to use law enforcement, including university police and politicians’ calls for National Guard. Armed with riot gear which does not include mace, batons, firearms, or metal or rubber tie handcuffs, this armament has been firmly in place long before this student mobilization. Through phones and social media, the world watches as students’ encampments are forcibly assaulted and police officers, municipal and university, use blunt force to remove students and faculty from these sites of protests.

With the images of unspeakable yet undeniable violence in Gaza and the horrific use of militarized deployment to destroy every university, hospital, and private home, it might be easy to miss the fact that rigorous study is in every encampment, every faculty group of solidarity, and myriad teach-ins that have been a staple in the encampments. On the contrary, students’ encampments are providing public pedagogy. In the United States, this public pedagogy has supplanted vacuous stories on mainstream media, often leaning into stories that don’t require saying Gaza, Israel, or genocide.

Read the full essay on BeaconBroadside.