Threat, Delay, and Deradicalization: Brandeis University and the Political Power within Institutional Memory

Through the study of case events in the short history of Brandeis University, I find that university administrators often pitch their responses to on-campus protest to two audiences: the protestors themselves, and the uninformed public. Administrators often try to angle their disapproval of student dissent into familiar channels, such as threat, disruption of daily affairs, and infeasibility. The university also tends to selectively employ criminalization of student protestors, based on the struggle between appearing as a stable, law-and-order institution and appearing cruel and unresponsive to student demands. The rate at which adoption of said student demands and official incorporation into the institutional history happens is determined by the radical nature of the demands’ content, as well as the relative cost of adoption. Those elements chosen for incorporation must fit into the nebulous structure of neoliberal capitalist knowledge production, and then be claimed by the university as a standalone event. While this is happening, student protestors are criminalized and disciplined while the university can profit off the history of their labor.