Demands made, revised, rejected, reiterated and (in some cases) retracted have been in the spotlight recently—on our campus and on countless others. In fact, WeTheProtesters—a protest coordinating group that originated in Ferguson, Missouri—has compiled demands from 77 universities on thedemands.org. “Across the nation,” the site declares, “students have risen up to demand an end to systemic and structural racism on campus. Here are their demands.”
The entry for Duke is linked to a PDF of “Demands of Black Voices,” which was circulated at the November 20 “Duke Tomorrow: Student-Organized Discussion with Brodhead and Administration.” Since that meeting, information about the Trask lawsuit has spawned a new (albeit related) set of demands.
But what are “demands,” really? Who makes them, and of whom? When, and why do we demand? How do we (and how should we) respond to demands?
Demand, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, can mean “to ask for (a thing) peremptorily, imperiously, urgently, or in such a way as to command attention,” or “to ask for (a thing) with legal right or authority; to claim as something one is legally or rightfully entitled to.” In the case of protests, I find that these two senses often coincide; after all, protests exist to command attention as a means of obtaining something believed rightfully due.
The problem with protest demands, from a logical and moral standpoint, arises when the two senses of demand are conflated; that is, when the urgency of an issue and the overwhelming desire to enact change begins to eclipse considerations of rightness. Of course, protesters’ agendas must be founded on a belief in their right to make demands. A Google N-gram visualization of the words “protest” and “demands” since 1900 shows that the prevalence of “demands” tracks closely with that of “protest." There is a peak for both words around 1920, attributable to labor movements and women’s suffrage, and a larger peak around 1970, attributable to the antiwar, women’s rights and Civil Rights movements.
Obviously, protesters have historically made demands to promote important causes and in doing so have shaped the fabric of our society for the better. Their progressive demands have been anchored in strong convictions about justice, freedom and natural human rights. That’s not to say that members of different protest movement always agreed on their demands; indeed, feminists are notorious for contradicting themselves. But successful demands, no matter how varied, remained faithful to some interpretation of the core principles motivating them.
Concerns arise, then, when the urgency of a particular moment compels protesters to make demands (in the first sense of commanding or requesting things peremptorily) that conflict with the principles underpinning their asserted authority to demand them (in the second sense of claiming a legal or moral right).
These concerns are heightened by the fact that lists of demands are like scoreboards for the success and progress of a movement; they are concrete objectives that can galvanize support for a cause by serving as symbols of achievement. This is readily apparent in recent demands for the resignation of university officials (with varying degrees of culpability) at campuses nationwide. Resignation or firing in response to a demand, whether the person is guilty or not, legitimizes the movement demanding it and symbolically commits the university to grappling with the broader issues—a huge victory.
In this way, demands’ usefulness for drumming up support increases the likelihood of their misapplication; demands like resignations and terminations that are theoretically easy to execute become attractive, even if they momentarily sacrifice certain principles (and people) to the greater good. Here we can draw a parallel to the lacrosse case; the demand for the players’ conviction was hyped into a symbolic affirmation of the fight against sexual violence and racism in general. In the overzealous pursuit of that juicy symbolic victory, activists hypocritically sacrificed key principles like equality in judgment and due process—principles that were otherwise cornerstones of their agendas. Demands are great conduits of support for justice and liberation from oppression, though sometimes (hypocritically) are met at the expense of prudence and deliberation.
Some of the Allen building occupiers’ original demands (issued by Duke Students and Workers in Solidarity) exemplified similarly concerning contradictions. Recognizing this, the protestors modified their original list. Their original demand that Executive Vice President Tallman Trask pay full medical and legal reparations to parking attendant Shelvia Underwood undermined the authority of our impartial court system, something vital to the cause of a just society. By removing that demand and letting the court determine the outcome of the Trask case, the protesters resolved this contradiction. Unfortunately, this revision necessarily exposed their initial oversight and diminished the legitimacy of their demand-making authority, an effect apparent in the Administration’s response: “We’re done with demands.”
Making three of their other demands negotiable, including the calling for the termination of Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, Vice President for Administration Kyle Cavanaugh and parking and transportation services director Carl DePinto, also suggested a realization that they could not abridge the rights of an individual in the name of their cause without fundamentally contradicting what they stand for. I’m not saying those three individuals have done nothing wrong, only that to make a determination about their punishment based on the demands of the protesters rather than systematic a review of the facts (as every employee is entitled to) would not, in fact, advance the cause of justice.
Demands have been at the center of protest movements for centuries, and rightly so. From Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, to Anti-Federalists’ insistence that the U.S. Constitution include a Bill of Rights, to 20th-century activists’ clarion calls for integration and women’s suffrage, history has been written and rewritten in response to demands. But to be honest, the fact that there are literally thousands of college protest demands on thedemands.org dilutes the power of each individual demand, especially when some of them are demands only in the urgent, peremptory sense of the word. Rightful demands, as they are defined in the dictionary and by history, should be unquestionably linked to deep-seated principles. Campus protests today could be stronger and more coherent if they were more conscientious about making demands that align with the complete spirit of the word and with the fundamental principles of their movements.
Lauren Forman is a Trinity senior. Her column runs on alternate Fridays. To suggest a word for a future column, please email Lauren at lauren.forman@duke.edu or tweet her at @lauren_forman.
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