Monday, November 12, 2001

WILMINGTON, NC – University students who protest American military action in Afghanistan or the curtailing of civil liberties through a national ID card do so as part of a long history of students fighting perceived oppression, according to Dr. Mark Edelman Boren, author of Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject.

“Unruly students can be tremendous catalysts for change,” said Boren, an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. “Students throughout the world continue to develop strategies to defy authority.”

In Student Resistance, Boren chronicles more than 500 years of strife between activists and academia and demonstrates that students have confronted governments, society and their own universities for as long as institutions have existed. From the Middle Ages to the present, Boren highlights major student rebellions throughout the world.

Boren said his own interest in protest movements led to his discovery that a current, chronological history of student resistance didn’t exist.

“Thousands of articles have been written on individual protests. In my book, I’ve created a quick-reference that provides the reader with the major flashpoints of activism and how students have used protests throughout the world.”

During the past decade, student resistance actions blossomed, often with violence, in many parts of the world, said Boren.

“During the Vietnam War, student activism was linked to conservative or liberal ideological viewpoints,” said Boren. “The American student protests on U.S. college campuses today tend to be issue-based, such as the anti-sweatshop movement or those efforts concerned with preserving the environment. We must remember that when resistance erupts, it often does so quickly and in unexpected ways. Student-led uprisings are unpredictable, and given that the students themselves can rarely control the power that they sometimes generate, acts of resistance must be considered seriously.”

For more information, contact Dr. Boren at 910/962-7545.

Photos of Dr. Boren and the book cover are available to download from the Web at www.uncwil.edu/news/releases/november01/boren_book.html.